Program för Aktiva Mötesplatser

The Property and Streets department is running a strategy called Program för aktiva

mötesplatser – strategi för utveckling av platser och strukturer för ökad fysisk aktivitet på allmäns plats i Malmö (Malmö Stad, 2015), which translates to ‘programme for active

activity in the public space in Malmö’. Interviews with two experts from the Property and Streets Department were held, the interviewees are currently working with the strategy (but did not work on the creation of the strategy). The strategy has three starting points which are seen as fundament of the whole endeavour; public health, city life and democracy. ‘Public health’ refers to the fact that physical activity can decrease the risk for NCDs and improve physical health. ‘City life’ refers to the aim to make everybody want to be outside more, creating public spaces for everyone, where physical activity is possible. In connection to this point the strategy mentions a greater feeling of security which comes with more frequented public spaces, the process of individualisation of sport (process by which organised sport decreases in popularity, whereas individual, spontaneous sport increases) and the fact that physical activity in public spaces is free and therefore more equal. This is directly related to the last point ‘democracy’, which suggests that through creating meeting places which are accessible to everyone, different groups of people will meet. By the contact between people who would not necessarily meet otherwise, stereotypes, racism and other issues can be tackled. The strategy paper contains an analysis of the situation (how it was at the time of publication) regarding meeting places for physical activity in the city. The results showed that there were many meeting places for physical activity in the city, however, many were not in good shape, and too often the places were planned for one activity only. Furthermore, the results showed that most meeting places were used predominantly by young men, who were already physically active (e.g. in sport clubs). The only gender equal physical activities were walking, cycling and jogging, therefore the spaces used by girls and women were scarce. Out of this analysis the strategy was developed. The strategy includes three approaches; (1) basic supply, (2) variations to the basic supply and (3) flexibility and openness to new ideas.

The basic supply approach aims at guaranteeing easy and equal access to meeting places for physical activity, so every citizen should have access to the basic supply meeting places within 500m of his/her home. The basic supply meeting places include multi- functional sport pitches, highlighted running and walking paths, outdoor gyms and grass areas. Different points were given special emphasis, such as the need for accessible and open design of meeting places, which invites different groups of people for different types of activities with various intensities. Several points overlap with the previous research about park characteristics mentioned in chapter 2 (Bedimo-Rung, Mowen & Cohen,

2005; Schipperjin et al., 2013; Lindberg & Schipperjin, 2015). Park aesthetics, diversity of features, safety and access, for instance, are all mentioned in the strategy paper. During the interviews, when asked about the biggest challenges they were facing with the implementation of the strategy, one main point was the difficulty of making the meeting places for physical activity equal, accessible and attractive for various groups:

…when they (strategy creators) started the work with the strategy, the report came how unequal these spontanidrottsplatser (spontaneous sport pitches) were and they tried to do something different and we continued that work but no one knows the exact recipe how to do it different so we test and then we try to see how it works and so on. (Expert 2, Fastighets- och Gatukontoret)

Again the parallels to the previous literature are apparent. Some knowledge is existing, for instance how the design of a park or meeting place can have influence on who the users will be. However, there is no detailed evidence on what works for whom and in what way (Fazli et al., 2017). Because of the lack of detailed evidence, the experts often have to take recourse to trial and error approaches:

It can be like development of the equipment at the outdoor gyms or the locations of them or more like about dialog how to involve other people, we try new things. And actually, it hasn't been going on for so many years, so that we can't really see it, what has worked really well. There is some things which worked well, we see that when we activate the places, like offering free trainings in the beginning and so on, that brings new people to the places that wouldn't go there by themselves, so now we work quite a lot with that. And then we look at what other cities and other countries do as well. Because we are in a phase where everyone is trying to do it different, but we don't really know how. (Expert 2, Fastighets- och Gatukontoret)

The second approach of the strategy is called ‘variation to basic supply’. It aims at creating variations of the basic places which meet the needs of the citizens, depending on the neighbourhood the wishes can differ widely. The scale of the projects can go from small e.g. ping pong tables in a square or boules sites to large e.g. skateboard parks such as the one located in the Western Harbour neighbourhood, or the sea bathing infrastructure. These larger projects are however, often treated separately from the strategy. When asked about an example of a variation project one interviewee gave the following explanation:

Down by the ocean (Sibbarb) there were skateparks and a very big area where there was nothing and a lot of trash, they burned cars and destroyed things there. So we

did some cooperation with the people here who work with playground, we did something in between physical activity and playgrounds in a really big area, where there are big climbing nets and also big piles of sand that you can run on and climb on, and there's baskets and outdoor gym and lots of different things. That's not the part of the basic stuff, it involves some basic stuff but it's a lot more. That could be like that (Expert 2, Fastighets- Gatukontoret)

Lastly, the third approach called ‘flexibility and openness to new ideas’ aims at keeping a steady dialogue with citizens about the needs and wishes, and being open for collaboration with target groups and external actors. This leads to the second research question of this work, namely, the collaboration in connection to strategies and approaches to increase physical activity in public open spaces.