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I detta kapitel introduceras begreppen ”tomrum” och ”platser emellan”. Begreppen är delvis kopplade till en jämförelse mellan Nordnorge och norra Sverige. Tomrum kan begreppsliggöras på många sätt, från ett fysiskt vakuum till ett rum tomt på företeelser eller geografiska objekt. Inom samhällsvetenskap och geografi hänvisar det ofta till bristen på något i det geografiska rummet, brist på resurser, människor eller aktiviteter. Fördelningen av geografiska objekt som människor är också relaterad till aktiviteter, resurser och andra människor. Rummet blir relationellt. Den relationella förståelsen av rummet refererar bland annat till hur individer försörjer sig. Människans eller individens relation till det fysiska rummet förändras också över tid. Det relationella rummet genomgår en förändring. Många idéer om relationen mellan människor och rum är baserade på Torsten Hägerstrand och hans tidsgeografi (Hägerstrand 1974, Stjernström 1998, Rönnlund & Tollefsen 2016). Det relationella rummet (Lefebvre 2014) och tanken om den dynamiska relationen mellan aktör och struktur, som utvecklats av Anthony Giddens (1984) (inspirerad av Hägerstrands tidsgeografiska postulat om det fysikaliska rummet), markerar en av de teoretiska utgångspunkterna i denna text.

Chapter 2 discusses the changes in habitation or human geography, contextualizing the idea of a sparsely populated region with in fact great variation, from large coastal cities down to the village level. The chapter illustrates that even villages close to each other and with similar economic or other backgrounds can come to vary vastly, depending on factors that are not accessible within a pure demographic context, and questions the use of a sparsely populated area assumption, which may make areas seem unitary in their development.

This study explores how winter conditions are taken into accountin urban planning in the city of Umea in northern Sweden. Snow and harsh winter conditions are to some extent considered inurban planning in most northern towns in Sweden. Besides that, snow and ice could also be elements in the city attracting people and contribute to the design of public spaces. Current plans and interviews with planners were complemented with participatory observations. The results show that public spaces designed for both winter and summer seasons are preferred.

Chapter 6 takes up the more recently developed sector of tourism, problematizing the assumptions inherent in conceptions such as "resource periphery" and "pleasure periphery". Instead, the chapter shows that resource use and tourism may well interact, and that tourism even largely relates to mining or mining infrastructure: the extensive existence of infrastructure related to resource uses and industrial as well as post-industrial development at large can even be seen as the basis for tourists being able to access the "wilderness".

Syftet med kapitlet är att beskriva skogens nyttjande och hur synen på den har förändrats över tid, samt kopplingen till fysisk planering och relaterad lagstiftning. 

Forestry constitutes the basis for some 10% of export value in Sweden (2018), making it an economically significant contributor to the country’s economy. Related to this, over the centuries wood has come to be institutionalized as a primary land use, not least related to export as well as the forest industry, so significant today. This role is visible in legislation, with wood production given preference as the “ongoing land use” – making it the use to which other sectors, to some extent, must relate – and also remaining enthroned in special legislation rather than integrated in environmental or planning legislation. The production logic that forms the basis for the sector means that issues relating to future use can also be seen as related to this logic, with climate change adaptation- and mitigation-related strategies targeting those in line with industrial forestry, such as shortening rotation times rather than investing in mixed forest. This chapter thus shows that even that which can be defined as a climate change adaptation is crucially dependent on the national context in which it is defined.

Spatial planning using a landscape approach has been recognized as being essential for reconciling ecological, cultural and socioeconomic dimensions in sustainable development (SuD). Although embraced as a concept, there is a lack of planning tools capable of incorporating multi-level, multifunctional and multi-sectoral perspectives, especially in a rural context. The departure point in this paper is the legal requirements for municipal comprehensive planning (MCP) in Sweden and an e-mail survey about incentives, stakeholder involvement, policy integration and implementation in MCP in all 15 Swedish mountain municipalities. The purpose of this explorative study is to examine whether MCP could be a tool in planning for SuD. Results indicate a general lack of resources and a low status of MCP that affect, and even limit, stakeholder involvement, policy integration and implementation. However, legal requirements for MCP are targeted at SuD, and municipal personnel responsible for planning appreciate the potential of MCP. Therefore, there is potential to develop the MCP into an effective landscape planning tool. To accomplish this, the status of an active planning process has to be raised, the mandate of the local planning agency has to be secured, and residents and land users have to be involved throughout the planning process.

By adopting a qualitative approach and considering the case of Sweden, the aim of the paper is to investigate and analyse how private forest owners' experiences and emotions related to their private forest ownership manifest themselves in their relationship to public use of their forests and public planning for recreation and biodiversity on their land. The study incorporates and elaborates upon a conceptual framework related to the dimensions of property rights, feelings of ownership, and sense of place in its analysis of the private forest ownership context. Fifty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with forest owners owning land in two geographically different areas. The results demonstrate the important role of the 'social contract' of rights and responsibilities, which are associated with the concept of property rights, and are embedded in the relationship between private ownership and the Swedish custom of the Right of Public Access to nature in the broad acceptance of public use of private forestland. The forest owners' relationships with public planning are diverse and complex, illustrating the various dimensions of private forest ownership, the heterogeneous forest owner corps, and the different geographical contexts. The dimensions of ownership feelings and sense of place, and the interplay between them, are shown to contribute to enhanced sentiments linked to forest ownership, expressed in ambivalence or lack of conviction about public planning. An important point of resistance to public interests is owners' identity as stewards or long-term custodians of their particular forestland. The article ends with a set of recommendations for public policy and planning processes regarding public interests related to private forest ownership.

This article studies the relation between territorial and functional planning by investigating the Swedish local comprehensive planning system and the forest management. The former is locally based and the latter is functionally based or sector-orientated. By interviewing planners from the County Administrative Boards responsible for monitoring the national interests in the Swedish municipalities and forest managers from the Regional Forest Agency Administration, we found out that forest- and municipality related issues that coincide or interact with each other is normally considered in the collaborative planning process based on consultations and cooperation between the involved stakeholders. Weaknesses in the collaborative planning system consists of lack of coordination between the involved legal frameworks as well as lack of local planning resources and in some cases competences. 

In this chapter, we look at the role that a forest held in common can play in supporting local development and promoting the livelihood of the local community. Four dissimilar cases in Italy, Slovenia, Sweden and UK are described and analysed by applying the Sustainable Livelihood Framework. Despite very different pre-requisites and local conditions, our results show that all cases contain rules to maintain the extent and function of natural assets, and they contributed to the mobilisation of different types of capital. In each case there is evidence of interaction with higher governance levels, which protects the group’s room for action. The provision of access to natural and physical resources for rural people in a broader sense illustrates the cases’ orientation towards public good.