“GREEN FIX” AS CRISIS MANAGEMENT
“Green fix” as crisis management.
Or, In which world is Malmö
the world’s greenest city?
by
Ståle Holgersen and Andreas Malm
HOLGERSEN, S. and MALM, A. (2015): ‘“Green fix” as cri-
sis management. Or, in which world is Malmö the world’s green-
est city?’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography
97 (4): 275–290.
ABSTRACT: As economic and ecological crises evolve in com-
bination, some policy strategies might aim at killing the two birds
with one stone. One recent example can be found in Malmö,
Sweden, where crisis management has operated, we propose, as
a green fix. The district of Västra hamnen (Western Harbour) is at
the centre of the reinvention of the city: once the home of a world-­
leading shipyard, it is now a no less prominent neighbourhood of
ecological virtues. Through outlining the history of Malmö in gen-
eral and the Western Harbour in particular, we identify how the
municipality and local capital in concert increasingly used “green”
strategies in the urban policies that started as crisis management
in the 1990s. Today Malmö is reckoned to be among the world’s
greenest cities, and we reflect on the importance of this interna-
tional recognition for the city. Finally, we develop a critique of the
green fix as concealing crucial factors of scale, and hence running
the risk of myopia.
Keywords: green fix, sustainability fix, crisis management, dual cri-
sis, ecological modernization, Malmö
Introduction
Since 2008, crisis has become a normal condition
in advanced capitalist countries. While growth has
surged again in China and other BRICS economies
after the financial meltdown, the old heartlands –
particularly in Europe – are mostly bogged down
in stagnation or struggling to regain growth (cf.
e.g. Harvey 2010; Blackburn 2011; McNally
2011; Kliman 2012). As for the ecological crises,
while carbon emissions have fluctuated with the
fortunes of the world economy, global warming as
such exhibits no tendency to cyclical behaviour. It
follows a monotonous curve of rapid deterioration
(e.g. Solomon et al. 2007; Allison et al. 2009; Peters
et al. 2012).
How will the European core respond to this dual
crisis? What policy options are on its table? One clue
could be taken from the very recent past, for in quite
a few parts of Europe, efforts to manage and escape
the effects of the previous economic crisis, with
© The authors 2016
Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2016 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
roots in the 1970s, continued right up to the onset of
the present one. In some places, those efforts were
framed as models of environmental improvement.
This article focuses on Malmö and its city district
of Västra hamnen, or Western Harbour, in particular.
Among Swedish cities, Malmö suffered more than
most from the industrial shakeout of the 1970s and
1980s. In the early 1990s, it found itself in very
dire economic and social straits. Twenty years later,
Malmö had gained a global reputation for exceptional
progress towards environmental sustainability. This
remarkable makeover proceeded in tandem with an
apparent economic recovery, employment increasing
somewhat and municipal finances improving –
although the recovery did not transcend the more
inert social effects of the crisis, as the fallout of
industrial collapse continued to reverberate through
the landscapes of housing, employment and class
divisions in the city. The former industrial area of the
Western Harbour is the most prominent example of
green Malmö, kicking off the remaking of the city
with a housing exhibition in 2001.
But what does it mean when a city engulfed in
economic crisis steers the green path? What might
be the driving mechanisms in a deliberate urban
push towards sustainability, under conditions of
persistent stagnation – and, not the least important,
what is actually achieved?
This article seeks to contribute to the literature
on (1) the links between the current crisis and
urban policy, and (2) on general urban-­ecological
discourses. Concerning the former: despite an
abundance of research on the causes of the global
economic crisis and how it has affected cities
(Engelen et  al. 2010; Engelen and Musterd 2010;
Aalbers 2012; Holgersen 2014), very little has
been done to investigate the nexus of economic and
ecological factors in urban crisis management in the
current conjuncture.
As for the latter, the amount of literature on
urban (un)sustainability is enormous, to put it
275
 STÅLE HOLGERSEN AND ANDREAS MALM
mildly. Among the relevant subfields are case-­
driven research on ‘“urban” governance of
climate protection’ (in Newcastle upon Tyne and
Cambridgeshire; Bulkeley and Betsill 2005);
‘greenwashing’ of the waterfront (in Port Adelaide,
South Australia; Szili and Rofe 2007); the ‘death and
revival of green planning’ (in Australia and Canada;
Bührs 2000); the proliferating experiments in ‘eco-­
cities’ (not least in China; Caprotti 2014a); “urban
environmentalism” (in Malmö; Jamison 2008);
“ecological gentrification” (in Seattle; Dooling
2009); theoretical approaches to ‘neoliberal natures’
(see e.g. Bakker 2010); various discussions on
‘nature, metabolism and cities’ (see e.g. Heynen
et  al. 2006); as well as policy recommendations,
such as the ‘principles of green urbanism’ (Lehmann
2011; see also Krueger and Gibbs 2007b; Tretter
2013a). To this might be added inquiries into
how all this relates to scale (see e.g. Bulkeley and
Betsill 2005; Kärrholm 2011). What is missing is an
investigation of the greening of cities qua efforts to
restart accumulation and overcome local crises. We
aim at creating an analytical tool for understanding
such efforts.
Malmö poses an interesting case of how
treatments of the economic and ecological crises
have intersected in the recent past. It could offer
lessons for the roads that might – and perhaps should
not – be taken. The rest of this article proceeds in
five sections. First, we outline the concept of a
green fix as a concerted response to economic crisis,
primarily on a city level. Second, we briefly survey
the modern economic history of Malmö, its descent
into structural crisis and struggle for rejuvenation,
and the spectacular success of the rebranding
campaign. Third, we elaborate on Malmö’s green fix
as (1) a way to achieve international recognition, (2)
a business strategy on the real estate market and (3)
an export commodity in itself. In the fourth section
we scrutinize Malmö’s green fix further, and open up
for critique of its contradictions. In the final section
we conclude by claiming that antidote compounds
advertised as solutions to both the economic and
ecological crises should be treated with a healthy
dose of scepticism, and we point out some venues
for future research.
Spatial fix and other fixes as crisis management
When capital enters a crisis, it may exit this unpleasant
place, at least for some time, by developing a fix.
David Harvey’s trademark concept of the spatial fix
276
Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2016 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
plays on the dual significance of the English word:
fix as in quick fix, the drug addict satisfying his
burning desire or a broken car-­engine demanding
to be fixed, and fix as in putting something in its
proper place, fixing the pole in the hole or attaching,
tying, binding something to a particular position
(cf. Harvey 2001; Jessop 2006). In Harvey’s subtle
exposition of the spatial fix, the duality of meaning
corresponds to an actual dialectic in the process
of capital accumulation (Harvey 1999). Capital
enters a crisis: it can respond by leaving the room
it has occupied for some time, suddenly finding it
repellent, and moving into another. It relocates in
space.
However, there might be fixes that begin not by
an abandonment of the crisis-­hit room and a quest for
profits elsewhere, but rather by an invitation to capital
to step into that very room and resuscitate profits
there. One such fix comes in green. In a comparative
study of the post-­industrial transformations of
Manchester and Leeds, Aidan While and colleagues
(2004) have proposed the concept of sustainability
fix (see also Jonas and While 2007; Temenos and
McCann 2012). Paraphrasing Harvey, they conceive
of the sustainability fix as something related to yet
different from what Harvey refers to. It also takes
place in space, but through the reverse movement:
a crisis-­torn locale reinvents itself as a highly
attractive site for investment, by unrolling some sort
of programme for sustainable development.
Unfortunately, however, the concept of a
sustainability fix is left rather underdeveloped by
While et al. (2004, 2010). It is only given a vague if
suggestive definition (While et al. 2004, p. 551):
[t]he historically contingent notion of a “sus-
tainability fix” is intended to capture some of the
governance dilemmas, compromises and oppor-
tunities created by the current era of state restruc-
turing and ecological modernization. Although
nature and its production has always been a nec-
essary precondition for capital accumulation,
sustainable development is itself interpreted as
part of the search for a spatio-­institutional fix to
safeguard growth trajectories in the wake of in-
dustrial capitalism’s long downturn, the global
‘ecological crisis’ and the rise of popular envi-
ronmentalism […] The notion of a sustainability
fix does not deny progress on ecological issues,
but draws attention to the selective incorpora-
tion of ecological goals in the greening of urban
governance.
© The authors 2016
 “GREEN FIX” AS CRISIS MANAGEMENT
While we shall build on it in what follows, we
believe that the notion of a sustainability fix is
insufficiently rigorous and fails to realize some
of the analytical promises bequeathed by Harvey.
Using the word sustainability implies, to begin with,
that the fix does contain some component of real
sustainable development – however defined – in
analogy with the spatial fix actually being realized
in space. But in the sort of fix While et al. (2004,
2010) are groping for, sustainability is by no means
a certainty on the par of Harvey’s spatiality. There
is no reason to assume that it produces sustainable
results, any more than unsustainable ones: the fix
may have absolutely nothing to do with concrete,
measurable progress on relevant environmental
indicators (selectively incorporated or not).
Scholars employing the concept of sustainabil-
ity fix tend to emphasize the component of grass-
roots initiative behind the turn to green planning.
Thus While et  al. (2004, 2010) point out that it
would fail without “popular environmentalism”,
and Temenos and McCann (2012, p. 1392) have re-
cently argued, in a case study of Whistler, British
Columbia, that the fix requires – as its very first
premise – ‘an active, responsible, and environmen-
tally conscious citizenry’ from which the interest
in sustainability originates. The fix then evolves ‘in
the face of growing popular concerns about the en-
vironment’ (Temenos and McCann 2012, p. 1390;
cf. e.g. Tretter 2013b). Again, the analogy with
Harvey’s concept is here blurred: the spatial fix
was never conceived as a concession to bottom-­up
demands, or as a co-­optation of social movements.
Rather, the term is meant to designate a strategy for
the renewal of accumulation in response to a crisis,
realized in space, and over time. A general aware-
ness of issues of ecology – preferably broadly, even
hazily and sloppily conceived – is a vehicle for the
fix. Capital can only be attracted to the place if
people care about the environment, but this pop-
ular component of the fix is primarily a matter of
semblance. The problem tackled is not fundamen-
tally one of environmentally unsustainable prac-
tices, but rather sluggish capitalist accumulation
– or “growth” – in the locale. Only then can it be a
fix, in analogy with Harvey.
We therefore propose “green fix” as a more
accurate concept, green referring to a visual sensation
of benign environmental policies, without a priori
implying that any sort of sustainability or ecological
policy is in fact involved. Green can certainly be real,
as in a forest replanted where wasteland once stood;
© The authors 2016
Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2016 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
it can be false, as in greenwashing (conversely,
“sustainability-­washing” would be an oxymoron); it
can even serve as a mask for accelerating ecological
destruction. The only criterion it has to fulfil, in this
context, is the image of greenery – and that is the
material of the fix as such. But a more elaborate
definition is called for.
Green fix
A green fix is an attempt to overcome a crisis of
capital accumulation in a particular locale. If an
environmental makeover of a city is launched for
other reasons, with other driving forces – which may
well happen, of course – it does not count as a green
fix under this definition.
While Harvey’s original spatial fix implies the
expansion of capital beyond the locale, accumulation
is here rather refurbished and rejuvenated in situ.
We here encounter several other crucial differences.
The agent of the spatial fix is essentially capital
alone, operating independently, though demanding
services of the state along the way. In the green
fix it is otherwise: the marketing of the locale as
a place for environmentally sound business is
necessarily launched by state and capital in concert.
The greening of the place appears in the realm of
politics – planning guidelines, infrastructural
development, the adoption of certain environmental
values, and so on – and is advertised in the public
arena as a solution to political problems, such as
unemployment, sagging competitiveness, slow or
non-­existent growth and, of course, environmental
degradation in one form or another. This requires
the active participation of policy-­makers, planners
and politicians, all of whom identify the crisis and
develop the green fix in close cooperation with
capital. If it is successful, it delivers political gains
as much as pecuniary profit. The two components go
hand in hand, in a political-­economic dialectic that is
at the heart of the green fix.
The ideology of the green fix is a version of
eco-­modernism (York and Rosa 2003; Mol 2010;
York et  al. 2010; McLaughlin 2012). While eco-­
modernism proper contends that growth and
sustainability are compatible, the green fix gives
it a slightly different twist: sustainability is here
a means to growth. In the original formulation,
growth is conceived as a potential instrument for
the furthering of sustainability; now the tables are
subtly turned.
The green fix may be realized at several different
277
 STÅLE HOLGERSEN AND ANDREAS MALM
scales: we shall focus on the city. The logic of the ur-
ban green fix is to attract capital to the city through
the production of a green image. Urban authorities
tend to have an interest in such attraction. In the era
of globalization, the nation state has retreated, ‘so
that investment increasingly takes the form of a ne-
gotiation between international finance capital and
local powers doing the best they can to maximise
the attractiveness of the local site’ (Harvey 1989, p.
5). Local governments are often compelled to entice
investors to dock in their harbours, lest they lose out
in the competitive race and find their tax bases melt-
ing away (cf. Peck and Tickell 2002, p. 394). This
is done precisely through the creation of some kind
of positive image. Cultural vibrancy, entertainment
outlets, sports stadiums, upgraded inner cities, shop-
ping malls, universities and other centres of knowl-
edge and innovation may serve as lighthouses that
‘cast a seemingly beneficial shadow over the whole
metropolitan region’ (Harvey 1989, p. 8).
In the green fix, environmentally benign prac-
tices are promoted as features of the city. The green-
ery has the function of attracting further capital:
investments and the affluent citizens that accom-
pany them (cf. Anderberg and Clark 2012). In anal-
ogy with Harvey’s spatial fix, the greening of the
city also materializes in fixed capital, such as resi-
dential areas and office buildings, new infrastructure
and transport systems, all branded as sustainable;
entire new neighbourhoods are designed to gain a
reputation for environmental excellence. Such pro-
jects constitute the material lynchpin of the new
image as well as objects of investment, in a self-­
reinforcing dialectic between the two components
– if all goes as planned. Whereas the production of
new landscapes is a function of the expansion be-
yond the crisis-­ridden place in Harvey’s spatial fix,
here it is an integral part of its revival; the green fix
has a corresponding duality, but primarily in an in-
ward rather than outward movement.
While et al. (2004, 2010) find only mixed and
rather weak evidence for a sustainability fix in their
case studies. Leeds did initiate a relatively coherent
strategy for sustainable development, unrolling a
green profile with some success, but the municipality
of Manchester did not (While et al. 2004, p. 557).
Manchester’s rulers and planners sought to attract
capital though traditional magnets, even dismissing
environmental concerns as alien to their working-­
class constituencies. We shall see that Malmö did
much better.
This article is a case study (Yin 2009), as we
278
Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2016 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
look at one specific phenomenon – green fix – within
a limited space–time: Malmö and Western Harbour
since late 1990s (cf. Kitchin and Tate 2008). As the
case study is about researching different aspects of
complicated, real-­time events, different kinds of
sources and methods are consulted (cf. Burawoy
1998; Flyvbjerg 2006). We draw primarily on two
sources of information: interviews and documents.
As for the former, we have conducted in total 19
semi-­structured interviews, each lasting between
45 and 90 minutes; the informants were selected
as being key actors in the process (Fuglestad and
Mørkeseth 1997; Kitchin and Tate 2008). Of these,
11 interviewees are referred to directly in the article:
(1) the former project manager for Western Harbour;
(2) the director of city planning; (3) a planner at the
municipality; (4) the CEO of Sustainable Business
Hub; (5) the director of the environment department
in the municipality; and (6–11) real estate developers
at Western Harbour.
The other major method applied is document
analysis, particularly of policy and planning
documents from the municipality of Malmö. Cloke
et  al. (2004, p. 42) reminds us that when data
are official, we often assume greater reliability
and accuracy, but it is important to stress that
governments are not ‘neutral referees overlooking
society but players actively involved in the game’.
This source criticism is especially relevant in this
case, as municipal policy is exactly what is under
investigation (cf. Kitchin and Tate 2000). We also
make use of other national and international data.
Before we delve deeper into them, however, we need
to know something about the historical background
to the rise of green Malmö.
The fall of industrial Malmö and the rise of new
urban strategies
The twentieth century history of Malmö is primarily
the history of a proud industrial city, being one of
Sweden’s most “prosperous region of growth”
during the golden decades after the Second World
War. Traditionally run by the Social Democratic
Party, the city has been labelled the ‘Mecca of the
Swedish labour movement’ (Billing and Stigendal
1994; Dannestam 2009; Mukhtar-­Landgren 2009).
As the world economy entered its post-­war
golden age, Sweden also reached a pinnacle of
shipbuilding, second only to Britain in number
of ships produced. In 1952 and 1953, the yard
Kockums, located in the Western Harbour in Malmö,
© The authors 2016
 “GREEN FIX” AS CRISIS MANAGEMENT
produced more tonnage than any other in the world.
In the 1960s, other Swedish yards stagnated as the
demands on ship size grew continuously with the
world economy, but not Kockums (Olsson 1995).
Another round of expansion was launched in the
late 1960s, culminating in 1973 with the erection
of the 138 m high “Kockums’ crane”, at that time
the largest gantry crane in the world (Dannestam
2009). It was a monument of industrial prowess and
modernity, in a city that seemed to go from strength
to strength.
But the worldwide crisis of the 1970s eventu-
ally reached the shores of Malmö. Overcapacity in
the global shipbuilding industry and ferocious chal-
lenges from distant yards torpedoed Kockums; in
1987, all civil shipbuilding had come to an end. The
foundation of the industrial city lay in tatters. To
counteract the decline, the dominant policy through-
out the 1980s was to attract large new industrial en-
terprises to the Western Harbour; with the aid of state
and municipal subsidies, Saab-­Scania opened a car
factory in 1989. Only two years later, however, the
plant was shut down (see Jerneck 1993; Billing 2000;
Anderstig and Nilson 2005; Dannestam 2009). In the
early 1990s, Sweden suffered a general economic
crisis and Malmö, now with neither shipbuilding nor
car production, was dragged down the mire.
Ripples of further closures and bankruptcies
swept the city. From having a tax capacity 12 per
cent above the national average in 1980, it passed
the average in 1991 on its way down to 91 per cent
at the end of the 1990s (Billing 2000), and 25 per
cent of all workplaces disappeared between 1990
and 1994 (Sernhede and Johansson 2006, p. 35).
This was compounded by an infamous flight of the
“well-­off” to neighbouring municipalities, a dispro-
portionately large influx of migrants – with costs
by no means covered by the state compensation
schemes – as well as particular disadvantages stem-
ming from national tax reforms and the distribution
of governmental grants (Billing 2000, p. 19). A for-
eign debt weighed down heavily on the municipal-
ity of Malmö, exposing it to further negative effects
of the devaluation of the Swedish krona in response
to the national crisis (Jerneck 1993, p. 235). It was at
this nadir the city of Malmö began its “work on vi-
sions” where we can also identify the first seeds of
the green fix.
In 1994, Malmö elected a new mayor: Ilmar
Reepalu, local leader of the Social Democratic Party,
educated civil engineer and architect. The municipal-
ity commenced a comprehensive vision-­work, with
© The authors 2016
Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2016 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
teams tasked with conceiving alternative futures for
the post-­industrial city (Dannestam 2009; Mukhtar-­
Landgren 2009). This laid the foundation for the
new Comprehensive Plan (översiktsplan) adopted
in 2000, proclaiming, as a simple factual statement,
that ‘after the industrial society comes the knowl-
edge and information society’ (Malmö stad 2001,
p. 18). In the late 1990s, meanwhile, the fortunes
of Malmö improved somewhat, when the Swedish
state implemented a tax adjustment system in 1996
and, three years later, allocated special funds to mu-
nicipalities with a large number of immigrant chil-
dren and youth (Billing 2000; Mukhtar-­Landgren
2005; Dannestam 2009).
The reinvention of Malmö now picked up pace.
Within little more than a decade, it came to include
many of the archetypal components of what is often
labelled a “post-­industrial” or “neoliberal” or “en-
trepreneurial” city (see e.g. Harvey 1989; Baeten
2012b). Among high-­profile construction projects
were new transport and communication systems,
most visibly the new bridge connecting Malmö to
Copenhagen, and the City Tunnel, a rail link be-
tween Malmö central station and the bridge. The es-
tablishment of Malmö University College boosted
the knowledge profile of the city, while advanced
architecture came to the fore in the housing exhibi-
tion Bo01 and the famously “revolving” skyscraper
known as Turning Torso. There were “events” –
the most recent being the 2013 Eurovision Song
Contest – new sport stadiums, media clusters, at-
tempts to attract the “creative class” and small-­scale
entrepreneurs, quite a few shopping centres and of-
fice buildings and assorted appendages (Dannestam
2009; Baeten 2012a). How, then, did this “new”
Malmö come to be coloured in green?
Malmö’s green fix from seed to flower
At the time when the work of visions was elaborated,
environmental concerns did not occupy the prom-
inent position they have in Malmö’s current urban
policy. To the contrary, a closer analysis of planning
documents of the municipality from mid-­1990s on-
wards shows that the set of strategies we call green
fix evolved out of pragmatic reasons, as the city re-
sponded to incentives on various scales and selected
the most useful strategies on an ad hoc basis.
In early documents, the environment was men-
tioned as part of city development solely in relation
to recreational parks (see Malmö stad 1995). Within
the general framework of the work of visions, the
279
 STÅLE HOLGERSEN AND ANDREAS MALM
environment was brought in as one of eight “vi-
sions”, although in the shadow of the first main cat-
egories: economy, business and education (Malmö
stad 1996). Later on, in the Comprehensive Plan
2000, the preoccupation with environmental issues
has matured; now they are less related to economic
affairs and more to regional and European relations.
The sustainability terminology also comes into
play here. But it is only in the updated comprehen-
sive plan, Malmö 2005, adopted in February 2006,
that environmental aspects are brought all the way
up front. The primary goal of physical planning is
now defined as an ‘attractive and sustainable city’,
and the concept of sustainability – ecological, eco-
nomic and social – is given pride of place (Malmö
stad 2006, p. 98).
The emergence of the green fix is insolubly as-
sociated with the housing exhibition Bo01 – City
of Tomorrow in Malmö in 2001. Symbolically lo-
cated in the Western Harbour, it was touted as the
arrival of the new economy and attracted immense
international attention. Key actors and participants
in the process offer ambiguous explanations as to
exactly why environmental issues became so cen-
tral to Bo01: the first prospectus for the exhibition
is described by one municipal planner as ‘amaz-
ingly fluffy – everything from culture, information
technology and welfare to new ways of organizing
schools was included. It was really far out’ (inter-
view). According to the current director of city plan-
ning, the main object of the exhibition was to attract
taxpayers to Malmö, the environment rather appear-
ing as a series of afterthoughts, with questions of
‘energy and other green questions, such as “green
space factors”, green roofs and storm-­water man-
agement’ (interview). The director also claimed it
was partly a matter of branding, partly an opportu-
nity to demonstrate ideas for the city. Another ex-
planation suggests that ‘use of energy’ was a simple
and manageable metric for all projects involved (in-
terview, planner, municipality).
Several of the interviewees also referred to
the state’s Local Investment Programme (LIP), a
scheme for disbursing money in support of envi-
ronmentally sustainable projects, from which Bo01
drew much needed financial support (Dannestam
2009). According to the director of city planning (in-
terview), LIP enticed Malmö to:
receive money from the state in exchange for
new solutions. The timing was perfect, ener-
gy and green issues were emphasized more and
280
Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2016 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
more as Bo01 came to be. And then there was
the vision of creating the world’s first sustaina-
ble city. It was a little vaguely expressed in the
beginning, but it was filled with content step by
step.
The ‘perfect timing’ was also related to a concurrent
national discourse on the Green People’s Home (det
gröna folkhemmet), a catchword for Swedish eco-­
modernization first proposed by the then Prime
Minister Göran Persson in 1996. The term re-­
cast the classical post-­war concept of the People’s
Home (folkhemmet), but now the home was to be
painted green. A push for environmentally efficient
technologies would, in Persson’s words, ‘provide
great competitive advantages on these promising
markets’, in a happy marriage of ‘ecology, economy
and employment’ (quoted in Lundqvist 2004, p.
1287). This was the context in which LIP developed.
The right-­wing government of Fredrik Reinfeldt
which subsequently assumed power essentially
upheld the discourse: ‘[e]nvironmental challenges
are to be used as an economic lever’, through
which green technology would ‘provide growing
opportunities for increased Swedish exports’ (quoted
in Harring et al. 2011, p. 391). This amounted to a
programme for a national green fix, continuously
interacting with local levels. Around the turn of the
millennium, however, the stimulus came not only
from the national level. The EU put a premium on
sustainable planning, while the Environmental
Programme for the Øresund Region stressed a
good environment as ‘one of the most important
preconditions for a positive and dynamic region’
(Anderberg and Clark 2012). Indeed, as recently
demonstrated by Harring et al. (2011), the discourse
of sustainability as a lever of growth, an instrument
for improved competitiveness and business climate,
has become hegemonic, the marriage proposed by
Persson taken for granted by the Swedish elite.
Malmö green fix in full bloom
Today, Malmö’s international reputation as green
post-­industrial city is blossoming. According to
the director of city planning, ‘environmental issues
have been a very important part of getting Malmö
out of the crisis in the 90s. It has promoted us
very much. And actually, it is more important now
than ever’ (interview). With Bo01 as its material
basis, the success of branding the city as green
became an overarching business strategy for the
© The authors 2016
 “GREEN FIX” AS CRISIS MANAGEMENT

Table 1. Relevant awards received by the municipality of Malmö 2007–2013.

Third Greenest city in the world, 2013 (by Mother Nature Network)
Finalist for the European Green Capital, 2012 and 2013
Earth Hour Capital, 2011 (by WWF)
Third most environmentally friendly city in Europe, 2011 (study by Economist Intelligence Unit commissioned by Siemens)
First winner of the Nordic Sustainability Price, 2011 (by Idébanken)
Winner of the Intermodes Prize, 2011 (as part of Oresund Region) (by AEBR)
Honoured a seat at the Urban Best Practices Area at Expo 2010 in China
Recipient of the World Habitat Award, 2010
The World Green Building Council’s BEX Award, 2009 (for best master plan, with special compliments to the Western Harbour)
‘Scroll of Honour 2009’ (for its ‘innovative and holistic approach to becoming a 21st century eco-city’) (by UN-Habitat)
Global District Energy Climate Awards, 2009
European Fleet of the Year Award from the Green Fleet Award, 2009
Honourable Recognition at the Globe Award, 2009
Fourth “greenest city in the world”, 2007 (by Grist.org)
Bo01 used as “Role model” in State of the World report, 2007

Source: compiled by authors.

entrepreneurial city of Malmö. Below we shall look
into three aspects of the evolution of the green fix
on the ground in Malmö, providing some depth to
the concept. The dialectics between the economic
and ecological components are always present,
with the former arguably influencing the latter more
than the other way around. We will first look at the
importance of international recognition, then at how
the green fix is a business strategy in the real estate
market, and third at how it has become an export
commodity in itself.
Green fix as international recognition
The list of international awards given to Malmö for
its environmental achievements is impressive. In
Table 1 we list international awards directly related
to green imagery. Many such prizes may be based
as much upon subjective impressions as on careful
measurements of environmental quality (Anderberg
and Clark 2012), and there is arguably an inflation in
these kind of competitions, but the prestige, quantity
and variety of the awards indicate that Malmö is
experiencing considerable success.
In addition, there are a vast number of national
prizes (as e.g. Sveriges bästa miljökommun –
Sweden’s most environmental city – in 2010, 2013
and 2014), and also a few prizes for other aspects not
directly linked to the green fix (as of 20 November
2015, the municipality of Malmö and the local
paper Sydsvenskan both have extended lists on their
websites, the latter updated in 2011). Malmö is
likewise frequently mentioned in research in social
sciences, as some sort of pioneering city (see e.g.
Krueger and Gibbs 2007a; Jamison 2008; Kärrholm
2011).
It is hard to ascertain how much Malmö gains in
direct pecuniary profit or political recognition from
its green reputation. One aspect that is quantifiable is
the numbers of visitors to Malmö, and the figures are,
again, impressive: annually the municipality guides
some 10,000–12,000 professional visitors – archi-
tects, planners, developers – who flock to Malmö to
observe sustainable urban development and plan-
ning practices first-­hand (e-­mail communication,
public officer, Malmö). International recognition is
very much appreciated by the municipality: accord-
ing to Malmö’s coordinator of communication and
study visits, the ‘visits are part of Malmö’s branding
work, and every visitor must be seen as a future am-
bassador for the city’ (quoted in Malmö stad 2011b,
p. 30). Turning into a virtual tour agency, the munic-
ipality trains its staff to emulate the tourist sector in
receiving the guests and impressing upon them the
virtues of the city. The CEO of Sustainable Business
Hub, a network helping “clean-­tech” companies to
increase their competitiveness on the export market,
confirms ‘it is very important to strengthen the brand
of Malmö, so one can attract people from the whole
world’ (interview).
According to the director of the environment
department in Malmö, there are plans to charge a

© The authors 2016 281

Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2016 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
 STÅLE HOLGERSEN AND ANDREAS MALM
fee for professional visitors, who have until now had
their visits paid by the city (interview). This might
be another way to convert a successful brand into
money. By all accounts, the green fix has succeeded
in giving Malmö a new aura, no less global in its
reach than the ships of Kockums once were.
Green fix as business strategy in the real estate
market
Through interviews with real estate developers in
the private sector, it became clear that the firms at
Western Harbour are deeply involved in the creation
of environmental credentials, perhaps even more so
than we initially assumed. One developer said: ‘[i]t is
purely a business strategy. We think it will be profitable
in the long run. It will become easier to get tenants,
and easier to sell blocks, and the whole city district
will become more valuable, from a business point of
view’ (interview, real estate developer). One project
manager at Western Harbour likewise argued that this
is a market-­driven process, in which ‘everyone wants
to appear as a corporation which takes responsibility’
(interview, real estate developer). One developer at
another major company asserted ‘it is not possible to
build anything today, unless one takes a clear stance
on questions of environment and energy’ (interview,
real estate developer).
Several developers in the Western Harbour
claim to build more energy-­efficient houses than
current legislation demands. One said his company
decided never to build anything that does not meet
the requirements for Green Building certification –
for ‘if you don’t have it, you are not in, you lose out
in business’ (interview, real estate developer). He
further explained how he recently sold a building in
Western Harbour to a company who would only ac-
cept a Green Building-­certified house, in one stroke
returning the extra sums spent on meeting the stand-
ards. A real estate developer at another company
confirmed that officially approved environmen-
tal standards are a sheer necessity: ‘[it] is not about
making some hundred kronor more per m2 when
leasing an office, but rather about getting tenants at
all. It is a pure question of survival’ (interview). In
our fieldwork, not a single developer refrained from
claims to build better than the average. Only one
was critical of other developers engaging in “green-
ing” or greenwashing. A chorus of informants un-
derscored that greenery first and foremost served as
a business strategy in the real estate market.
282
Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2016 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
Green fix as export commodity in itself
Malmö also offers other cities around the world
the input required to copy its success (interview,
director of city planning:
[w]e have got a lot of response from various
parts of the world after the EXPO in 2010 [see
Table 1], and we have made contacts that we can
use today. We run an exchange programme with
a city outside Beijing, which builds environ-
mentally friendly and aims to become an eco-­
city. Our task is to engage Swedish businesses
with our products and systems-­thinking in this
exchange
Malmö and Sweden seem to have some competitive
advantages: ‘[w]e are good at systems. The wind-
mills are manufactured at lower cost in China, but
the systems-­knowledge, how to integrate parts into
a whole, and such things – this is what we’re good at’
(interview, director of city planning).
Instigated by the municipal authorities, this ex-
port strategy receives national support from e.g.
SymbioCity, a network of Swedish companies and
organizations founded on the initiative of the gov-
ernment and leadings industrial associations, and
administrated by the (then) Swedish Trade Council
(Exportrådet). In this third moment, the green fix
moves beyond its original determination, actually
leaving the place known as Malmö and travelling
across the globe to reap financial gains from other
locales. The second part of Harvey’s spatial fix –
the materialization of new spatial configurations –
reaches a new level, when Malmö seeks to export its
own green space as such.
Scrutinizing Malmö’s green fix
The green fix in Malmö developed ad hoc, almost
accidentally and arguably to a large degree because
of its own success measured through international
recognition, and as a response to the challenges that
politicians, planners and entrepreneurs faced in the
1990s. Malmö’s green fix cannot be understood out-
side the political-­economic context outlined above.
It was the deep crisis in the industrial city that
opened the path for both a new urban policy aiming
at attracting well-­off residents, instigating events,
stadiums, a university college and so forth, and – as
an integral part of the rejuvenation – the greening of
the city. International recognition has long been rec-
ognized as crucial for city branding (see Kavaratzis
© The authors 2016
 “GREEN FIX” AS CRISIS MANAGEMENT
and Ashworth 2005; Dannestam 2009; Anderberg
and Clark 2012), but the examples of green Malmö
as a business strategy in the real estate market and an
export commodity in itself suggest that something
more has been going on in the city. The totality of
these dynamics is what constitutes the green fix, as
distinct from a pure business strategy or a mere po-
litically motivated environmental project: namely, a
strategy for crisis management, in which state and
capital have stimulated each other to proceed along
the green path to prosperity and profit.
Even though economic processes are dialec-
tically related to other phenomena, including en-
vironmental politics and ecological crises as such,
the latter are not the prime movers of the green fix.
Rather, the fix is embedded in generic efforts to re-
vitalize a post-­industrial city – a story well known
from all corners of the advanced capitalist world.
From the vast amount of case studies, it is worth
mentioning Laidley (2007) who describes how
Toronto’s Central Waterfront underwent a shift in ra-
tionale: initially planned through the “ecosystem ap-
proach”, it was absorbed into the neoliberal “global
imperative”. In Malmö we have seen rather the op-
posite trajectory: not so much a late co-­optation of
visionary schemes as the green fix emerging from
economic imperatives dressing themselves in eco-
logical phraseology.
Closer to home, the Western Harbour is often
compared with Stockholm’s Hammarby Sjöstad
(see Pandis Iverot and Brandt 2011). This neigh-
bourhood resembles Western Harbour in that it
started in the mid-­1990s, is primarily built for the
well off, is very profiled for its “environmental” so-
lutions, and has been accused of greenwashing (see
Rutherford 2008). And as observant reader will no-
tice: these characteristics will not make any of them
unique internationally. Rather, the history of Malmö
and the Western Harbour is in many respects a blue-
print for post-­industrial and neoliberal urbanism in
the late twentieth and early twenty-­first centuries.
But Malmö stands out on three counts: the sheer
immensity of its transformation, the deep integra-
tion of the “green” component in a larger redevel-
opment plan and the size of the city. Compared with
most others circulating on the lists of world green-
est cities, such as Portland and San Francisco (US),
Vancouver (Canada), Curitiba (Brazil), Copenhagen
(Denmark) and Hamburg (Germany), Malmö with
its 300,000 inhabitants is fairly small (with the im-
portant parallel of Reykjavík, Iceland). For its tiny
size, the amount of international attention to its
© The authors 2016
Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2016 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
greening is certainly impressive, and it goes without
saying that the transformation has had a significant
impact on the self-­image on the inhabitants.
The ecological challenges Malmö has been
facing during the last decade are similar to those
on the agenda today – primarily carbon control
(cf. While et al. 2010). The economic crisis today
contains similarities with, but is of course not
identical, to the situation Malmö found itself in
during the 1990s; policy solutions and urban crisis
management will likely differ as well. But some
lessons can certainly be learnt from the Malmö
experience.
Conspicuous contradictions and underlying
problems in the green fix
One of the main problems with the green fix, in our
view, is its inherent risk of myopia. The fact that
Malmö’s green fix contains contradictions and in-
consistencies should not come as a surprise. A case
in point is the developer in Western Harbour who
plans for windmills and solar panels on the roof,
in a house so nice that the tenants arguably will
not have reason to leave on holiday and thus will
not emit greenhouse gases by flying. In the news-
paper Sydsvenskan it was argued (13 June 2011)
that this development will attract professional vis-
itors to the Harbour for a long time to come, but
it is not explained how these visitors will travel to
Malmö (perhaps arriving at Scandinavia’s larg-
est airport just 20 minutes away?), or how much
energy the pool in the garden – open year-­around
– will consume. Other conspicuous contradictions
are the continuous emphasis on car pools and bicy-
cling outdoors, combined with the hush-­hush sur-
rounding the construction of a new multi-­storey car
park at Western Harbour (see Fig. 1). Those mov-
ing in to Fullriggaren are also automatically mem-
bers of a car pool, but in a neighbourhood blog it
is questioned whether a mandatory membership in
such a pool is really a way to discourage motoring
(see Västra Hamnen i Malmö 2012). Given the gen-
erously provided opportunities for parking private
cars in the immediate vicinity of the apartments, this
may indeed be doubted.
A more serious problem for Malmö is research
demonstrating that the buildings in Western Harbour
do not consume less energy than standard Swedish
buildings. One of the cornerstones of the sustainable
Western Harbour was the claim that the houses at
Bo01 would exhibit exceptional energy efficiency,
283
 STÅLE HOLGERSEN AND ANDREAS MALM

Figure 1. Multi-storey car park at Fullriggaren, at Western Harbour.

Photo: authors.
Note: the parking house was inaugurated in 2012, hosts 450 cars and a car pool. To the left in the picture is also 145 m2 of
solar panels on the façade.

as all buildings were restricted to use no more than
105 kWh/m2 annually, ‘including space heating,
domestic hot water heating, common electricity and
household electricity’ (Bagge 2007, p. 5). However,
Bagge investigated the nine properties that were
constructed in 2001 and found that all properties
save one used more energy than stated (Bagge
2007; see also Nilsson 2003; Nilsson and Elmroth
2005). The municipality’s own half-­way evaluation
of the Western Harbour from 2011 acknowledges
that neither Bo01, nor its sequel Flaggskeppet (or
Bo02), delivered the promised results (Malmö
stad 2011a). Yet these shortcomings remain under-­
communicated by both the municipality and local
capital, for obvious reasons.
As for scale, although the Western Harbour has
always aimed at becoming an international example,
the urban green fix in Malmö is first and foremost a
local project, both in terms of policy and evaluation.
But the actual environmental outcomes have to be
assessed on a number of scales simultaneously.
It is well established that impacts on the world’s
ecosystems might extend far beyond the site where
the actions in question take place – indeed, distant
effects are emblematic of the main environmental
problems in our time, including, not the least, those
of greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. Roberts and Parks
2007; Hornborg 2011; Malm 2012). Moreover, there
are mountains of evidence showing that pressures
on the environment may be displaced from what
appear, at first sight, to be a clean, green locale,
towards less visible, far-­away places; trade, foreign
direct investment and other mechanisms of global
exchange may simply re-­distribute the ecological
burden in space and increase its total extent. The
results of the purported greening of Malmö cannot
be evaluated outside this multi-­scalar world.
It is obvious that post-­industrial Malmö (or
any notion thereof) is dependent upon industrial
production elsewhere. Ironically, the city’s ecological

284 © The authors 2016

Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2016 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
 “GREEN FIX” AS CRISIS MANAGEMENT
flagship is established on what was once the world’s
largest shipyard; without the disappearance of
shipbuilding – epitome of gritty mega-­industry,
servant of the global oil economy – the greening
on the site would, of course, be unthinkable. But
the world never stopped building ships, and the
Kockums Crane did in fact not disappear. It was sold
for USD 1 in 2002, and the crane now towers above
the Hyundai Heavy shipyard in Ulsan, South Korea,
the world’s single largest shipyard.
Meanwhile the affluent parts of Malmö – Western
Harbour most famous among them – continue to en-
joy remarkable prosperity. That prosperity rests on an
inflow of commodities from all corners of the earth.
Needless to say, fossil fuels are implicated at every
stage of these flows – from the production of the steel
used in the ships, via the tanker fuel, to the transported
commodities themselves – even though they cannot
be directly seen at the Western Harbour. And it is pre-
cisely this invisibility that has made the recreation of
the Harbour as a green paragon possible.
The same logic is reflected in data on carbon di-
oxide emissions in Sweden and Malmö. A recently
published Swedish report, based on 2004 data, sug-
gests that Sweden’s consumption-­based emis-
sions are around 90 per cent higher than the official,
production-­based figure (SEI 2012). According to
the same report, for the city of Malmö, consumption-­
based accounting gives a figure 204 per cent higher
than the official emissions figure. If Sweden’s to-
tal emissions are doubled through consumption,
Malmö’s are tripled, to 13.39 tons per person and year
– far above the 2 tons reportedly available for each
person on the planet if we want a ‘just and sustainable
development at global level in accordance with the
so-­called two-­degree target’ (SEI 2012, p. 8).
As for the Western Harbour, it was originally
conceived to attract affluent and “entrepreneurial”
people to the city, the municipality trying to reverse
the flight of its tax base. In this pursuit, Malmö has
been eminently successful (Dannestam 2009).
Although the average income level has decreased
somewhat as Western Harbour has expanded from
2122 persons (between the ages of 20 and 64) in
2007 to 3722 persons in 2011, it is still far above
that of the city as a whole: whereas the mean dis-
posable income (again people 20–64 years of age)
in 2011 was SEK 195,351 in Malmö, it stood at
SEK 279,110 in Western Harbour (Malmö stad
2014; see also Holgersen 2012). This could be
compared with the districts Törnrosen, Herrgården
and Kryddgården, where the mean disposable in
© The authors 2016
Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2016 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
2011 income was SEK 117,022, SEK 101,758 and
SEK 94,191, respectively (Malmö stad 2014).
Now, it is well known from studies in Sweden
and elsewhere that affluence correlates closely
with consumption of energy and raw materials.
This comes on top of a situation where one would
need 3.4 planets if everyone consumed as much as
the average Swede in 2004 – up to 3.7 planets only
two years later (SEI 2012; Borgström-­Hansson and
Wirtén 2014). Furthermore, from Områdefakta
(statistical data from 1995–2008) one gathers that
people in the Western Harbour have more cars than
the average in Malmö (Malmö stad 2015). Total
consumption levels in the Western Harbour are
probably unsustainable, but the paradox does not
end there: the image of environmental friendliness
may be a badge of affluence, something well-­off
Swedes cultivate as a class identity, further pro-
moting a lifestyle of high total material throughput
(cf. Bradley 2009; Vojnovic 2014, p. S42).
So far in the history of capitalism, economic
growth in itself has – contrary to the claims of eco-
logical modernists – always been realized through
a higher throughput of biophysical resources, de-
coupling remaining a politically useful chimera
(see e.g. Jackson 2009; Blauwhof 2012). If the fix
has fulfilled its purpose of improving growth rates
in Malmö in direct pecuniary terms, it most likely
has also ratcheted up Malmö’s metabolism of en-
ergy and raw materials.
There are now plans afoot to build another part
of the Western Harbour called Varvsstaden, with
1500 apartments, offices for 5000 workplaces,
stores, restaurants, schools and rail-­traffic, to be
completed in 2030 (Malmö stad 2011c; see also
Fig. 2). Varvsstaden will have a certified ecological
profile. But as the industrial production going on at
the site, ironically manufacturing parts for trains
and windmills – things obviously needed for some
future transition to a sustainable local society – is
polluting and making noise, it is slated for termina-
tion in 2013. As in the case of the Kockums crane,
manufacturing activities have to vanish from sight
to make way for more greenery. The myopia ap-
pears to be a constitutive feature of the green fix in
Malmö.
Concluding remarks
While the economies in Western Europe seem to
have problems with regaining pre-­crisis accumu-
lation rates, the climate crisis seems to undergo
285
 STÅLE HOLGERSEN AND ANDREAS MALM

Figure 2. Varvsstaden.
Photo and copyright: Peab, published with permission.
Note: within the white line is Varvsstaden, with its so-far still ongoing production of parts to windmills and trains. In front
is Malmö University. From Varvsstaden and to the right is the area known as Western Harbour, with Turning Torso. At the
left is more of the city of Malmö and in the background the Öresund Bridge to Denmark.

nothing but secular deterioration. It should therefore
come as no surprise that policy-­makers are aiming at
killing the two birds with one stone. This has so far
not gained the attention it deserves on urban levels.
In this article, we have sought to establish “green fix”
as a concept that can be used to analytically grasp
the greening of cities qua efforts to restart accumula-
tion and overcome local crises. This has been miss-
ing in current discussions on the economic crisis and
the city, and also in discourses on urban (un)sustain-
ability in general. The concept of green fix brings to
the discussion an analytical tool by which one can in-
vestigate further such trends. And we think this can
be a useful tool, considering that the economic re-
cession that started in 2008 has still not disappeared
– with Swedish growth rates standing at a trifling 0.9
per cent in 2012 and 1.5 per cent in 2013, and inter-
national figures being even worse, Europe (28 coun-
tries) showing a growth rate of –0.4 per cent in 2012
and 0.1 in 2013 (Eurostat 2014).
We will conclude here by first discussing whether
the green fix in Malmö can be deemed successful
and then by identifying future research issues. The
success of the green fix is in the end determined by
its economic results, but should for obvious reasons
be analysed in terms of its ecological results as well.
In terms of economic results, it is hard to gauge its
success with perfect precision. It has delivered huge
political capital to the city, and as this was one of
the original aims it is a truism to call it a success. It
is difficult, however, to measure the effects in direct
pecuniary profit or revenue flow, and the municipality
itself has never ventured any such calculations
(e-mail, coordinator of communication and study
visits). On the other hand, it appears likely that the
global reputation of Malmö has produced spin-­
off effects and contributed to the attraction of both
visitors and enterprises. The fix may not on its own
result in any massive accumulation of capital, but
indications are that it has partaken in the resurgence

286 © The authors 2016

Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2016 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
 “GREEN FIX” AS CRISIS MANAGEMENT
of – as one might call it – upper Malmö since the
dark days of the early 1990s. As the work of visions
and the production of the post-­industrial Malmö was
a (neoliberal) economic strategy where one planned
for the rich in the first place, it should come as no
surprise that lower Malmö has seen far less of these
spin-­off effects, the city being increasingly divided
and the image of “green Malmö” jarring against
social realities of segregation, unemployment and
unrest (Dannestam 2009; Baeten 2012a; Holgersen
2012).
In terms of ecological results, it follows from our
critique above that there are deep problems with the
green fix, both in the case of Malmö and, by extension,
more generally. However, all that glitters in green is
not false. The solar panels, waste recycling systems
and windmills in the Western Harbour should not
be discounted or jettisoned but rather developed
further. And although decreased emissions in Malmö
to some degree correlate with increased emissions
elsewhere, the actual improvement of air quality
in Malmö is, of course, good for the inhabitants
of the city. (A recent report from the municipality
shows that air quality has improved, but Malmö did
not in 2012 reach the “environment quality norm”
[miljökvalitetsnormen] on NO2 and O3 in a number
of streets; Malmö stad 2013.) But the major benefit
from a decade or so with a green fix is perhaps the
substantial production of local knowledge about all
kinds of ecological issues – particularly within the
municipality, but also at educational institutions and
in local businesses. The case of Malmö teaches us
to pay attention to the concrete minutiae of a project
of environmental transformation, the imprints of its
driving forces, as well as its effects on and moorings
in various spatial scales.
A more radical restructuring of the city of
Malmö would certainly aim, first of all, at im-
proving the lot of people in disadvantaged neigh-
bourhoods – infamous as “slums” – crying out
for restoration. Several of these neighbourhoods
were built between 1965 and 1975 (i.e. as part of
the Swedish Million Programme), and these build-
ings are now in need of restoration. This could, and
should, have an ecological component of dramati-
cally reduced energy consumption. The municipal-
ity of Malmö has also started working on this issue,
but, as the director of Malmö’s environmental de-
partment said, ‘we are struggling a bit to establish
the right funding model’ (interview). Subsidies
to energy-­efficient renovation of working-­class
housing would not generate the same publicity as
© The authors 2016
Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2016 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
spectacular architecture in neighbourhoods such as
the Western Harbour. This calls for a policy beyond
the green fix.
The Malmö case contains its particularities, but
the story is far from unique, which opens possibil-
ities for investigating other cases in the light of the
green fix concept. Economic crisis management
coloured in green can be found in many places; fur-
ther research is needed in order to grasp these phe-
nomena properly and develop the concept further.
In the literature, case studies on relations between
ecological crisis and economic conditions are in-
vestigated from various angles. Caprotti (2014b)
rightly points out that current research on the “eco-­
city” cries out for clearer definitions and greater
sensitivity to scale; the concept of green fix is in-
tended as a response to such concerns, and could
hopefully inspire further analytical distinctions
and spatial contextualization. Here, economic driv-
ers have provided the analytical point of departure,
identified as the engines of the green fix. Future re-
search will show whether this phenomenon is wide-
spread; we suspect that it is. It would be of high
interest to see different cases, with different partic-
ularities and driving mechanisms producing green
fixes. Another worthwhile endeavour would be to
calculate how much cities and local capital actually
gain in pecuniary profits from green fixes. Factors
of scale need to be explored further: are there any
urban policies that can avoid the trap of importing
embodied emissions? What sort of urban renewal
would walk free from the critique of ignoring the
global scale? Needless to say, possible alternative
urban-­ecological paths that go beyond green fixes
form an urgent field of research.
From our study, there is at least one lesson
Malmö can provide us with. Claims to solve the two
crises with an antidote compound – green new deal,
green economy, green growth, or whatever it might
be called – should be treated with a healthy dose of
scepticism. Behind the gloss might hide just another
strategy for revamping accumulation.
Acknowledgements
The authors would especially like to thank Guy
Baeten, Stefan Anderberg, Karl-­Johan Lundquist
and Rikard Warlenius, as well as two anonymous
reviewers and the editors of Geografiska Annaler:
Series B, Human Geography, for highly valuable
comments and critique along the process.
287
 STÅLE HOLGERSEN AND ANDREAS MALM
Ståle Holgersen
Institute for Housing and Urban Research
Uppsala University
PO Box 514
SE-751 20 Uppsala
Sweden
Email: stale.holgersen@ibf.uu.se
Andreas Malm
Department of Human Geography and the Human
Ecology Division
Sölvegatan 10
SE-223 62 Lund
Sweden
Email: andreas.malm@hek.lu.se
References
AALBERS, M. B. (ed.) (2012): Subprime Cities: The Political
Economy of Mortgage Markets, Studies in Urban and Social
Change. Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, MA.
ALLISON, I., BINDOFF, N. L., BINDSCHADLER, R. A., COX,
P. M., de NOBLET, N., ENGLAND, M. H., FRANCIS, J. E.,
GRUBER, N., HAYWOOD, A. M., KAROLY, D. J., KASER,
G., Le Quéré, C., LENTON, T. M., MANN, M. E., McNEIL,
B. I., PITMAN, A. J., RAHMSTORF, S., RIGNOT, E.,
SCHELLNHUBER, H. J., SCHNEIDER, S. H., SHERWOOD,
S. C., SOMERVILLE, R. C. J., STEFFEN, K., STEIG, E. J.,
VISBECK, M. and WEAVER, A. J. (2009): The Copenhagen
Diagnosis, 2009: Updating the World on the Latest Climate
Science. UNSW Climate Change Research Centre, University
of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW.
ANDERBERG, S. and CLARK, E. (2012): ‘Green sustainable
Øresund region – eco-branding Copenhagen and Malmö’, in
VOJNOVIC, I. (ed.): Urban Sustainability: A Global Urban
Context. Michigan State University Press, East Lansing, MI,
pp. 591–610.
ANDERSTIG, C. and NILSON, J. (2005): Bo Noll Ett – samhälls-
ekonomiskt sett. Inregia AB, commissioned by the Malmö stad,
Malmö.
BAETEN, G. (2012a): ‘Normalising neoliberal planning: the case
of Malmö, Sweden’, in Taşan-Kok, T. and BAETEN, G.
(eds): Contradictions of Neoliberal Planning: Cities, Policies,
and Politics. Springer, Berlin, pp. 21–42.
BAETEN, G. (2012b): ‘Neoliberal planning: does it really ex-
ist? Contradictions of neoliberal planning’, in Taşan-Kok,
T. and BAETEN, G. (eds): Contradictions of Neoliberal
Planning: Cities, Policies, and Politics. Springer, Berlin, pp.
205–211.
BAGGE, H. (2007): Energy Use in Multi-family Dwellings:
Measurements and Methods of Analysis. Report TVBH-3049,
Building Physics LTH, Lund University, Lund.
BAKKER, K. (2010): ‘The limits of “neoliberal natures”: debat-
ing green neoliberalism’, Progress in Human Geography 34
(6): 715–735.
BILLING, P. (2000): Skilda världar? Malmös 1990-tal i ett kort
historiskt perspektiv. Malmö stad, Malmö.
BILLING, P. and STIGENDAL, M. (1994): Hegemonins de-
cennier. Lärdomar från Malmö om den svenska modellen.
Möllevångens samhällsanalys, Malmö.
288
Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2016 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
BLACKBURN, R. (2011): ‘Crisis 2.0’, New Left Review NS 72:
33–62.
BLAUWHOF, F. B. (2012): ‘Overcoming accumulation: is a cap-
italist steady-state economy possible?’, Ecological Economics
84: 254–261.
BORGSTRÖM-HANSSON, C. and WIRTÉN, H. (2014):
‘Svenskarnas konsumtion pressar jorden allt hårdare’, Dagens
Nyheter 30 September: 6.
BRADLEY, K. (2009): Just Environments: Politicising
Sustainable Urban Development. School of Architecture and
Built Environment, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.
BÜHRS, T. (2000): ‘Green planning in Australia and Canada: dead
or alive?’, Environmental Politics 9 (2): 102–125.
BULKELEY, H. and BETSILL, M. M. (2005): ‘Rethinking sus-
tainable cities: multilevel governance and the “urban” politics
of climate change’, Environmental Politics 14 (1): 42–63.
BURAWOY, M. (1998): ‘The extended case method’, Sociological
Theory 16 (1): 4–33.
CAPROTTI, F. (2014a): ‘Eco-urbanism and the eco-city, or,
Denying the right to the city?’, Antipode 46 (5): 1285–1303.
CAPROTTI, F. (2014b): ‘Critical research on eco-cities? A
walk through the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City, China’,
Cities 36: 10–17.
CLOKE, P., COOK, I., CRANG, P., GOODWIN, M., PAINTER,
J. and PHILO, C. (2004): Practising Human Geography. Sage,
London.
DANNESTAM, T. (2009): Stadspolitik i Malmö. Politikens men-
ingsskapande och materialitet. Lund Political Studies 155,
Statsvetenskapliga institutionen, Lunds universitet, Lund.
DOOLING, S. (2009): ‘Ecological gentrification: a research
agenda exploring justice in the city’, International Journal of
Urban and Regional Research 33 (3): 621–639.
ENGELEN, E., KONINGS, M. and FERNANDEZ, R. (2010):
‘Geographies of financialization in disarray: the Dutch case in
comparative perspective’, Economic Geography 86 (1): 53–73.
ENGELEN, E. and MUSTERD, S. (2010): ‘Amsterdam in crisis:
how the (local) state buffers and suffers’, International Journal
of Urban and Regional Research 34 (3): 701–708.
EUROSTAT (2014): Real GDP growth rate – volume: percentage
change on previous year, Eurostat [online]. URL http://epp.eu-
rostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/refreshTableAction.do?tab=table&pl
ugin=1&pcode=tec00115&language=en [accessed 18 March
2014].
FLYVBJERG, B. (2006): ‘Five misunderstandings about case-
study research’, Qualitative Inquiry 12 (2): 219–245.
FUGLESTAD, O. L. and MØRKESETH, E. I. (1997): ‘Et semi-
otisk perspektiv på forskningsprosessen og på forskerens rolle
i felten’, in FOSSÅSKARET, E., FUGLESTAD, O. L. and
AASE, T. H. (eds): Metodisk feltarbeid. Produksjon og tolkning
av kvalitative data. Universitetsforlaget, Oslo, pp. 167–187.
HARRING, N., JAGERS, S. C. and MARTINSSON, J. (2011):
‘Explaining ups and downs in the public’s environmental con-
cern in Sweden: the effects of ecological modernization, the
economy, and the media’, Organization and Environment 24
(4): 388–403.
HARVEY, D. (1989): ‘From managerialism to entrepreneurial-
ism: the transformation of urban governance in late capital-
ism’, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 71
(1): 3–17.
HARVEY, D. (1999): The Limits to Capital. Verso, London.
HARVEY, D. (2001): ‘Globalization and the “spatial fix”’,
Geographische Revue 3 (2): 23–30.
HARVEY, D. (2010): The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of
Capitalism. Profile, London.
© The authors 2016
 “GREEN FIX” AS CRISIS MANAGEMENT
HEYNEN, N., KAIKA, M. and SWYNGEDOUW, E. (2006): In
the Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the Politics
of Urban Metabolism. Routledge, London.
HOLGERSEN, S. (2012): ‘Exploring urban development in
Malmö city through discourses on change’, in JACOBSSON,
K. and SJÖBERG, K. (eds): Pondering on Methods: A Plethora
of Methodological Concerns. Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund
University, Lund, pp. 137–150.
HOLGERSEN, S. (2014): ‘Urban responses to the economic crisis:
confirmation of urban policies as crisis management in Malmö’,
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38 (1):
285–301.
HORNBORG, A. (2011): Global Ecology and Unequal Exchange:
Fetishism in a Zero-Sum World. Routledge, Abingdon.
JACKSON, T. (2009): Prosperity without Growth: Economics for
a Finite Planet. Earthscan, London.
JAMISON, A. (2008): ‘Greening the city: urban environmentalism
from Mumford to Malmö’, in HÅRD, M. and MISA, T. J. (eds):
Urban Machinery: Inside Modern European Cities. MIT Press,
Cambridge, MA, pp. 281–298.
JERNECK, M. (1993): ‘Malmö – porten till kontinenten? En mak-
tstudie av en internationaliserad storstad’, in STENELO, L.-G.
and NORRVING, B. (eds): Lokal makt. Lund Political Studies
79, Lund University Press, Lund, pp. 231–311.
JESSOP, B. (2006): ‘Spatial fixes, temporal fixes, and spatio-
temporal fixes’, in CASTREE, N. and GREGORY, D. (eds):
David Harvey: A Critical Reader. Blackwell, Malden, MA, pp.
142–166.
JONAS, A. E. G. and WHILE, A. (2007): ‘Greening the
Entrepreneurial city? Looking for spaces of sustainability poli-
tics in the competitive city’, in KRUEGER, R. and GIBBS, D.
(eds) (2007b): The Sustainable Development Paradox: Urban
Political Economy in the United States and Europe. Guilford,
New York, pp. 123–159.
KÄRRHOLM, M. (2011): ‘The scaling of sustainable urban form:
a case of scale-related issues and sustainable planning in
Malmö, Sweden’, European Planning Studies 19 (1): 97–112.
KAVARATZIS, M. and ASHWORTH, G. J. (2005): ‘City brand-
ing: an effective assertion of identity or a transitory marketing
trick?’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 96
(5): 506–514.
KITCHIN, R. and TATE, N. J. (2000): Conducting Research
in Human Geography: Theory, Methodology and Practice.
Pearson, Edinburgh.
KLIMAN, A. (2012): The Failure of Capitalist Production:
Underlying Causes of the Great Recession. Pluto Press, London.
KRUEGER, R. and GIBBS, D. (2007a): ‘Introduction: prob-
lematizing the politics of sustainability’, in KRUEGER, R.
and GIBBS, D. (eds) (2007b): The Sustainable Development
Paradox: Urban Political Economy in the United States and
Europe. Guilford, New York, pp. 1–11.
KRUEGER, R. and GIBBS, D. (eds) (2007b): The Sustainable
Development Paradox: Urban Political Economy in the United
States and Europe. Guilford, New York.
LAIDLEY, J. (2007): ‘The ecosystem approach and the global
imperative on Toronto’s Central Waterfront’, Cities 24 (4):
259–272.
LEHMANN, S. (2011): Principles of Green Urbanism:
Transforming the City for Sustainability. Earthscan, London.
LUNDQVIST, L. J. (2004): ‘“Greening the People’s Home”: the
formative power of sustainable development discourse in
Swedish housing’, Urban Studies 41 (7): 1283–1301.
MALM, A. (2012): ‘China as chimney of the world: the fossil
capital hypothesis’, Organization and Environment 25 (2):
146–177.
© The authors 2016
Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2016 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
MALMÖ STAD (1995): ‘Vision Malmö 2000’, in LUNDQVIST,
Å. (ed.): Malmö idag (stadsbyggnadsvisionen). Stadsbyggnads­
kontoret, Malmö.
MALMÖ STAD (1996): ‘Vision 2015: om framtidens Malmö’.
Stadskontoret, Malmö.
MALMÖ STAD (2001): ‘Översiktsplan for Malmö 2000. Antagen
december 2000’. Stadsbyggnadskontoret, Malmö, January.
MALMÖ STAD (2006): ‘Malmö 2005. Aktualisering och kom-
plettering av Malmös översiktsplan. Antagen februari 2006’.
Stadsbyggnadskontoret, Malmö.
MALMÖ STAD (2011a): ‘Halvtidsutvärdering av Västra
Hamnen’. Malmö stad, Malmö.
MALMÖ STAD (2011b): ‘Malmö lockar besökare från hela
världen’, Planering i Malmö (3): 30.
MALMÖ STAD (2011c): ‘Planprogram Varvstaden’. Pp 6030,
Malmö stadsbyggnadskontor, Malmö.
MALMÖ STAD (2013): Luftkvalitet i Malmö 2012: anta-
gen av Miljönämnden 2013-03-27. Rapportnr 4/2013,
Miljöförvaltningen, Malmö.
MALMÖ STAD (2014): Statistikunderlag för Malmö 2007–2014,
Malmö Stad [online]. URL http://malmo.se/Kommun--politik/
Statistik.html [accessed 18 March 2014].
MALMÖ STAD (2015): Områdesfakta, Malmö stad [online]. URL
http://malmo.se/Kommun--politik/Statistik/Omradesfakta-for-
Malmo-1995-2008.html [accessed 20 November 2015].
McLAUGHLIN, P. (2012): ‘Ecological modernization in evolu-
tionary perspective’, Organization and Environment 25 (2):
178–196.
McNALLY, D. (2011): Global Slump: The Economics and Politics
of Crisis and Resistance. PM Press, Oakland, CA.
MOL, A. P. J. (2010): ‘Ecological modernization as a social the-
ory of environmental reform’, in REDCLIFT, M. R. and
WOODGATE, G. (eds): The International Handbook of
Environmental Sociology. 2nd edn. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham,
pp. 63–76.
MUKHTAR-LANDGREN, D. (2005): ‘Den delade staden – välfärd
for alla i kunskapsstaden Malmö’, Fronesis 18: 120–131.
MUKHTAR-LANDGREN, D. (2009): ‘The city (as) exhibition:
urban regeneration and city marketing in Malmö during two Fin
de Siècles’, in ECKARDT, F. and ELANDER, I. (eds): Urban
Governance in Europe. Future Urban Research in Europe 2,
Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin, pp. 249–272.
NILSSON, A. (2003): Energianvändning i nybyggda flerbostads­hus
på Bo01-området i Malmö. Rapport TVBH-3045, Avdelningen
för byggnadsfysik, Lunds tekniska högskola, Lund.
NILSSON, A. and ELMROTH, A. (2005): ‘The buildings consume
more energy than expected’, in PERSSON, B. (ed.): Sustainable
City of Tomorrow. Bo01 – Experiences of a Swedish Housing
Exposition. Formas, Stockholm, pp. 107–118.
OLSSON, K. (1995): ‘Big business in Sweden: the golden age
of the great Swedish shipyards, 1945–1974’, Scandinavian
Economic History Review 43 (3): 310–338.
PANDIS IVEROT, S. and BRANDT, N. (2011): ‘The develop-
ment of a sustainable urban district in Hammarby Sjöstad,
Stockholm, Sweden?’, Environment, Development and
Sustainability 13 (6): 1043–1064.
PECK, J. and TICKELL, A. (2002): ‘Neoliberalizing space’,
Antipode 34 (3): 380–404.
PETERS, G. P., MARLAND, G., Le QUÉRÉ, C., BODEN, T. ,
CANADELL, J. G. and RAUPACH., M. R. (2012): ‘Rapid
growth in CO2 emissions after the 2008–2009 global financial
crisis’, Nature Climate Change 2 (1): 2–4.
ROBERTS, J. T. and PARKS, B. C. (2007): A Climate of Injustice:
Global Inequality, North-South Politics, and Climate Policy.
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
289
 STÅLE HOLGERSEN AND ANDREAS MALM
RUTHERFORD, J. (2008): ‘Unbundling Stockholm: the networks,
planning and social welfare nexus beyond the unitary city’,
Geoforum 39 (6): 1871–1883.
SEI (2012): Global miljöpåverkan och localt fotavtryck – analys
av fyra svenska kommuners totala konsumtion. Stockholm
Environmental Institute and Cogito, Stockholm.
SERNHEDE, O. and JOHANSSON, T. (2006): ‘Den industriella
epoken: Göteborg och Malmö. En bakgrund’, in SERNHEDE,
O. and JOHANSSON, T. (eds): Storstadens omvandlingar.
Postindustrialism, globalisering och migration: Göteborg och
Malmö. Daidalos, Göteborg, pp. 23–38.
SOLOMON, S., QIN, D., MANNING, M., CHEN, Z., MARQUIS,
M., AVERYT, K. B., TIGNOR, M. and MILLER, H. L. (eds)
(2007): Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis.
Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment
Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Cambridge University Press, New York.
SZILI, G. and ROFE, M. W. (2007): ‘Greening Port Misery: mar-
keting the green face of waterfront redevelopment in Port
Adelaide, South Australia’, Urban Policy and Research 25 (3):
363–384.
TEMENOS, C. and McCANN, E. (2012): ‘The local politics of
policy mobility: learning, persuasion, and the production of a
municipal sustainability fix’, Environment and Planning A 44
(6): 1389–1406.
TRETTER, E. M. (2013a): ‘Contesting sustainability: “SMART
growth” and the redevelopment of Austin’s Eastside’,
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37 (1):
297–310.
290
Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2016 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography
TRETTER, E. M. (2013b): ‘Sustainability and neoliberal urban
development: the environment, crime and the remaking of
Austin’s downtown’, Urban Studies 50 (11): 2222–2237.
VÄSTRA HAMNEN i MALMÖ (2012): P-huset Fullriggaren in-
vigt, Västra Hamnen i Malmö 16 May [online]. URL http://
vhamnen.com/index.php/tag/p-hus [accessed 27 April 2014].
VOJNOVIC, I (2014): ‘Urban sustainability: research, politics,
policy and practice’, Cities 41 (S1): S30–S44.
WHILE, A., JONAS, A. E. G. and GIBBS, D. (2004): ‘The envi-
ronment and the entrepreneurial city: searching for the urban
“sustainability fix” in Manchester and Leeds’, International
Journal of Urban and Regional Research 28 (3): 549–569.
WHILE, A., JONAS, A. E. G. and GIBBS, D. (2010): ‘From sus-
tainable development to carbon control: eco-state restruc-
turing and the politics of urban and regional development’,
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 35 (1):
76–93.
YIN, R. K. (2009): Case Study Research: Design and Methods. 4th
edn. Sage, London.
YORK, R. and ROSA, E. A. (2003): ‘Key challenges to ecolog-
ical modernization theory: institutional efficacy, case study
evidence, units of analysis, and the pace of eco-efficiency’,
Organization and Environment 16 (3): 273–288.
YORK, R., ROSA, E. A. and DIETZ, T. (2010): ‘Ecological
modernization theory: theoretical and empirical challenges’,
in REDCLIFT, M. R. and WOODGATE, G. (eds): The
International Handbook of Environmental Sociology. 2nd edn.
Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, pp. 77–90.
© The authors 2016