When The Urban Location Promotes Conservation Of Natural Areas: A Case Study Of Gothenburg (Sweden)

Despite the "greening" of territorial practices, urban development and nature conservation seem to remain contradictory. Nevertheless, the Nordic experience indicates that it is possible to reverse this paradox and create constructive interactions between natural and artificial spaces within cities. The aim of this research is to test this hypothesis through a case study in the city of Gothenburg, in Sweden. With fifteen protected natural areas and with about 500,000 inhabitants, the city faces a set of typical urban problems (urban renewal and development, deindustrialisation, increasing land pressure,...). The case of the Rya Skog forest, a nature reserve located in an expanding industrial zone, reveals the virtue of maintaining protected natural areas in the urban centre. Indeed the threats due to urban development reinforce their value and simultaneously the limits to urban growth imposed by the green areas can be rewarding for the city as a whole. In the very specific Swedish socio-cultural context, the importance of the traditional attachment to nature will be highlighted as well as citizens' mobilization in the process of urban planning. At last, in order to understand these constructive interactions, this paper will show that a determining role is played by the decision makers that take into account the interest and the practices of all the urban stakeholders.