“A New Area of Knowing:” Women Advance an Urban Renovation Agenda in Gothenburg

As educators, researchers, designers, civil servants, and also in other capacities, several women who graduated in architecture from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden in the 1960s and 1970s became key players in the struggles against large-scale urban renewal programs, promoting a more socially and environmentally driven approach to the city. Drawing from oral history research we carried out in 2021–2023, this article argues that the individual and collective achievements of these women point to a situated way of working that sheds fresh light on how the professions of the built environment adopted new roles, and how they straddled resistance to as well as reliance on welfare state provisioning, how they radically opened up the inclusion of residents and experts outside architecture in urban renewal processes. The article also discusses the role of the university in these women’s work. Telling their stories is important because, despite their significant contributions, many of these women have remained largely absent from historical accounts of the period.