Social sustainability for whom? The role of discursive boundary objects in Swedish strategic urban planning

Abstract

This paper provides further understanding of how social sustainability functions as a discursive boundary object, by exploring how it is artefactually anchored during the planning process, and how this anchoring affects the discourse of social sustainability. This is explored in a Swedish strategic planning project – the RiverCity in Gothenburg – where social sustainability is the desired policy objective. This paper traces how the discourse of social sustainability shifted during the planning process (2012–2019) and shows how social sustainability contains two levels of meaning, substantives aspects of what a socially sustainable city is and procedural of how to achieve it. The substantive level functions as a boundary object between policy areas, however, the procedural level leads to goal conflicts when it is translated and artefactually anchored by different municipal departments. The findings show how the conflicts between different translations of social sustainability change the discourse over time without changing the phrasing of the first level of meaning. This finding shows that 1) while the core idea persists different translations lead to different artefactual anchoring, 2) which shows a mismatch between long-term socioeconomic goals and short-term financial goals for social sustainability, and 3) risks the concept being hijacked.