Flen : Om stagnation i skuggan av Stockholm

• Main Author: Nilsson, Daniel
• Format: Others
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för naturvetenskap, miljö och teknik 2013
• Subjects: regional growth; commuting; regional policy; depopulation; stagnation; regional enlargement; regional tillväxt; pendling; regionalpolitik; avfolkning; regionförstoring
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-23349

This thesis aims at analyzing why the municipality of Flen, in the eastern part of Sweden, has experienced strong depopulation for the last forty years in spite of its relative vicinity to Stockholm. The study uses current theories on regional developement, population theory and theories on regional enlargment to help explain and to evaluate the different regional factors that affect the developement of Flen on the local level. The thesis is primarily focused on the subject of regional policy and strategies to meet regional depopulation. The study also gives a presentation of the strategies of major regional institutions as well as analyzing what impact regional policy have on local policy in the municipality of Flen. Interviews with local officials, politicians and other people representing the population of Flen were carried out to achieve a better understanding of the specific challenges that the municipality faces and of the measures that are taken to meet them. Regional policy in Sweden prioritises measures that promote regional enlargment to link the housing and labour markets together with the regional infrastructure. Each region should promote and develop its own unique qualities as a way of stimulating growth. This disregards the former notion that the state should strive for regional growth to be achieved equally distributed within its boundaries. The thesis puts forward the view that this development could lead to an allowance for some regions to be neglected by the state. The findings in this study show that the measures that are put in to curb the stagnation in the municipality of Flen are made with difficulty and cannot be financed without external aid. The challenges are to a growing extent no longer managable by the municipality itself which brings me to a final conclusion that predicts that Flen could befavoured in a future municipal reform in which there are clearer connections to Stockholm and to other larger towns in the region, as well as a new delimitation that better takes the functional relationships of the population into account.