Vallastaden is a new neighbourhood concept, planned and built in Linköping, Sweden, and host to a housing and built environment exhibition in 2017. This concept was supposed to show the future in city planning, construction and housing, with a specific focus on sustainability. The novelty in the concept consists of several ingredients, such as new designs, alternative planning procedures, communal spaces – Felles houses and Winter gardens - for interaction with immediate neighbours, planned green and blue infrastructures and an infra culvert for centralisation of energy and waste management. This research focus on spatial practices in relation to the concept Vallastaden and focus on questions about how space is shaped and used over time. Empirical data from the planning processes and early use phases show how historical values in the spatialisation, a theoretical concept for understanding socio-material spatial forms, are shaping Vallastaden. Ideas based on work by Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey further show how this concept is experienced, represented and becomes a symbolic space, with dialectic tensions between absolute, relative and relational space, as different socio-material worlds are formed. The political power of the local council both made the concept possible and hindered the realisation of some urgent local tasks, such as planning of homes for vulnerable groups of people. Other social issues, with other emotives and less controversies, were foregrounded, such as “meeting places”, “variety” and “diversity”. Building designs became a prominent symbol for variety and diversity in the concept, and designs of meetings places, either open air spaces or glass buildings, symbolised transparency and connection between people and place. From a social sustainability perspective, the concept failed to deliver affordable housing and make the neighbourhood diverse. Conclusions show that dialectical spatialisation is a relevant concept in understanding new developments on the neighbourhood level.