Welcome to Sara Gottschalk Thesis of the Year lecture!

"Controversies of Urban Transition"


Welcome to my lecture, where I will discuss urban transition for sustainability from a design-theoretical lens. I will present my long-term engagement with the urban development project Sege Park in Malmö, and use this case to discuss aspects such as controversies, distributed design, alignment and thickening. I will then turn to the study circle I conducted with newly arrived residents in Sege Park, as a “seed for change” for fostering stewardship. I will share thoughts on how small, situated acts might become consequential beyond the moment in which they occur, and how design might open possibilities for longer-term collective action.

The lecture will be held in English. Fika will be served.
All lectures will be streamed. The link will be posted here before the lecture.



Sara Gottschalk
Faculty of Culture and Society
"Controversies of urban transition – thickening urban sustainable planning processes through design"

In her thesis, Sara Gottschalk examines how design contributes to urban transition processes. The thesis is based on a long-standing involvement in the Sege Park urban development project in Malmö. Sara combines citizen-led and collaborative methods, as well as participatory design, with theoretical and strategic perspectives, which makes the thesis original and innovative.

The innovative aspect of the thesis lies primarily in how the concepts of controversy and friction can be understood and how they can help to deepen our understanding of what urban development can entail in practice. Overall, the thesis constitutes an independent, original and well-executed piece of research in which theoretical breadth is combined with carefully and innovatively collected empirical data. The thesis is an important contribution to the understanding of how design can contribute to a sustainable urban transition and an excellent example of the research conducted at Malmö University.

The text has been translated from the original document in Swedish