Mind the City; Decoding Spatial Narratives and Reimagining Nordstan for People

Abstract

In contemporary urban environments, people navigate spaces shaped by strong commercial, infrastructural, and symbolic cues that guide their perception and movement, often without conscious awareness. Nordstan, Gothenburg’s central urban node, is one such environment: a complex hybrid of commercial, transit, public, and office space. Over time, its development has increasingly prioritised foregrounding commercial visibility and infrastructural efficiency, while user comfort, publicness, and clear pedestrian movement are backgrounded. With the upcoming Västlänken development expected to significantly increase pedestrian traffic, rethinking Nordstan becomes increasingly important. This thesis critically analyses Nordstan as a commercial-transit hybrid space through Henri Lefebvre’s conceptualisation of the production of space. Lefebvre’s spatial triad of perceived, conceived, and lived dimensions of the built environment, is used to guide the study in examining Nordstan’s social production beyond the commercialisation of its public space, while questioning user prioritisation. Design scenarios are used as part of the analysis to situate the tensions of lived space-specific to users, commuters, public, shoppers, to finally examine contradictions and constraints in the spatial dimension. Using archival and morphological studies, alongside predominantly qualitative methods including serial vision, photo-elicitation, node & centrality mapping, user questionnaire—the research investigates how, spatial configurations, semiotic cues and social power structures shape everyday experiences of movement, perception, and behaviour of public users. Despite knowing Nordstan’s centrality and role as a major pedestrain transit node, the findings indicate that ongoing development has been driven largely by profitability and infrastructural efficiency. These priorities have produced spatial conditions that encourage rushed movement, reduce legibility, and weaken the site’s sense of publicness within the lived space dimension. Findings from the design scenarios exposes tensions between social use and commuter movement and give us insights on spatial user needs. This thesis argues for a more human-centred approach to future infrastructural development in Nordstan, grounded in critical spatial thinking and informed by interdisciplinary modes of inquiry. Drawing on the findings from the critical spatial analyses and the design scenarios, while foregrounding the narratives of lived space, the study exposes the necessity of qualitative approaches in addressing the complexities of urban development and advocates to rethink design strategies prioritising user’s spatial experience