NAISS
SUPR
NAISS Projects
SUPR
Digitizing aerial photographs of Stockholm
Dnr:

NAISS 2025/22-1336

Type:

NAISS Small Compute

Principal Investigator:

Jonatan Andersson

Affiliation:

Uppsala universitet

Start Date:

2025-10-03

End Date:

2026-10-01

Primary Classification:

50201: Economics

Webpage:

Allocation

Abstract

Sweden underwent rapid urbanization during the mid-20th century. Yet, inner-city housing standards remained low, and overcrowding was a widespread problem. In addition, underdeveloped infrastructure made commuting slow and costly, thereby constraining urban growth. To address these challenges, the 1960s brought extensive reforms, notably the large-scale housing investment of the Million Programme alongside major expansions of the metro and road networks. This project examines how these transformations reshaped Stockholm’s urban landscape during the 1960s and 1970s. We digitize aerial photographs from 1960s and 1970s to track changes in land use. In a future project, we want to merge the novel geospatial data with already collected individual-level population data. This allows us to study, for example, shifts in density gradients driven by decentralization, the socioeconomic consequences of inner-city ‘slum clearances’, health effects of increased motor traffic versus the expansion of urban green spaces, the metro system, and inner-city deindustrialization. Taken together, these results will contribute to our understanding of how the planned modern city’s land use patterns impacted households and individuals.