Marco Eimermann

This chapter aims to increase our understanding of intra-European lifestyle migrants’ engagements in civil society and serious outdoor leisure in the context of local communities in northern Sweden’s inland. The studied village offers exceptional opportunities for dogsledding on a renown dogsledding trail. Drawing on qualitative Foresight approaches the focus is on locals’, lifestyle migrants’ and municipal officials’ desired local socio-economic futures (e.g. in ten years). This provides insights into individuals different accounts of local ‘community’ through civil society such as dogsledding clubs. These insights are then connected with more general issues such as the notion of community itself, and municipal planning for the right-sizing of green spaces and infrastructure in sparsely populated areas challenged by demographic shrinkage. Conclusions indicate values and challenges of adapting fixed assets such as roads and trails to local and incoming populations’ specific needs and wishes.

The paradoxical situation of planning for growth while managing decline has long been a reality for politicians and planners in Nordic peripheries. In recent years, however, attempts to plan for demographic adaptation, smart shrinkage, and ‘right-sizing’ public services have become commonplace. While it has taken decades for this to become an accepted part of municipal planning, new opportunities are now arising in the Swedish North due to several unforeseen giga-investments. These are expected to trigger rapid socio-economic growth along the urbanized coast and in a few select inland locations. Yet the likely effects on shrinking rural and sparsely populated municipalities geographically adjacent to these investment hotspots are much less understood. Previous research suggests that such investment projects might cause pressure for rural labour and housing markets but may also offer a range of positive spillover effects and development opportunities for rural areas. We draw on structural level narratives and interviews with key informants, including local and regional political stakeholders, to identify how the prospects of the giga-investments are viewed in places that are not directly affected, and what opportunities and threats are discussed. An overarching theme identified in the empirical material concerns the a-spatiality of discourses of growth, which we divide into two concrete dilemmas: infrastructure and mobility. Our findings show that, while the investments are seen as ringing in a new ‘golden age’ for the northern region, such a-spatial understandings of regional characteristics might stand in the way of acting fast and being able to make the most of the potential spillover effects.

Studies of sustainable ways of life have hitherto made limited use of register data since, e.g., voluntary simplicity is usually identified through characteristics that cannot be found in data registers. Despite this, claims about these trends have been made in many countries, at times generalising the phenomena both in academia and media, based on anecdotal examples. This article draws on a quantifiable definition of holistic simplicity that includes certain fully measurable aspects, such as living in more affluent suburbs, moving to less affluent places and a significant reduction in individual work income. Other aspects are partially observable in register data, such as housing and car consumption. The advantage of this study is that it combines relevant theories around voluntary simplicity with register data that capture important characteristics of the entire national population (in this case, in Sweden) and thus, to some extent, also captures the magnitude of the phenomena. The article aims to statistically explore different demographic groups’ probability of becoming holistic simplifiers in Sweden, regarding their consumption, gender and age. It discusses opportunities and limitations for advancing our knowledge on voluntary simplicity in Sweden, with current findings suggesting more of the same consumption patterns and only initial paths to degrowth. This is discussed in the context of individuals’ agency in a state such as Sweden, which is changing from collectivist social democratic values to more neo-liberal conditions.

This final chapter of the book wraps up the discussions in previous chapters and links back to the book’s introductory chapter. We reflect on the future of sparsely populated areas in connection with growth, decline and degrowth. We do so through revisiting the intro-chapter’s example of local development and broader historical and political perspectives on major current challenges such as the corona pandemic, climate change and the refugee crisis. What does this mean for the north? The need for rural people, places and products has not disappeared. On the contrary, change, transformation and adaptation have been pivotal for development, and this is what we have seen as examples throughout this book.

This chapter sets the scene for this book. It introduces issues that we relate with living, working and traveling in sparsely populated areas. We explain that ‘the north’ is more than an area on a geographic map. We relate this with seminal previous research on sparsely populated municipalities under constant pressure due to socio-economic challenges. This chapter also provides concrete local examples of civil society-based local development. It explains how this book nuances both myths of rural areas as struggling and dull or as ideal idylls. We relate this with views of countrysides as productivist, post-productivist and multifunctional. In turbulent times due to global political struggles, climate change and the Corona outbreak, this book shows how the north of Sweden and similar areas are heterogeneous in their dos and don’ts.