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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Clifton EversORCiD
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This article studies the role of spatial imaginaries in Sweden’s transition to a fossil free society. Drawing on focus groups and individual interviews conducted in two Swedish communities, closely entangled with carbon intensive industries, we analyze the spatial imaginaries embedded in people’s stories about place as well as how they affect local dynamics and perceptions of the fossil free transition. Our analysis illustrates how spatial imaginaries frame meaning in place, how they reinforce place-based identities and help people to position themselves in the broader regional geographies. Moreover, they shape perceptions of spatial justice and impact imaginaries of place-based futures. Our findings reveal how othering, recognized as a forceful feature of spatial imaginaries, fuels a pronounced us-and-them dynamics in our case study locations where geographical divisions such as urban-rural, north-south and center-periphery shape how fossil free transition is understood and received. Based on our findings we argue that from a national policy standpoint the greatest challenge ahead lies in “creating an us” in the face of transition by designing place-sensitive policies that frame the transition to a fossil free society as a collective endeavor. Moreover, our results confirm the critical need of also treating industrial decarbonization as a process of place-making where communities and local citizens are at the very center of envisioning place-based desired futures.
Author(s): Bohman A, Evers C, Lövbrand E, Brodén-Gyberg V
Publication type: Article
Publication status: In Press
Journal: Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy
Year: 2026
Acceptance date: 10/08/2026
ISSN (electronic): 1548-7733
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Inc.
