Mats Lundmark

Multilevel governance, networking cities, and the geography of climate-change mitigation: two Swedish examples

What geographical and institutional conditions are important for initiating and sustaining climate-change mitigation at the local level? Taking this question as a point of departure, we analyze local climate mitigation as a case of multilevel network governance. This is illustrated by the case of two Swedish cities, which are both involved in city networking in favour of climate-change mitigation. Different business structures and other local conditions in significant ways influence both the level of ambition and the climate-policy strategies of the two cities. The sheer size and intensity of the networking activities clearly illustrate the fact that cities are increasingly becoming arenas of globalization, rather than passive victims of global forces, thus confirming the call for a multilevel network-governance approach in policy and politics as well as in research.

Tourism Employment and Creative In-migrants

Abstract This paper analyses the importance of tourism employment for in-migration to Malung/Sälen and Älvdalen, two rural municipalities hosting two major tourist destinations in the southern Swedish mountains. It uses micro-data from a database that includes, among many other variables, residence and employment information. This work is explorative and uses longitudinal data that permit examining individuals and go beyond simple net employment figures to show that many in-migrants to these municipalities are employed in tourism and constitute part of what is defined as the “creative workforce” in the local labour market. In this sense, tourism employment is found to be a pull factor for in-migration of highly skilled and well-paid people.

Computer services in Sweden - markets, labour qualifications and patterns of location

In this paper the patterns of growth and location of computer services in Sweden is discussed. Computer services have been expanding rapidly during the last two decades. In Sweden, computer services are strongly concentrated to the metropolitan regions of Stockholm, Goteborg and Malmo. There are, however, clear tendencies of a decentralization process during the 1980s. On the receiving side are a number of regional administrative centres and industrial cities in other parts of the country. In relation to this pattern, two questions are investigated. First, it is concluded that the locational pattern is to a large degree consistent with market size at a regional (county) level, indicating the importance of proximity to customers. Secondly, it is shown that the educational level of the work-force does not conform to any clear or simple pattern of regional polarization. In fact, the workforce in the larger metropolitan areas in Sweden is not better educated than in other parts of the country. The basic rationale behind a more equal regional distribution of labour skills in the computer service industry, is probably that most of the spatial expansion can be characterized as a market capturing strategy, whereas spatial decentralization in manufacturing industry more often is motivated by labour cost savings.