City Center Index – Implementation!

Swedish city centers are the heart and lungs of cities. It is largely in the city centers where trade, recreation, culture, and work thrive in a harmonious mix. The city center is not only a historical heritage but also serves as an important economic engine that creates jobs and opportunities for local entrepreneurs.

The city center engages many different stakeholders – residents, business owners, municipal administrations, associations, and visitors. As a democratic arena, the city center provides opportunities for participation and co-determination, which can strengthen community and trust among residents.

City centers manage and operate areas that require increased planning, sustainability, equality, and diversity.

Despite this, we currently have no or poor guidelines on how city center stakeholders should best approach developing their activities, even considering potential goal conflicts. This challenge has not yet been addressed in an evidence-based and satisfactory manner by any Swedish city and its stakeholders.

During the previous innovation project period 2023-24 – with project partners Svenska Stadskärnor (also referred to as SSK in this application), together with nine of their member cities, RISE, and CO Nordic frameworks and basic conditions were created for a relevant, functioning city center index with an accompanying digital tool aimed at providing city center actors, property owners, municipalities, and other stakeholders with a solid factual basis for how to analyze and drive more sustainable, equal, and diversity oriented urban development. For cities to fully benefit from this potential, we now need to take the next step.

The previous project laid the foundation for Sweden's first more comprehensive city center index, measuring several important aspects of sustainability and attractiveness, and it also provided us with a digital prototype tool in the form of Pattern. Now we are raising the bar, and the goal is to further improve the quality of the index and tool and establish an operational activity to support cities across the country in measuring, monitoring, comparing, and improving the sustainability, attractiveness, and functionality of their city centers.

To reach its fu l potential and become an integral part of city center development work, further efforts are required in several areas. These efforts involve ensuring that the index can be implemented and used in different cities for various purposes, is scientifica ly robust, user-friendly, and adaptable, while also establishing a sustainable governance and business model and building a strong and credible brand.

We also need to review how the tool itself (Pattern) should be further developed to meet future needs and expectations. By identifying and addressing the gaps in areas such as index construction, thematic areas, indicators, data access, and product design, we can create a long-term sustainable and useful tool that truly makes a difference for Sweden's cities. It is important to act now, directly after the results and experiences of the previous project, so that we can take the next step in supporting cities in their journey towards increased sustainability and attractiveness, and how we now create a model for long-term management, benefit, and use.

In the previous project, we put the city center index on the map, in a double sense, and now it is high time to take the next step in implementing this, putting it into practice, and refining and improving what is needed to make it even more valuable and useful.

To achieve the long-term goals and realize the unique benefits that the index with the accompanying tool has the potential to contribute to a l Swedish cities, the three parties – Svenska Stadskärnor (this time together with 20 old and new reference cities, RISE, and CO Nordic) – are once again coming together to ensure that this happens. At this stage, we wil also begin an exchange of knowledge and experience with similar initiatives that we have identified outside Sweden's borders, such as IDA's Vitality Index (USA), to further strengthen the quality and use of our unique Swedish city center index.