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Jämlikhetens syntax

You cannot reach equality by focusing on inequality. So what does a pattern that supports equality actually look like, in space and in language?

The Syntax of Equality

Dark blue square sign with a white toilet pictogram and the letters WC set vertically beside it.
A sign from the family Kalmar municipality had produced during the project. The room described in words and function, no person depicted. The move went from research to the wall.
Funder
VINNOVA
Period
2021 – 2025
PI
Per-Olof Hedvall (Lund University, Certec)
Coordinator
Lund University (LTH, Department of Design Sciences)
Funding
Funded by VINNOVA: 4,998,000 SEK, under the call Social Sustainability in the Physical Environment.

What this project is asking

The Syntax of Equality started from a methodological objection. You cannot reach an equality goal by focusing on the inequality problem, any more than the early accessibility field reached good environments by cataloguing barriers. Good solutions are harder to notice and describe than bad ones. Deficit thinking acts as a counter-force: it keeps the eye on what is wrong and hides what might actually support equality.

So we asked what a positive description would look like. The term "syntax" points at a set of patterns for how meaning-making elements, in physical space and in language, can be composed so that a person can use, be, and interact in an environment without being stigmatised. A worked example from the project: a pathway whose main route is paved with large smooth tiles and whose edges are cobblestone serves a parent with a pram, a traveller with wheeled luggage, a wheelchair user, and, through the change in material, a person reading the route with a white cane, all on the same route. Against it, an entrance solved with a step plus a separate ramp sorts customers into two groups and fails to express equality.

The project was transdisciplinary by design: researchers in design, architecture and linguistics at Lund and Gothenburg, working with four municipalities of different sizes and regions. The starting point was that the way we communicate a society shapes the society we build, and that a syntax, an ordering of meaning-bearing elements, can be read as defining and determining inclusion and equality.

Method

A four-year project built around a "heartbeat" of workshops, four per year, hosted in turn by the participating municipalities, each anchored in real city-development cases at different stages from early land use to construction.

Three work packages mapped to three aims: WP1 identified patterns through workshops, site visits, go-alongs, video walks, photos and field notes; WP2 developed and tested the patterns iteratively in the municipalities' live cases; WP3 collated and published The Syntax of Equality in an open format and in scientific articles.

Guiding frameworks: social semiotics and semiotic approaches to architecture, the notion of affordance, a situated and statement-based reading of spatial syntax, a convergent mixed-methods design, and the Design Justice Network's ethical questions of who participated, who benefited, and who was harmed.

Partners

  • Lund University (LTH, Department of Design Sciences)
  • University of Gothenburg (Department of Swedish)
  • City of Gothenburg
  • Kalmar Municipality
  • Lund Municipality
  • Östersund Municipality

Co-investigators

  • Stina Ericsson (University of Gothenburg, sociolinguistics and interaction)
  • Gunnar Sandin (Lund University, architecture, semiotics and material agency)
  • Ida Sandström (Lund University, public space and urbanism)
  • Lilian Müller (Lund Municipality, accessibility; PhD student at Certec)
  • Angelina Aravena Leiva (Kalmar Municipality, sustainability strategist)
  • Emil Erdtman (Lund University, Certec)

Outputs

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