Social sustainability in communities and cities

The physical environment has a great impact on how we live our lives and on our well-being. By prioritizing social values such as equality, trust, security and well-being together with ecological and economic values, it is possible to create a more sustainable society.

Vinnova is therefore making a new effort to develop solutions that strengthen social perspectives and values in the physical environment.

- When social values are allowed to be in focus, it can, for example, lead to improved access to housing when reasonable rents are prioritized and better public health when society plans for walking and cycling paths and proximity to green areas. If the social values are not allowed to take place, the physical environment can, on the contrary, strengthen exclusion, segregation and perceived lock-ins in areas that are difficult to get from and to, says Anna Wall, responsible for the announcement at Vinnova.

Social sustainability is not something new in community planning, but one of the challenges is that social values are not included in project calculations and budgets and that there is a lack of objective and follow-up for the work, which leads to a lack of dissemination and use of existing models. Another problem is that decisions can be made in planning and construction processes that have social consequences without these being made visible or properly investigated. In addition, physical planning is often characterized by the fact that it is a limited area that is planned in detail or allocated to land, which makes it difficult to plan society as a whole.

- With this investment, we hope to develop and test models and working methods that can contribute to better integrating social values when designing the physical environment, says Anna Wall.