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Everyday Life Perspectives in Planning
Ann-Cathrine Åquist
Centre for Housing and Urban Research
University of Örebro
S-701 82 Örebro, Sweden
phone: + 46 19 303096
fax: + 46 19 303484
e-mail: Ann-Cathrine.Aquist@sam.oru.sePaper presented at the conference Area-based initiatives in contemporary urban policy, Danish Building and Urban Research and European Urban Research Association, copenhagen 17-19 May 2001
This paper is a revised version of an article that I am currently working on. The article is planned for publication in a book on development within Nordic Human Geography.
The aim of this paper is to discuss the usefulness of a perspective of everyday life in urban planning. This is not a new idea. In the mid 20th century everyday life was often used as a point of departure in urban planning . However, this is no longer the case. The idea presented here is to use the methods of time-geography for making everyday life a concrete tool in planning. The main difference compared to how everyday life was used in the mid 20th century is that today any approach to urban planning should be sensitive to the different lifestyles lived by various social groups. Another difference is the emphasis today on the involvement of citizens in planning processes. Here, it is argued that an everyday life perspectiv can be made useful for making planning processes sensitive to various needs among various social groups, as well as being a tool for concretely involving citizens in planning.
What is the meaning of a perspective of everyday life? First, by perspective I mean something else than philosophy or theory. A perspective is a specific way of viewing the world, a specific point of departure. A perspective can be combined with various philosophies or theories. Second, the perspective of everyday life focuses on the individual human being and her or his daily routines and activities, in relation to the social and material surroundings, or, formulated differently, in relation to the time- and space-specific context. This perspectiv, as a point of departure, opens up a view of the world which is different from for example having a sector of society as a point of departure, e.g. the economy, or starting from a specific set of problems, like environmental problems. However, in philosophy and the social sciences there are also theories containing specific understandings of the concept of everyday life, such as the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre´s philosophical theory and the Danish ethnologist Thomas Højrup´s theory of life-modes.
Perspectives of everyday life are not new but it has been used more frequently in later years. One thread goes back to the German philosopher Edmund Husserl who founded phenomenology. His notion of the lifeworld can be understood as emerging from an everyday life perspective. Every individual is the center of its own lifeworld. It consists of our immediate experiences and actions in the world, in a pre-conceptual sense. Meaning is constituted in the lifeworld. Husserl used the concept of the lifeworld in his critique of science. He argued that science must recognize its subjective base in the lifeworld, where meaning is constituted in direct experiences (Skirbekk, Gilje 1987, Martel 1999). Anne Buttimer has elaborated the connections between phenomenology and human geography. In her article Grasping the Dynamism of Lifeworld (1976), she writes about the lifeworld as "the culturally defined spatiotemporal setting or horizon of everyday life" (p 277) and develops it in relation to the human geographical concepts of sense of place, social space, and time-space rhythms.
Another thread of the perspective of everyday life goes back to the women’s movement in the Western world in the 1960s and the 1970s. Women argued that their experiences and the realities of their lives were concealed in the public world. "The private is political" became a slogan. The theme was taken up by women’s studies which became a new field of research in the early 1970s. In the early days, the aim of women’s studies was often formulated as studying and revealing the reality and the experiences of women. The gender blind mainstream (social) science was criticized for obscuring the reality of women’s lives and women’s experiences. Some feminist researchers took their point of departure in an everyday life perspective in order to fulfil the aim of women’s studies. This theme has been especially elaborated by the Canadian sociologist Dorothy Smith.
In the following I will present two theories of everyday life, developed by Henri Lefebvre and Dorothy Smith. I have choosen these two theories partly because they are more elaborated than most others. Further, Lefebvre’s theory makes references to urban life and urban planning. Dorothy Smith’s theory can probably be useful in reserach on urban planning, even if Smith herself does not make such connections. Another reason for choosing Smith’s theory is simply that I find it the most interesting.
Two theories of everyday life: Dorothy Smith and Henri Lefebvre
In his book Critiques of Everyday Life Michael Gardiner (2000) makes a distinction between two types of theories pertaining to everyday life. He designates some theories as having a descriptive or analytic approach. Here everyday life is presented as a non-contradictory and essentially unprobematic component of social existence. As one example he mentions the phenomenologically inspired theory of the everyday developed by Alfred Schütz. The second type of theories forms a conter-tradition which not merely describes or analyzes lived experiences but try to elaborate perspectives of everyday life as critical knowledge. One of the main objectives is to problematize everyday life. In these theories everyday life is given a historical dimension, it is understood as being bound up with the dynamics of modernity. Examples of this type, mentioned by Gardiner, are the theories developed by Henri Lefebvre and Dorothy Smith.
Henri Lefebvre
Lefebvre considers everyday life as an essential, though overlooked and missunderstood, aspect of social existence (Lefebvre 1991). Everyday life should not be understood as merely something trivial and uninteresting, compared to what is usually more highly valued human activities such as politics, arts, science or production.
"... Lefebvre stresses that the everyday represents the site where we enter into a dialectical relationship with the external natural and social worlds in the most immediate and profound sense, and it is here where essential human desires, powers and potentialities are initially formulated, developed and realized concretely. It is through our mundane interactions with the material world that both subject and object are fully constituted and humanized through the medium of conscious human praxis." (Gardiner 2000 p 75-76)
In modern societies everyday life is closely bound up with the requirements and logics of the capitalist order. Examples of that are the distinctions between use-value and exchange-value, between working hours and leisure, the split between public and private selves, and the commodification of various aspects of everyday life. Everyday life has a routinized and commodified form, devoid of play and creativity. Out of people´s feelings of alienation and unsatisfied needs in everyday life, a possibility for critique and emancipation is formed.
Lefebvre identifies a connection between people’s everyday life and the organization of time and space in society. This is especially experienced in urban settings. The dynamics of the city have specific routines organized in time and space. People’s everyday life is characterized by continous adaptations and collisions with various structures of time and space. (Simonsen 1993) Further, Lefebvre argues that there are connections between urban planning and everyday life. Urban planning creates forms in which everyday life takes place. He argues that in every urban planning project there is a concealed program for everyday life. (Franzén, Sandstedt 1982)
The Everyday world as Problematic
In her book The Everyday World as Problematic (1987), Dorothy Smith aims at formulating a ground for feminist social scientific inquiry. Her thinking is inspired by phenomenology and by marxist theory. She argues for a beginning of inquiry outside and prior to textual discourses. A site for such a beginning is the everyday world. Smith argues that our world contains two layers. One layer is the world of ruling, which is primarily a world of texts and discourses. It is generalized and without a specific localization. Mainstream social science, mass media, as well as the state and parlamentary politics belong to this layer. The other layer contains the everyday world. This is a particular and local world, every person is the center of it’s own everyday world. It is a world of concrete social practices. The everyday world is a basis for the world of ruling. It is like a "service department" where we as human beings are reproduced. Smith gives an example of this divided world:
"When I went into the university or did my academic work at home, I entered a world organized textually (...) and organized to create a world of activity independent of the local and particular. ... But I went home or put down my books and papers to enter a different mode of being. I cleaned up after, fed, bedded down, played with, enjoyed, and got mad at two small children. I inhabited a local and particular world - the parks we would go to, the friends they had, my neighbors, ..." (ibid. p 6)
Smith argues that modes of understanding are created in the world of ruling, in the form of ideologies. These become tools for understanding both layers of the world. Smith’s project is to develop a way of creating knowledge from a different point of view, from the everyday world. Here, the world is known otherwise, it is directly felt, sensed and responded to, outside discourses. This has bearings on her feminist position. She argues that the world of ruling is a world dominated by men and men’s perspectives. Women’s work and activities are to a greater extent contained within the everyday world. In order to make women’s experiences and realities visible the point of departure must be the everyday world. The aim is not merely to develop social scientific inquiries from women’s perspective, but to address society and social relations from a standpoint outside the world of ruling. This is the standpoint where questions originate but answers are not necessarily to be found. In the world of ruling social and economic processes which constitute the conditions for the everyday world, are controlled.
An example of Nordic research pertaining to a perspective of everyday life
During the 1980s some Nordic women researchers formed a network called "Forskargruppen för det nya vardagslivet" (The research group for the new everyday life). The group had a feminist perspective and their research focused on urban planning in an everyday life perspective. Two anthologies were published: Det nye hverdagslivet (The New Everyday Life) (1984) and Veier til det nye hverdagslivet (Ways to the New Everyday Life) (1987). They defined everyday life in the following way:
"Everyday life consists of the basic actions that are repeated every day in order to maintain one’s own and others lives: cooking and eating, playing, caring for and raising children, helping and caring for sick people and others who cannot care for themselves, doing paid work, caring for and maintaining bodies, clothes, houses and outdoor areas." (Veier til det nye hverdagslivet, p 28)
The aim of the work in the research network was to develop new ways of organizing and integrating the most important parts of everyday life, which were considered to be: housing, care and work (Det nya vardagslivet, s 2). A model for such integration was found in the "middle level". The middle level is perceived as spatial and an organizational level between the households, the public sector and business, localized in the neighborhood. At the middle level, some tasks such as care for children and elderly can be performed, outside the household but within the neighborhood. This is supposed to make everyday life more integrated spatially and reduce the need for daily transport. Organizationally this tasks are now carried through in the households or by the public sector. In the institution called the middel level, work will be organized as community work, outside the formal labor maket. People living in the neighborhood will themselves organize and controll the work.
In the two anthologies from the Research group for the new everyday life, various issues connected to their everyday perspective are analyzed. There are articles about women’s work within the formal and the informal sector, the rationality of care, women’s experiences of being unemployed, women’s lives in relation to various urban structures, etc. The Norwegian sociologist Siri Nørve writes about identity and material structures of everyday life. She uses the concept of "material structure", developed by the Norwegian sociologist Dag Østerberg (Østerberg 1985). He makes a distinction between the physical and the material, where the material is understood as physical entities formed within social relations. It includes things (cars, furniture, clothes, etc) as well as spatial environments. For example, a certain city block is a physical entity designed and built within specific social relations - that makes it a material structure. Once such a material structure is established, it has certain influences on people living and moving in that environment. Nørve uses this understanding of material structure to argue that our identity is developed not only in relation to other human beings but also in relation to our material environment. Material things and material space is included and drawn upon in agency, and in identity formation. Since women usually are responsible for the home and the housework, these probably are important to women’s identity. By design and decoration of the home a woman tells the world something about herself. That also goes for the food that she cooks, the arrangements of a meal, and the level of orderliness in the house. Nørve uses this theory to discuss the fact that few people live in collective housing, even though living in a collective house makes it easy to organize a "middle level". She argues that this form of living reduces the possibility to express identity thorough the material structure of the home and housework.
The characteristics of everyday life
The concept of everyday life has several dimensions and it can be defined in various ways. Charlotte Bloch (1991) has defined it as the activities through which we recreate ourselves at the same time as we contribute to the recreation society (p 31). This definition has much in common with Anthony Giddens’ theory of structuration (Giddens 1979, 1984) In the theory of structuration social practices in everyday life is understood as constituting society. Society and social relations are reproduced and transformed through the practicies of everyday life. Bloch’s definition looks much like the definition used by the Research group for the new everyday life. Dorothy Smith adds some dimensions with her understanding of the concept; everyday life is lived in a particular and local world, as opposed to the generalized character of the world of ruling, which is organized in texts and discourses.
One dimension of everyday life, mentioned by several researchers, is that we take our everyday lives for granted. (That aspect makes a phenomenological approach useful.) Birte Bech-Jørgensen (1997) argues that our everyday activities to a large extent passes unnoticed - "upåagtede". Usually, we do not focus our attention toward everyday life, we carry through everyday activities without paying much attention. This does not mean that we are unconscious of what we do. We can easily transfer our attention toward everyday life, make it the focus of reflections and discussions. (ibid.)
Another characteristic of everyday life is its routinization. Usually, we do the same things every day. From Monday through Friday our daily program look much the same. Friday night often brings the start of another pattern, which dominate week-ends. The routines of week-ends are usully different from the week-days. A forming factor of everyday life is work, paid as well as unpaid work. The time-schedule of paid work often direct the daily program. Those who work unregular hours do not have the same two patterns for the daily programs as those who work "nine-to-five" Monday through Friday. Also unpaid work, like cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry, as well as the caring for children and others, form the program of everyday life.
The daily routines give everyday life a certain time-organization, though this varies with the different phases of life. Phases with different routines in everyday life can be the life of small children, children going to school, teenagers, young grown-ups living single lives, etc. Everyday life has also got a spatial organization (Bohm 1990). It is situated in space, in a specific place. Various activities are often localized to different places. Our workplaces for paid work is usually somewhere else than our homes. Children spend parts of their days in daycare centers or schools. The housing segregation of urban areas is another aspect of the spatial organization of everyday life. We live our daily lives in concrete spaces/places created in interaction of the physical and the social.
A distinction can be made between everyday life and its conditions (Bloch 1991). The conditions for everyday life can be the possibilities to get an education, a job, a place to live, health care, but it can also include cultural phenomena like social norms, ideas about "the good life", etc. Economic and political circumstances influences the conditions of everyday life. Even the organization in time and space of an individual’s surroundings is part of these conditions. Here, urban planning is important, since it influences the spatial organization of the city, the design and standards of housing, the relative localizations of various services in the city, the design of the transportation system, etc. For example, in a housing area planned as a neighborhood unit, there are other conditions for everyday life than in area of single family houses. The specific conditions for everyday life can enable certain projects, or activities, and be an obstacle for others.
Having presented theories of everyday life and the characteristics of everyday life, I shall continue with a presentation of time-geography, which can be used as a method for making studies in this field.
Time-geography as a method for studying the everyday
Time-geography, founded by Torsten Hägerstrand (1970, 1982a, 1982b, 1985), opens up a certain persepctive to the study of processes in time-space. The core of time-geography is the relationship of the individual to the surroundings. Emphasis is placed on the physical embeddedness of various processes. It is founded upon a physicalistic ontology, in which the world is regarded as a physical and concrete time-space context. Within this context, certain processes unfold in sequences of situations. In time-geography, processes consist of individuals’ paths and projects in concrete time-space contexts. The concept of project pertains to the activities of individuals, while the concept of path describes positions and movements of individuals in time-space.
Time-geography offers several advantages. For example, it gives a different view of the use of time compared to traditional time-use studies. Since paths and projects of individuals are followed in time-space contexts, time-geography illuminate how various activities are connected and where they take place, that is their relative location. Another advantage is that the activities of an individual can be studied without being categorized from the start, e.g. work, consumption, leisure. Nor is the study of activities restricted by its being categorized as belonging to a certain sector of society, e.g. the housesholds, the public sector, the business sector.
From the point of view of constraints in time-space, an environment (e.g. a region, a city, a neighborhood) can be studied in terms of possibilities and restrictions offered to an individual in that environment. One exemple could be the study of individuals’ actual access to various types of services, where not only the supply is analyzed but also to what extent various services are within reach for individuals. One method for collecting empirical data often used in time-geographic studies is time-diaries, describing people’s daily programs. Sometimes even time-diaries constructed by the researcher is used. Solveig Mårtensson (1979) used this method in her thesis On the Formation of Biographies in Space-Time Environments. She constructed several daily programs which were considered to be rather common. The constructed daily programs were used to analyse whether it was possible or not to carry them through in three actual municipalities. This is a way to test actual surroundings, to find out to what extent a specific time-space allows for certain daily programs to be carried through. However, it is more commmon in time-geogaphic studies that actual time-diaries are used, written down by people taking part in the the study. (An example of that is presented below.)
The physicalist ontology in which time-geography is based gives it certain advantages but also some shortcommings. A way of augmenting the usefulness of time-geography is to relate it to social relationships by way of the concept of social institution (Åquist 1992). The concept is here understood in the following way: a social institution is a socially determined sphere for certain activities, e.g. the family, the school, the church. An institution contains models for activities, or blueprints for projects. It also includes norms and rules for agency and conduct, based on various types of rationality. Further, it provides models or blueprints for roles. When an individual becomes a member of an institution, he or she is also assigned a role. Along with the role comes certain activities, or projects, and specific ruels for agency and conduct. The content of a role often varies with age and sex. This understanding of social institution can augment the usefulness of time-geography by shedding light on the origin and characteristics of projects, as well as some circumstances governing the use of time. Most projects originate in an institutional context. This context also defines the character of the project. Projects are formed by the rules for agency and conduct prevailing within a social institution. The blueprints for roles of an institution bring about a distribution of projects among individuals. In this respect the institution also plays a part as one of the circumstances directing the use of time. Further, the rules of agency and conduct attached to an institution or to a role influence the use of time.
Another augmentation of the usefulness of time-geography has been the develoment of the use of time-diaries carried through by geographers at the university of Gothenburg (Ellegård, Nordell, Westermark 1999). Time-diaries is a method for collecting empirical data which has been used for a long time within time-geography. In principle, time-diaries have been created by individuals taking part in studies, who have been asked to write down their actual activities during one or more days. This gives a record of sequences of activities, their duration and maybe also where they take place. One example of the development of this method has been Åsa Westermark’s use of "reflecting diaries" in her study of the consequences of development aid projects for women in Bogotá, Colombia. As a supplement to traditional time-diaries, where daily activities are merely recorded, women taking part in Westermark’s study were asked to write down their reflections about the various activities in which they tooke part. That could be motives, feelings, needs. That opened up an inside perspective of the parttaking women in the study, where they could bring about their experiences.
In the following I will turn to a more specific discussion of everyday life perspectives in relation to urban planning.
Urban Planning in the Perspective of Everyday Life
The idea of connecting planning issues to perspectives of everyday life is not new. It could be argued that much of the debates and planning of the Swedish welfare state in the middle of the 20th century was based in a thinking related to everyday life. Also urban planning of that period was related to the everyday.
The Swedish context - a discourse on everyday life
In the 1940s and the 1950s, there was a political discourse on everyday life in Sweden, or at least a discourse which focused on parts of everyday life, in a rather concrete way. It probably goes back to the political discussions of the 1920s and 1930s. A main problem at the time was the low birth rates. In the Social Democratic Party this became interpreted as caused by poverty. Alva and Gunnar Myrdal argued in their influential book Kris i befolkningsfrågan (The Crisis of the Population Issue) (1934) for this explanation. Poverty, high rates of unemployment, bad housing conditions and a severe housing shortage made it impossible for people to get married and have children. Here is a focus on the conditions of the everyday life of "ordinary" people. These conditions are understood as the explanation of the problem. The Social Democratic Party won the parliamentary election in 1932 and remained in the government untill 1976. During this period the Swedish welfare state was built. The construction of housing and urban planning became important tools in the building of the welfare state.
Within urban planning in the 1950s there was a thinking informed by an everyday life perspective. That comes through in my analysis of the master plan of the Swedish city of Örebro from 1955 (Åquist, forthcoming). The analysis is inspired by a statement of the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre, saying that in every urban plan there is a concealed program for everyday life (Franzén, Sandstedt 1982). The master plan of Örebro from 1955 concerns several issues that shape the conditions for the everyday life of the population. Here, plans are made for the spatial organization of the city: transportation, localization of work-places, housing, varoius types of services like schools, day care centers, post-offices, sports grounds, churches.
Reading between the lines of the master plan, you can find a representation of everyday life. That is the everyday life of a family with a bread-winning father, a home-making mother and children of school age. They live in a multi-family house in a housing area which has been planned as a neighborhood unit. The father goes to work, in the city center or in the adjacent industrial area, by bike or by bus. He probably comes home for lunch in the middle of the day. The mother can do most of her errands, on foot, in the small service center of the neighborhood. For some of her errands she needs to go to the city center, then the bus is a convenient mode of transportation. The children can walk to the nearby school, and the younger children stay at home with their mother. If the family has a car they use it to go out of town on weekends.
It is hardly surprising that a plan from 1955 is based on this image of people’s everyday life. The family consisting of a bread-winning father, a home-making mother, and children was an ideal for many people, men and women, at the time. In Sweden, the 1940s and 1950s is sometimes labelled "the era of the housewife". In that period a majority of the married women were full-time housewives. Earlier, as well as later, married women have to a larger extent worked outside the home. (Hirdman 1983, Åquist 1987) However, the question of how well this type of everyday life suited all people might very well be raised.
During "the era of the housewife" there was a discourse about the housewife’s work and her situation in general. There were radio programs in Sweden in the 1950s on this theme. Various magazines, not only women’s magazines, published articles about the work of the housewife. The weekly magazine of the co-operative movement, "Vi" (We), made a survey among its readers in 1949 about the contents of the magazine (Åquist 1987). In the first issue of "Vi" in 1950 the result of the surveys is presented. The most common wish among the readers about the content of the magazine was more information and advice for housewives. "Vi" started a supplement, which was published once a month, called "Vi husmödrar" (We housewives). Every issue had a specific theme, like cleaning, health, kitchen tools, suggested plans for the organization of the work of the housewife, etc.
In 1944 "Hemmens forskningsinstitut", a research institute for the home, was founded in Sweden. Initiators were various women’s organisations together with some women working with one of several public investigation on housing and the population issue (Lövgren 1994). The aim of the institute was to conduct research of the work of the housewife. Both working methods and tools for the work were studied. One result of the research was regulations for the design of kitchens (height of benches, light conditions, how various parts of a kitchens should be placed in relation to other parts, etc). In 1957 the institute was taken over by the state and re-organized. The name was changed into "Statens institut för konsumentfrågor" (The state institute for consumer’s issues). Maybe that was symbolic - housework was transformed into consumption, at the level of discouse.
This focusing on the work of the housewife can be interpreted as a perspective of everyday life. It has to do with the individual and her daily activities in relation to a time- and space-specific context. Focusing on the family as a unit of consumption is different. That starts from an economic perspective. When master plan of Örebro from the 1950s is compared to the structure plans made by the municiaplity today it becomes clear that the everyday life perspective of the 1950s is no longer used.
Putting everyday life in order
The Swedish historian Yvonne Hirdman (1989) has made inquiries into the period when the welfare state was founded, from the 1920s through the 1950s. She argues that the politicians focused on everyday life in the home and the private sphere, rather than on the conditions of working life. In the striving for "putting everyday life in order" there was an understanding of how welfare must be seen in the context of people’s everyday life. Welfare has to do with "the good life". But who decides what is "good"? Who decides what good housing is like, good and healthy food, good childcare? Hirdman argues that politicians, supported by scientific experts, made the value judgements about what was considered as good. This was made without inquiries into the values of the population. In fact, these values were not considered to be values, they were thought of as facts produced by social science and technology. Social engineering paved to road to the good society. Hirdman argues that in their eagerness to create a welfare society, politicians and experts intruded upon people’s private sphere.
Changes in discourses
Since the 1950s and the 1960s the discourses in urban planning as well as in the welfare state as a whole has changed. Everyday life and its organization is no longer in focus. One illustration to this change is part of the argumentation behind the tax reform in the early 1990s. The Ministery of Finance made an investigation about how the supply of labor power could be increased in the country. It was found out that a tax refrom would encourage women in part time employment to take on full time employment - about half of all employed women were in part-time positions. But no consideration was taken to the fact that most of the part-time employed women at that time had small children and used more time in unpaid work than in paid work. So there were other restrictions for these women for taking on full time employment that taxes, and an awareness of the actual organization of everyday life would have indicated that.
Within urban planning, in later years, it is difficult to discern a specific perspective from which various issues are seen. Though compared to the 1950s and the 1960s new issues have emerged. One of the new and important issues is environmental problems. It is sometimes argued that urban planning or land use planning is an appropriate way of working toward sustainable development (e.g. Breheny 1992a). There is an international debate about urban form and sustainability, where some researchers argue that the environmentally friendly city is a compact city whereas others argue the opposite (Breheny 1992b, Jenks, Burton, Williams 1996, Åquist 2001). Another important issue in urban planning is democracy and the involvement of citizens in the planning process. This was debated already in the 1970s and written into the Swedish planning legislation in 1987. It is still an issue since it has been difficult to find appropriate forms for the involvement of citizens in planning processes. In a recent study Khakee (2000) has found that planners and politicians in principle support the idea of citizen’s involvement in planning but in practice find it inefficient and difficult to organize.
I would like to argue for an approach to urban planning, based in a perspective of everyday life, which is different from what was practiced in the middle of the 20th century. One important issue, which has changed since then, is the idea of the involvement of citizens in urban planning. Daily programs, a method developed in time-geography, could be used for this purpose.
An example of how the perspective of everyday life ca be used
Daily programs as a methodological tool for planning can have various forms. They can be actual daily programs describing the sequences of an individual’s actual activities during one or more days. Actual programs illustrate the concrete organization of daily life. They are formed as a compromise between on the one hand our wishes and priorities, on the other hand by various demands, for example from working life and responsibilities for the family and the home. Also the conditions for everyday life created by the surroundings in which it is lived influences the compromise of an actual daily program. It is a result of various wishes, demands, obstacles and possibilities. Torsten Hägerstrand, who originally founded time-geography, argues that for some purposes actual daily programs are not feasible because they have this character of being compromises (Hägerstrand 1982a). For the purpose of studying concrete surroundings (e.g. a city, a neighborhood) as conditions for the organization of everyday life a more feasible method is to use constructed daily programs. With constructed programs the obstacles and possibilities in a concrete surrounding for one or several types of daily programs can be studied. As mentioned above, Solveig Mårtensson (1979) used constructed daily programs in her study of living conditions in three Swedish municipalities. She starts from certain assumptions, for example that all daily programs contain paid work and that the workplace is located in the centre of the municipality. She then compares the possibilities to carry through certain constructed daily programs assuming various means of transport and various locations of the home. The five constructed programs used are the following:
Home - workplace - home
Home - workplace - grocery - home
Home - workplace - surgery - home
Home - workplace - library - home
Home - workplace - home - social participation - home.
A similar procedure can be used to study the obstacles and possibilities in a certain neighborhood or a part of a city as a surrounding for various everyday life. Though, it requires a different spatial scale and more detailed daily programs. An example of what such an actual daily program can look like is the following, it comes from Tora Friberg’s study of women’s everyday life (1990 p 268).
The time-diary of Mia:
5.30 gets up, makes coffe
5.30-6.00 showers
6.00-6.30 reads the newspaper, has breakfast
6.30-7.00 makes breakfast for the children, wakes the children up
7.00-7.30 the children are having breakfast
7.30-7.45 helps the children to wash and dress
7.45-7.50 Sandra goes to school
7.50-8.10 washes up, dresses Erika
8.10-8.15 bikes to Erika’s day care center
8.15-8.26 stays at the day care center
8.26-8.32 bikes to work (arrives to late!)
8.32-15.00 works
15.05-15.10 bikes to the day care center
15.10-15.20 talkes to the staff, collects Erika
15.20-15.25 bikes to the after-school center
15.45-15.50 bikes home
15.50-16.15 plays with Erika, looks at the mail, makes the beds
16.15-16.35 talks to Sandra, plays with Erika
16.40-17.15 vacuumcleans
17.15-17.50 makes dinner, fills the washing machine
17.50-18.20 having dinner, washes up
18.20-18.50 helps Sandra with her home-work
18.50-19.30 takes out clothes for the next day, puts Sandra to bed
19.30-20.30 hangs the laundry, tidies the house, irons
20.30-20.45 has coffee with Per
20.45-23.00 watches TV, does crossword
23.00- goes to bed
An everyday life organized like this needs short distances between the home, work-place, day care center, school and after-school center.
An analysis of a neighborhood, useing actual or constructed daily programs, can have several purposes. It can be used for an inquiry into how well a certain neighborhood functions for various daily programs - the assumption being that different social groups have different daily programs and demand different functions in the surrounding. The question may for example be if a certain neighborhood functions well for elderly people. Or does it functions well for families with small children? For teenagers? If not - what can be changed in the surroundings? Another purpose may be to compare qualities in different neighborhoods with the help of daily programs from several persons with different everyday lives. The method can also be used in the process of renewal of a neighborhood.
So far actual and constructed daily program have been discussed. A shortcomming of the method of actual daily programs is that it says nothing about what the person, who’s daily activities are recorded, think about it - whether it corresponds to that person’s idea of a good life or not. The use of reflecting time-diaries, as used by Åsa Westermark (Ellegård et.al. 1999) can help. Another way of including people’s assessment of their everyday life and its conditions is to use ideal daily programs. People taking part in studies or in planning projects can be asked to write down what they would like their daily programs to be like. Thereby wishes and needs of citizens can be included in a plannig process at an early stage. Thinking in terms of actual and ideal daily programs may help people to concretize their whises. This can be a method for involving of citizens in plannig processes. If the involved citizens belong to various social groups, their wishes and needs can be made known to planners and politicians.
Finally, I will return to Dorothy Smith’s theory and its distinction between the everyday world and the world of ruling. The world of ruling is the sphere where power over decision-making and resources are exercised, its is a sphere mediated in texts and discourses, which makes it different from the everyday world. Another difference is the universal character of the world of ruling. The everyday world is particular and concretely localized. Urban planning can be seen from the point of view of Smith’s theory. Urban planning is a part of the world of ruling. Its content is mediated in texts and discourses. Within that world decisions are taken which have consequences for peoples’ everyday life since planning concerns the conditions of everyday life. If planners involve citizens, with their actual and ideal daily programs, in the planning process a connection between the everyday world and the world of ruling can be made. The everyday world may be involved in the formation of its conditions.
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