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Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the architectural implications of the Swedish campaign “Green Welfare State.” By tracing the historical context and connections of the environmental discourses, policies, and spatial practices in Sweden in the 90s, my aim is to unveil the production of “neoliberal natures.”

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the material, spatial, and infrastructural implications of the Swedish national campaign “Green Welfare State.” Led by Prime Minister Göran Persson in 1996, it crystallized on the first environmental code of 1999 that included fifteen national environmental quality objectives. Tracing the historical context, this research follows three conditions: the decentralization of responsibility—moving from public institutions to include private companies, industries, as well as individual citizens; the institutionalization of environmental practices and the indivisible association of environmental concerns with economic development—both brought by the dissemination of the notion of “sustainable development” in the 1987 Brundtland report and the 1992 Earth Summit. These three aspects transformed the Swedish environmental discourses, policies, and practices in the early 90s. My aim is to connect the inception of the Green Welfare State with the redesign of part of the Swedish landscape through the systematization of alternative sewage systems. Particularly, I follow the construction of four pioneering wastewater treatment wetlands in South Sweden (1993-1999), that were planned to support conventional municipal plants. Even though circular design and environmental accountability were put at the forefront of these political and spatial practices, nature was rendered as a space of research interest, governance competition, and technological investment. I offer here a critical spatial reading of this neoliberalization of nature or of the production of what has been termed as “neoliberal natures” (Haynen et al., 2007). At the core of this investigation lies the aspiration to test alternative routes to address the contemporary endless exploitation of the environment.