Today, parts of the city development take place in peri-urban areas. One node for the population concentration in this form of outer urbanisation is the locality (urban area). The Swedish peri-urban locality has for a long time experienced population growth, firstly in times of urbanisation, through periods of counterurbanisation and lately in combination with a wave of reurbanisation. From the 1990s and onwards the population development in these peri-urban localities has become more and more skew. In certain aspects the recent differentiation of these peri-urban areas is connected to the size of the neighboring city, but also with respect to processes of transformation within the city regional context in which some localities tend to grow continuously over time (both during periods of counterurbanisation and reurbanisation), while others starts to shrink or suddenly starts to grow very fast. One way to understand the regional differentiation of the population development in peri-urban localities can be achieved through an anayse of the planning of cities and circumstances that changes the way the planning is carried out in different peri-urban settings.

In this presentation I will pay attention to the planning process associated with the development of a recently fast-growing peri-urban locality, located close to one of the most fast-growing cities in Sweden between 1990-2005, the city of Örebro. I will try to analyse and discuss both the motives and acting of the actors involved in the planning process and its socio-economic outcome for the city region as a whole.