Shift2Access

The Swedish scientist Johan Rockström says: "We have moved from a small world on a big planet, to a big world on a small planet". As a consequence profound change is needed in the built environment, land-use and transportation systems. To achieve the climate goals, we need a shift to a circular, resource-efficient economy.

Planning, design, construction and operation of the built environment and transportation represents both a major opportunity and a major challenge. Shift2Access addresses these complex challenges by thinking and doing things differently.

We are joining together two previously separate sectors to find solutions for the future.Eighty-five years ago, people queued outside "Futurama", the most popular pavilion of the World Fair in New York. Once inside, the visitors enjoyed a large-scale model of a future ideal society.

It displayed automated highways, vast suburbs and tall buildings functionally separated according to a well-thought-out master plan. Buildings and city fabrics of the past were nowhere to be seen.

These ideals, typical for the modernist movement, came to impact the built environment, transportation and land-use for decades to come.

Sweden was reshaped through reforms and planning principles such as the road plan of 1958, SCAFT and the million homes programme. It improved the well-being of many, with better housing and faster transportation.

However, with hindsight, we know this development came at the expense of environmental, social, and economic sustainability.Today, one-third of Swedish CO2 emissions come from transport, one fifth from built and construction environments. Waste from the construction and deconstruction of buildings is three times greater than waste from households.

Road transportation, and cars in particular, account for 93.6 per cent of energy use for transportation.

While public transport systems in larger urban agglomerations are generally well developed, there are problems with the relative attractiveness of these systems compared to cars.

Research on transport justice in the Swedish context show that access to public transport varies significantly between different groups (based on e.g. age, gender, income, ethnicity, etc.), both in larger and smaller cities and on the countryside. Nineteen per cent of the Swedish population are living in overcrowded conditions.

At the same time, prices for using public transport have increased by 24 per cent since 2009, which is considerably more than the increase in disposable income for most people, and the housing shortage for those on the lowest incomes is increasing.To create sustainable pathways towards the future we need a new “Futurama” showing what attractive and well-functioning societies can look like and how transformation can happen.

But it has to be a display that takes place in real-world settings, engaging businesses, policy-makers and people at locations where they work and live, and with a focus on both planetary and social boundaries.

We want to mobilise a diversity of actors around a mission for such change – in Sweden but with global reach.The program mobilise actors around three shifts transforming Sweden - fossile free and resource-concious - into a country with attractive and accessible living spaces for all.

We shift from planning, development, production and operations in silos to new innovative ground by integrating built environment and mobility eco-systems. We shift from resource-intensive building processes to creating new values from circular business-models.

We shift from unsustainable transportation to a new freedom reform with competetive alternatives to single car use.We show how these shifts can be made, in urban, semi-urban and peripheral contexts all over Sweden. We do it in practice using a place based prism allowing "down-to-earth" systemic innovation.

We do it backed by a strong partnership founded in democratic institutions at regional and national levels, with vast support from private companies.