The Lab in Lund – inspiration from the small town

September 25-27th, the network met up in Lund for the annual Lab. The lab gathered 65 politicians and planners from Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Norway and Sweden to explore what makes smaller towns attractive. For three days, we took off our urban glasses to explore how the village of Genarp can develop into a vibrant and sustainable community. How does rural development differ from urban development? And what can we learn from it?

 

Lund opened the lab with a nice introduction to the municipality’s development, and the network also got to see postcards from both the present and future Genarp. Through input from academia, other Nordic cities, and village walks with local actors, we then explored how Genarp can become a vibrant village that develops the municipality’s unique identity and attractiveness while being part of a resource-efficient structure in a sustainable and innovative region.

 

Three questions were central to the lab’s discussions:

• Sustainable mobility – how can we make Genarp’s natural areas accessible to more people?
• Vibrant center – how can we use the municipality’s resources to create an experiential and welcoming village center in Genarp?
• Attract new residents – how can we create exciting living environments that attract new residents and visitors?

Here you can read more about some of the projects presented at the lab:

• Nordregio: Small Town Attractiveness 
• Region Kronoberg: BY2030
• Biosphere Reserve Storkriket

 

Kick-start of our new project

On the first day of the lab, we also took the opportunity to kick-start next year’s anniversary project on new Nordic urban development. Read more: Nordic City Networks 20th Anniversary and New Nordic Urban Development.

 

Lund, Trondheim, Fredericia, Linköping, and our former member city Aalborg were invited to make an initial analysis of their examples and shared the results during a panel discussion. A lot has happened in the last ten years, for example in the form of a pandemic, war, and an increasing climate threat. The planning paradigm (and not least the conditions for our planning) has changed quite a bit since 2014, and it turned out that many projects had a somewhat different impact than was thought ten years ago.