Organising Everyday Planning Practice for Reduced Residential Segregation: Understanding the Strategic-Operational Gap from the Inside

This paper discusses how everyday practices within a municipal organisation contribute to the gap between strategic and operational spatial planning. We use reduced residential segregation as an example of across-sectoral issue which is known to be difficult to operationalise within planning practice. Through an ethnographic case study in Sweden, we provide an insider perspective on the hybrid organisational landscape, focusing on three groups of practitioners. Our results show how these practitioners navigate between parallel governance ideas and roles, and identify an organisational deadlock in which no one works proactively to reduce residential segregation through spatial planning.