This is a Festschrift to Professor Harald Rohracher at Tema Technology and Social Change (TEMA T), Linköping University.  

Harald finished his PhD in Social Sciences in 2002 at the University of Graz. He has a background in Sociology and Science and Technology policy. Harald has been a Professor at TEMA T and Linköping University since 2012. The years before were spent at the University of Klagenfurt, Graz University of Technology and Karl-Franzens-University Graz as a research fellow, lecturer and associate professor.  

Through his years at TEMA T Harald has achieved many things. He has been head of division -  managing over 50 persons; successfully supervised more than 10 PhD students and supported  them through their defense acts; acted as deputy head of Department; contributed to development of the PhD Education at Tema T; been an integral part of developing both the Bachelor program in Urban and Regional Planning and the Master's program in Strategic Urban and Regional Planning; been an important part in developing the weekly STRIPE seminar (Sociotechnical research of infrastructures, politics and the environment); developed the International Lecture Series – Planning in Transition which has hosted a number of prominent international scholars; founded the Tema Research Fellow program in Urban and Regional Climate Transition; been part of a number of scientific boards; been Co-Editor of ‘Science, Technology and Innovation Studies’ and associate editor of ‘Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions’ and been part of several boards, like EUN at the Energy Agency, CMTS (Centrum för människa, teknik och samhälle) and CKS (Centre for Local Government Studies). And of course, Harald has published a number of papers and book chapters in reputable journals and books, lectured in courses, along with all other duties that professors do.  

And the list can go on... But an important aspect is that Harald, despite being busy and successful in his endeavors, has always been a sociable, highly present and generous person in the work environment. There are numerous people that have Harald to thank for support, advice, being invited to and thus part of new networks, proposals, and projects. He always takes a broad perspective on his work, and on how he can involve and support both junior and senior research colleagues. All of this demonstrates Harald's immense strength and generosity as a colleague. This is all reflected in different ways in the chapters in this book, both in relation to his early work and carrier in Graz and Klagenfurt in Austria, but also later in relation to his work together with colleagues and PhD students (both present and former) at TEMA that all witness of his willingness to support and give of his time. 

The work with this anthology was initiated sometime in 2024, we believe, or maybe 2023, when the editors of the book realized that Harald would soon turn 60. It has been a pleasure to work with this project, which was initiated by going through Harald´s CV to invite possible authors and collaborators to contribute to this book. The project has evolved and was carried out in the usual chaotic manner (except for our last meeting when it all came together, and we also needed to put it all together...). Even though there was no budget and limited amount of time, we are very happy that so many authors had the opportunity to contribute, which also reflects the fact that Harald is an appreciated colleague by lots of people around the globe.  

We would like to thank all the contributors of the anthology for their work and contributions to realize this book. The instructions from us were rather simple; “would you like to contribute to a book that celebrates Harald turning 60? It can be a personal contribution, or a more theoretical, traditional chapter based on Harald´s work.” We got several interesting contributions in return, which we have divided into three sections. 

The first section of the book focuses on how it is to work with Harald. In the first chapter Michael Ornetzder introduces us to 25 years of doing research with Harald. The chapter also provides an insight into Haralds earlier carrier and as a researcher and lecturer in Austria. In the following chapter, Kristina Trygg and Ida Grundel discusses how their current research with urban and regional planning has been influenced by Haralds work and thus the impact his work has on transformative planning (and geography!). Dick Magnusson uses concepts from Large Technical Systems Theory as a way to describe the processes of getting to know Harald. Linus Burgman Ekman writes about Harald from a positive relational ontology. He bases his chapter on a survey that was sent out to the colleagues at TEMA T asking what they associate Harald with.  

The second part of the book involves a number of theoretical contributions that has been written by many of Haralds closest colleagues throughout the years and that can be seen as a lens and insight to much of the work that they have been doing together with Harald. Thomas Berker writes about technology studies building on Haralds contribution about users, households and sustainable innovation. Bernhard Truffer builds on Haralds influence on institutional analysis in innovation and transition studies going back historically. Klas Kubeczko and Mattias Weber contribution is a translation from a book chapter in German that served as a basis of the published article Legitimizing research, technology and innovation policies for transformative change by Weber and Rohracher (2012). Jenny Palm discusses the importance of households in energy transition studies. She has been inspired by Haralds work on households as arenas where sociotechnical systems are reconfigured and focuses in this chapter on grand technological transitions and what implications it has for households.  

The third and final part of the book is a dedication to Harald from both his former and current doctoral students, who share their insights and reflections on Harald as a supervisor. Adam, Stella, Giorgi, and Gavin—current doctoral students—share their experiences of having Harald as a supervisor during different phases of their doctoral journeys, highlighting how his guidance has shaped their paths. Amelia, Johan, Nancy, Darcy, Anna, and Fredrik—former doctoral students—contribute with a collection of stories and reflections on what it was like to be mentored by Harald

For full transparency, we have also taken help from various software tools to generate pictures over how to fold a Brompton, Harald´s PhD Students, and others for different matters.

The editors would especially like to thank Giorgi Kankia for his help with the illustration of the cover of the book. 

Finaly we would like to thank all the authors for their hard work filling this book with their thoughts and final chapters, which is what has made this book to Harald possible. 

The book Stories of Transforming Cities, Stories from the Bike - A Festschrift for Harald Rohracher is a gift and a tribute to Harald.  

Dick, Ida, Kristina  

Linköping, 12th of May 2025

A challenge for urban planning is the transition away from private car use towards other more sustainable transport modes, moving from urban policies and planning approaches to the implementation of sustainable mobility alternatives. This paper addresses how four Swedish municipalities are implementing new mobility solutions in transport infrastructure through the example of mobility hubs. The use of mobility hubs as a planning tool is a relatively new way of designing and combining different transportation modes, focusing on sharing options, e.g., bikes, e-scooters, car-sharing, etc., as well as public transport to reduce car dependency in cities (Czarnetzki & Slek, 2022; Rongen et al., 2022). The aim of this paper is to explore how municipal planners use mobility hubs strategically to achieve sustainable mobility. Our empirical material is based on interviews and workshops with planners, as well as an analysis of policy documents in four Swedish municipalities (between 2020 and 2022). We use strategic spatial planning as a framework to examine and understand the planning processes around mobility hubs. Our results show that although the overall aim in all municipalities is to reduce car dependency, there are spatial differences in how and where the mobility hubs are located, designed, and defined. This will have consequences for whom they are developed, and how they can strengthen socio-spatial relations and mobility justice. There was also a lack of consensus on the definition of mobility hubs, both between and within the municipalities under study. As a result of the inconsistencies in the implementation of mobility hubs between the municipalities, the municipal planners are not convinced of the effectiveness and appropriateness of the ways mobility hubs are currently being implemented.

There is increasing urgency to tackle the ongoing climate crisis. New innovations, policies, tools and changes in habits related to our transport systems, especially the need to decrease people’s car dependency, are necessary. Recently, the redesign of city planning through urban experimentation to reduce car dependency has become a common planning tool in many cities. This paper addresses how Swedish municipalities are implementing innovations in transport and mobility through urban experimentation and their work with mobility hubs. Importantly, we wanted to understand the ways in which the municipalities are working with urban experiments towards transformative change and how local authorities are increasingly applying experimental governance approaches. Our empirical material builds on interviews and workshops with local officials and planners, and an analysis of policy documents in the municipalities. Our results show that the influence of local conditions and the planning environment matters for how transformative planning is practised. Communication around future visions and goals is an important aspect of implementing new tools for change. The implementation of new innovations in the mobility sector may require new governance models to achieve more consistent planning tools and challenge existing norms and structures.

This article highlights the urgent need to explore how transformative planning can be put into practice and what competencies urban and regional planners need to facilitate this transition. There is a consensusthat traditional planning, with its rigid and structured approaches, isinadequate to address the challenges of climate change. Instead, moreproactive, transformative planning practices are needed. This study presents the results of a questionnaire conducted among planning managers in Swedish municipalities, aiming to deepen the understanding of how municipalities can achieve climate neutrality by identifying the necessary competencies among planners. The results identify five competence categories: technical knowledge (including climate adaptation), broad knowledge in various areas, analytical skills, coordination and cooperation, and communication. Our findings thus suggest that current planning practices in Swedish municipalities are largely traditional rather than transformative, but also that the focus is on adaptation rather than mitigation. We argue that this can partly be explained by the concept of obduracy, and how frames and persistent traditions affect the way planning managers think of the future, making it difficult to envision a future beyond current challenges and demands, but also the importance of thinking more visionary about planning to achieve climate neutrality and transformations.  

Increasingly, cities and municipalities are involved in urban experimentation to meet current societal challenges. The expectations on local authorities to implement new ways of dealing with current challenges are high and raise questions of municipal capacity and governance structures, challenging more traditional ways of planning and policymaking. In this paper we have analysed three urban experiments related to transport and mobility in three Swedish municipalities and how they are governed and planned for. The study builds on qualitative interviews and document analysis. Our results show that the municipalities are working with urban experiments on different scales. All experiments are top-down experiments run by the municipalities, with limited citizen involvement. All experiments have become part of placemaking activities in the municipalities with the aim to support and promote both future visions and municipal sustainability work related to transport and planning. However, to date, the experiments have had limited outcomes, and planners express a concern for implementation and limited knowledge transfer within and between cities.

The ELABORATOR project aims to support cities across Europe in their transition to climate neutrality by promoting the implementation of mobility interventions towards inclusive, sustainable, safe and affordable mobility. The project aims to provide tools and methods to support a truly collaborative and participatory approach in achieving inclusive transport infrastructure development in 12 cities in Europe. The deliverable of T2.3, the ELABORATOR Co-creation playbook provides practical guidelines to engage groups of stakeholders and citizens in the development of qualitative data collection methods, comprising community-based and citizensscience research to ensure that the final methods and tools have legitimacy for all the parties involved in new and innovative urban interventions’ design and deployment. The playbook provides a solid foundation for the cities to work with co-creation methodologies to support the involvement of stakeholders and citizens, especially focusing on the inclusion of VRUs in co-creation processes. Hopefully these guidelines will also prove fruitful for other cities working with collaborative methods. 

I svenska kommuner har mobilitetshubbar kommit att bli en del av den strategiska planeringen för en hållbar stad. Som ett led i den strategiska planeringen har kommunerna kommit att experimentera genom att testa nya lösningar. Här har mobilitetshubbar vuxit fram som en ny trend för att skapa attraktiva städer och mer hållbara resor. En mobilitetshubb kan beskrivas som en plats där olika färdmedel är paketerade i kombination med olika tjänster för att på så sätt förenkla för ett hållbart resande. I Sverige är planeringen och implementeringen av mobilitetshubbar ett relativt nytt fenomen. Det har dock genomförts ett fåtal pilotstudier och det finns ett antal olika exempel där implementering har skett. I denna bok visar vi hur fyra kommuner, på olika sätt, planerar för en hållbar mobilitet genom att studera mobilitetshubbar. Vi vill med denna bok inspirera planerare på kommunal och regional nivå, samt andra samhällsaktörer som vill leda förändring genom att testa (experimentera) för en hållbar energi- och mobilitetsomställning.

We propose an innovative approach to empower urban planners by integrating comprehensive and qualified citizen input into the planning of the 15-minute city (15mC) through immersive digital technologies. Our methodology includes (1) enabling citizens to annotate their real environment using augmented reality, (2) generating urban space alternatives based on generative AI and citizen annotations, (3) allowing modifications to AI-generated alternatives, (4) providing immersive 3D simulation environments for experiencing these alternatives, and (5) facilitating better negotiation between citizens and political players to identify the optimal solution. This process aims to account for diverse stakeholder interests, ensuring inclusive contributions and an experiential understanding of potential urban adaptation.