SOME NOTES ON GEOGRAPHY AND SOCIAL ENGINEERING

"A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words." Ludwig Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations . "Instead of posing as prophets we must become the makers of our fate. We must learn to do things as well as we can and to look out for our mistakes." Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies .     

The attraction of the rural: Characteristics of rural migrants in Sweden

This paper investigates the characteristics of rural migrants in Sweden divided into periurban and remote countryside using register data at the individual level. The results show that during the two years of investigation, 1987 and 1993, there was a concentration of the population in general but the periurban countryside gained migrants from the cities. In addition, the migration pattern had an aging effect on the population in rural areas. It is also shown that migration selectivity is relatively stable during the study period. The countryside is less attractive than urban areas to those with high income and high education but when the two types of countrysides are compared to each other the periurban is more attractive. Despite the renewed interest in rural living which has been reported in other studies, remote rural areas are less attractive to migrants than periurban areas in Sweden.     

Poor Relief,Taxes and the First Universal Pension Reform: the origin of the Swedish welfare state reconsidered

In the year 1900, Sweden probably had the oldest population in the contemporary world. It was also the first nation to implement a universal pension system in 1913. The universal character in early social legislation has certainly been decisive for the development of the Swedish welfare state. This alternative has not been self-evident. Why did the reforms turn universal, when the continental model, the Bismarck social security system, was exclusively directed at industrial workers? Research has concentrated on demographic factors and growing demands for social security, or on the fact that Sweden was still a predominantly rural society with about 2,400 local authorities. This article examines the development of social legislation in the light of local government expenditures and incomes, and suggests an overlooked possibility: the formulation of the first universal national social security reform was a redistributional response to uneven distribution of incomes and general expenditures among the rural districts in Sweden.     

Connecting Municipal and Regional Level Planning: Analysis and Visualization of Sustainability Indicators in Bergslagen,Sweden

Sustainable development as a process towards sustainability requires collaboration among societal actors and stakeholders at multiple levels. A key issue is to provide them with that they have comprehensive and transparent knowledge base representing the state and trends of different dimensions of sustainability. This study addresses the need to analyse and present data of sustainability as a foundation for the sustainable development process within municipalities, and among them. As a case study, we focus on 18 municipalities in the crisis-struck Bergslagen region in Sweden and compare them with 101 surrounding municipalities. Data from 2001 and 2006 on 15 indicators representing ecological, economic and social sustainability criteria were transformed to a common scale through normalization around the median, and summarized. Bergslagen region municipalities performed poorer than the surrounding ones for all dimensions in 2006. The change from 2001 to 2006 was positive for economic and social criteria, while the ecological dimension developed negatively in all municipalities. We stress the need for municipalities to collaborate with each other and other actors both at municipal and regional levels, and to use sustainability indicators as a base for informed planning processes. We propose visualization of indicators using maps to support decision-making and social learning.