Urban sustainable development from a place-based and a system-based approach: Case study Malmö

In English This paper discusses urban sustainable development by comparing two approaches: a place-based sustainability approach which focuses the direct and often production based impacts on a region, and a system-based approach which reveals the indirect and consumption based effects of globalised patterns of production, consumption and trade. Malmö, a small/middle-sized city in Sweden, is used as a case study. While many improvements have been made in the local environment the big challenge is the fact that Malmö, as well as other modern urban regions, has a large and globally dispersed Ecological footprint. That is, in the course of modernization and deindustrialisation of many European cities, the ecological (and social) burden from a continued high level of material and energy consumption has changed from a local and contemporaneous problem into a global and complex sustainability challenge.