Municipal Dreams of a Placemaker

15:15 - 15:45

Stockholm lessons for global cities. Placemaking activism that shifts systems, when temporary projects bring lasting change.

Glad Stad is a Scandinavian-based, globally active company within urban planning solutions to create sustainable growth and development patterns for cities. Through self-initiated projects alongside consultancy work, they aim to show how urban space may be used in an efficient and creative way. By focusing on temporary projects with a time span of 1-5 years, space that often goes unseen is allocated and optimized. With projects primarily self-funded, accumulated profits are reinvested into new projects – to make cities happier!

As a placemaker at heart, Lindstål will share his best-kept secret: how to turn space into an appreciated, vibrant, and attractive place. In his view, creating a place is about creating memories and adding value. His recipe for place activation is based on a simple formula around creating content to reach shared goals. Through live examples from his past, ranging from international festivals to local markets and his time at city hall, we will explore how these principles can be applied to build places and create attractive destinations.

Fredrik will also take you down the rabbit hole of creative bureaucracy and how to apply placemaking activism in rigid municipal structures and create systemic change, and why apologising is sometimes better than asking permission! One example? The two-year experience at Plåtparken in Stockholm, where a community market and a wooden swimming platform on the river found a temporary approval by the city government to allow for a vibrant public space to thrive.

Fredrik Lindstål Placemaker

Glad Stad

Fredrik Lindstål is a Stockholm-based placemaker with an international outlook, working at the intersection of urban planning, culture, and social innovation. As former Deputy Mayor of Stockholm, he played a key role in shaping the city where he was born and still lives. Lindstål is a board member of Placemaking Europe and founder of Glad Stad (Happy City). Today, he is engaged in city-making both locally and on a global scale, contributing to NEOM – the world’s largest urban development project.

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