Umeå: Tomtebo strand

Team VEX explored opportunities for active participation in urban development.

Conditions: 3 kilometers from central Umeå, right next to the lake Nydalasjön and Universitetsstaden, Tomtebo strand is planned. The nearby Nydalasjön is already a popular recreational area and provides good conditions for interacting with the surrounding city. The ambition is for Umeå municipality to develop Tomtebo strand into an urban district that meets the challenges of the future. The design will contribute to social sustainability, but the development will take place in several stages over a long period of time.

Challenge: There are outdoor areas with swimming and skiing tracks and Umeå’s largest workplace area. How can design and small-scale tests in the present be used as tools to identify relevant actors? How to co-create a neighborhood that is socially sustainable over time? The team will explore methods to investigate how it can become part of a long-term strategy for equal access to quality living environments.

Image: White arkitekter. 2024. Visualization of Tomtebo strand, Umeå.

Survey, analysis and initial proposals

Through their work, Team VEX sought to add another layer to the conversation about the future city. The project was based on the premise that active participation and co-creation arise from room for action, and on the idea that social, economic and environmental sustainability begin with enabling people to take root, assume responsibility and shape their place.

The team’s work was guided by a set of questions concerning the municipality’s role in urban development: How can land be used to strengthen users’ active participation in city-making? How can collective structures interact with individual initiatives and ambitions? And how can new models be tested and evaluated in practice? They examined the relationship between city and nature and identified the spaces in between as valuable resources for connecting the urban fabric while enabling the preservation of natural areas.

The first phase of the project resulted in a proposal to develop prototypes in three stages, from exploring possible land allocation models and tenure forms to conducting site-specific tests. One part of the proposal was the idea of “Folktomten” (the People’s Plot), a way of allocating a share of development rights within a planning area to local individual actors. The aim was to increase user influence and contribute to making construction more locally grounded and adaptable over time. The first phase of the work and its proposal were summarised in a report, available further down the page.

*Photo: Team VEX. 2025.* Dialogue with the municipality, academia and the building industry.

*Photo: Team VEX. 2026.* "Grundklumpen" at Umeå School of Architecture.

Workshop at Umeå School of Architecture.

Prototype: “Folktomten” and “Grundklumpen”

The team received continued funding to further develop their ideas during 2025 and test them as prototypes for a different approach to urban development. Over the course of the year, they refined their proposals through a series of dialogues and workshops with municipal planners, academia and industry professionals. This resulted in a two-part prototype: “Folktomten”,1 a manual exploring how municipalities can distribute land to smaller, local actors; and “Grundklumpen”, a self-sufficient unit that acts as a catalyst for local construction. It also served as a point of departure for a broader discussion on what services society needs to provide and whether existing standards can be reconsidered.

Using the “Folktomten” concept and “Grundklumpen” as a basis for discussion, the team opened up conversations about how land distribution is crucial in shaping the city we create, and how society might rethink urban planning in order to increase residents’ influence and enable a more locally rooted and dynamically evolving urban environment. The team’s full work is presented in the report Omland: Folktomten – a new tool for future urban development.