Building social capital with Living Lab

Important results from the project

Living Lab creates an environment in socially excluded residential areas characterized by security and trust between residents and the institutions of society and provides a long-term stable basis for people´s lives and development. The goal is to prevent violence and crime and reduce municipal support and financial risks in property investments. The solution is a deployable model for empowerment and the creation of social capital. Municipalities and real estate companies should be able to use health factors as tools to increase society´s resilience to crime in various forms.

Expected long term effects

In concrete terms, Living Lab means that municipalities and real estate companies will have a platform, a set of work areas and knowledge to help them with the practical task of creating calm in an area and mastering all necessary steps to: (1) invent and analyze the situation, (2) creating relationships in the right way, (3) organizing civil society in the right way in activities, and (4) training and developing their own organization and (5) supporting residents getting organized. Expected impact: reduced number of socially excluded areas and residents improved living chances.

Approach and implementation

Ideas in the Living Lab project have grown for a long time, especially in Hovsjö, Södertälje. This means that the model already has forms of implementation in its parts, but it has not yet been formalized and systematized as a whole. The main task of the project is to translate practical experience and tacit knowledge into a model a system of economically and organizationally reasonable and distinguishable parts. The model has been formed in step 1 and now needs to be refined and communicated more clearly, in order to proceed to development in a real context.