Selection of sites in Helsingborg

We chose to analyze the city of Helsingborg since this is a midsize Swedish city with many ambitious development projects and goals. Urban areas in Helsingborg city were selected through structured and unstructured observations. For final selection, we considered:

1. Structured observations of people (Gehl’s People Moving Count and Stationary Activity Count)
1. Gröningen and the surrounding areas contained enough people engaging in a variety of activities compared to Sundstorget, for example. There were enough people in the Norra Hamnen area to make a rhythmanalysis possible.
2. Survey on people’s perceptions of public space
1. We conducted a small survey to try and capture people's perceptions on public spaces, how they use public space and what kind of activities they would perform. To summarize, parks and places for relaxation or performing activities were important. In Helsingborg, Gröningen was the clear choice.
3. Plans and strategy documents for Helsingborg city
1. The city of Helsingborg has a goal of quality public spaces but some efforts are more dramatic than others. The Norra Hamnen development stands out in this respect since it appears to have a very clear and elaborate urban design. In 1999 this area was the focal point for the H99 housing exhibition (like Bo01). From the documents we understood that the architect firm White saw Henry Dunkers Plats as a continuation of the flow down the hill on Hälsovägen out to the water. The beige stones and the whale-shaped shrub at the road symbolized a beach and the flow of the water was visualized using wavy lines of darker-coloured stones (Helsingborgs Stad, 1995).

Our selected site included the part of Helsingborg known as Norra Hamnen. As seen in the aerial photo from 1960 (see above), this part of Helsingborg was formerly industrial and Gröningen was a large railway yard. We observed that people usually came from the shopping ‘stråk’ Kullagatan or Knutpunkten train station direction (south). Henry Dunkers Plats is the first space encountered and forms a decision point as to how one will get to Gröningen. The most direct path (342 m) is a bike trail to the right of Stadsteatern while crossing Henry Dunkers Plats heading towards the water (378 m) would mean passing through Kungsparken to get to Gröningen. We therefore chose to focus our place-temporality analysis on Henry Dunkers Plats, Kungsparken and Gröningen.
 

Map illustrating the 3 selected sites in Helsingborg, Sweden.
Map content © Lantmäteriet 2016, aerial views © Google Maps 2019.

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