Swedish Town Centre Index- A prototype of a tool for measuring and monitoring sustainable development in town centres in Sweden

During the last decades, many town centres in Sweden have met various challenges relating to everything from external shopping centers, to online shopping and, lately, the Covid-19 pandemic. In this context, it becomes important for actors working with town center development to have access to useful and trustworthy sources of knowledge to be able to adapt to changes in their environment. The aim of this report is to explore the possibility of creating a scientifically based and practically useful tool for measuring and monitoring sustainable development in town centres in Sweden- a Swedish Town Centre Index. The first part of the report discusses the needs of such a tool in a Swedish context. The second part presents a prototype of such a tool, consisting of several dimensions or “values”, namely liveliness, economic vitality, comfort, safety, security and accessibility, for each of which several variables and data collection methods are proposed. However, it is argued that, for such a tool to become reality, the variables and data collection methods need further refinement. Also, the tool needs to be integrated into a digital dashboard and a long-term business models needs to be developed.