IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute

Digital Urban Planning Process Boosts Sustainability, Efficiency and Equality

Region Gotland has implemented a digital urban planning process to support case management, digital mailboxes and other aspects of administration. This is contributing to an open, gender-equal and sustainable planning and construction process.

Region Gotland, like many Swedish municipalities and regions, faces the challenge of digitalising its urban planning process. The DiSa project, Digital Urban Planning, is a unique municipal digitalisation project that has received funding to create a seamless digital urban planning process to support more sustainable, efficient and transparent planning and administration.

Dialogue with users and customers

The DiSa project has digitalised procedures and information. The work has been conducted by a project group that has investigated how digital dialogue with users and customers on the island of Gotland can be improved. By talking to businesses, the housing sector, civil society, residents and visitors, the project group aimed to find out what customers and users think is important in improving the level of service, accessibility and participation in planning and development.

Digitalising case management and information helps cut processing times, increase accessibility and boost the transparency of plans, projects and decisions. The idea is to make it easier for people to find planning documents, make an application using e-services and track their applications.

Potential savings of SEK 14.5 million a year

Once digitalisation is complete and all services have been fully implemented, the benefit calculation shows that the DiSa project will save the municipality of Gotland SEK 14.5 million a year. The total budget for the entire project period is SEK 26 million, which means the investment will pay for itself within two years. In addition, the project should lead to several major quality improvements for users of the urban planning process, both internally and externally, as well as greater legal certainty and a strengthening of democracy.

The project is financed by the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth and the municipality of Gotland via the EU regional development fund.

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