The Continuity of Dispossession : Locating the Rights of Tenants in the Redevelopment of Urban Land

Sammanfattning

The rights of tenants to the spaces that they are possessors of but do not hold titles to is contested in practice in large scale redevelopment projects. This thesis takes a look at two specific instances of urban district redevelopment and renewal in Malmö, Sweden: the slum clearance of Lugnet in the 1960s and the attempts to densify Holma in the present day. Using the concepts of the power of law, property and dispossession the thesis asks “how have the rights of tenants been taken into consideration?” This thesis finds that there is a great discrepancy between legal and philosophical constructs of property and ownership – that have been articulated in law well before the modern age – and the “dispossessory tendencies” prevalent in urban planning. It also finds that the codifying of tenant rights in the communicative model of planning has little relation to tenants rights as possessors – users – of their everyday spaces. These rights are challenged by ideas of the public good and the large scale of redevelopment projects.