Mittuniversitetet

This thesis questions what the call for safety in entrepreneurial urban planning and development might entail for the openness of public space, and challenges contemporary approaches to measure unsafety. The overarching theoretical framework draws on the Foucault-inspired dispositif of safety: referring to a system of relations between discursive and non-discursive elements through which people and places can be disciplined and controlled, and access to public spaces regulated. The thesis uses a case study-inspired design that, by using the city of Sundsvall as an empirical case, aims to map out a dispositif of safety and use it to criticise entrepreneurial urban planning and development for restricting the openness of public space and enabling exclusionary practices. The aim is addressed through four papers. Paper I traces how entrepreneurial practices have been implemented in the planning and development of Sundsvall’s city centre. Papers II and III critically investigate how the concepts of safety and inclusion become intertwined with entrepreneurial values. More specifically, they explore who Sundsvall’s city centre is made safe for, and what or who poses a threat to this call. Paper IV problematises the way feelings of safety traditionally has been measured quantitatively and introduces an intersectional quantitative approach to measure and examine feelings of (un)safety. A synthesised reading of the four papers reveals the complex, often contradictory nature of public safety in entrepreneurial urban planning and development. Safety within the dispositif of safety is depoliticised and commodified, and treated as a neutral, technical or purely administrative concern rather than as a subject of political debate. Hence, although safety is closely related to inclusion, the findings demonstrate that planning and developing safe public spaces in the entrepreneurial city neither challenges nor changes the normative order of public spaces.