Research project Renovation and Regeneration of the Million Homes Programme

In the thesis I investigate renovations of housing and regeneration of housing areas in Sweden, specifically with a focus on the Million Homes Programme. As in many European countries, housing from the post-World War II period is today aging and the cost to renovate and regenerate these areas are under discussion. In many cases, the cost of these renovations leads to increasing rent levels and thus causes ‘renoviction’.

My work aims towards an analysis of the naturalization of the housing politics and planning politics that constitutes as well are being constituted by the practices of renovation and regeneration. Thus, I want to investigate how the renovations and regeneration as spatial practices are naturalized, and how they relate to housing politics and planning politics. I also want to discuss how naturalizing discourses are interconnected with the socio-economic consequences, e.g. gentrification, caused by renovations and regeneration. Housing research and critical urban studies thus makes up the two fields in which my study is placed.