Senior lecturer in Landscape Architecture, with the emphasis on collaboration planning and urban garden cultivation/Universitetslektor med inriktning mot samverkansplanering och urbant trädgårdsbruk
Agr Dr in Landscape Planning
Master of Science in Landscape Architecture/ Landskapsarkitektexamen, LAR/MSA, 1991
Course coordinator of the Master Project in Landscape Architecture, 30 credits.
Examiner of the course Urban Agriculture and Social Interactions, 15 credits.
Other than the above I'm engaged in a broad spectrum of courses, tasks and assignments. For example I give lectures, hold literature seminars and other seminars, am part of the «critique panel" at project presentations, am supervisor and examiner. I teach in a majority of the programmes offered at the Faculty of LTV; the Landscape Architect Programme, the Landscape Architect Master's Programme, the Landscape Engineer Programme, the Garden Engineer Programme, the Sustainable Urban Development Master's Programme and the Food & Landscape Master's Programme.
The main focus of my thesis Stadsdelsträdgård: Plats för gemenskap och kreativa processer/ Public Garden: A Place for Community and Creative Processes draws attention to an aspect of society that is of profound importance to the achievement of sustainable development, namely the relation between governing forces (top-down policies) and local practice (bottom- up initiatives). Informal groups constitute an important, but often overlooked, resource when working to change society towards sustainable development.
My research focus on the significance of local gardening initiatives, where citizens jointly design and use public space in a socially and ecologically sustainable manner. Particular focus is placed on the driving forces within the gardening initiative and the underlying processes identified in the contact between citizens and the local authorities. The aim is to contribute to an increased understanding of self-organised gardens for community and cultivation as a social phenomenon.
The concept stadsdelsträdgård (a community garden in a Swedish urban context) was introduced in my thesis, in which the meaning of the concepts self-organisation and landscape, i.e. the social process and the place-making process, are brought together. In the garden the users are self-organised in relation to the local authority, attaining a common right of usage where it is the users who make the decisions concerning the use and cultivation of the garden. In this self-organised, local practice a sense of community may develop.
By cultivating organically the users develop knowledge of ecological cycles and the condition of the ecosystem. Through daily cultivation practices this knowledge becomes incorporated in the shaping of the garden through a process of interplay between the people and the physical landscape. Ideally, this creative place-making process creates a fertile ground for the trying out of new patterns of action for sustainable development. When citizens create gardens jointly the outcome are gardens with a personal touch and a feeling of homeliness, which distinguish them from the public park In the self-organised garden you get a combination of being in public space and feeling at home.
The stadsdelsträdgård is a resource in the town district, providing an opportunity for meetings between people of different backgrounds and generations and between various individuals and groups in society. The garden is not the goal in itself, but rather it works as a means of creating involvement, social solidarity and an active local community. A common practice is developed through people 's acting together in a place, and may lead to new, more sustainable ways of acting.
The research contributes knowledge concerning what a socially and ecologically sustainable public garden may look like in relation to tangible, lived life in the city. The stadsdelsträdgård is a way of working with sustainability in practice. The potential to develop new patterns of acting towards sustainable development lies in the combination of self-organisation and the use of the physical landscape. The interplay between community and the physical landscape needs to be recognized, the thesis argues, as a potentially important dimension of the planning process.
Link to the doctoral thesis in Epsilon: http://diss-epsilon.slu.se/archive/ 0000200 9/