My research interests can be found in the intersections between municipal spatial planning, landscapes for recreation, and competing understandings of landscape.
I am interested in how the tools, methods and systems in use for planning landscapes bring with them competing understandings, or ontologies, regarding what landscapes are. And how these methods and ontologies shape or interact with the functions, forms and structures of landscapes. Theoretically I draw on a socio-material approach and take inspiration from scholars within science and technology studies in order to understand the relations between the materiality of landscapes, their histories and layers of meaning and planning practices, discourses and methods.
I teach in the programme for landscape architecture, primarily on bachelors level.
During 2024 and 2025 I am working within the research project Land Paths, in work package 5 on multifunctional forest landscapes.
In autumn 2023 I presented my PhD thesis with the title Planning for an urban recreational landscape: tracing the geographies of outdoor recreation in the compact city. The thesis aims to offer an interpretation, and to deepen the understanding, of the interactions and tensions between outdoor recreation, compact city models and lingering planning legacies of past recreational planning.
International conferences:
AESOP annual congress, Chalmers Gothenburg 2018
Presentation title: TOD after work: tracing everyday recreational mobilities in planning policies and in the field
Nordic geographies meeting, NTNU Trondheim 2019
Presentation title: A troubled landscape planning – making space for recreation in the densifying city
Governing Urban Natures: Infrastructure, Citizenship and Municipal Ecologies, Aarhus University 2019
Presentation title: Urban natures and urban densities: studying tensions in contemporary recreational planning
Other engagements:
Participated in Movium and The Swedish Sports Confederations publication on Rörelserik Stadsutveckling, and associated seminar during Almedalen 2019.
I have a background in human geography and urban planning. In my maters thesis Bredäng in flux: reshaping modernist spaces through contemporary planning, I researched how contemporary ideals in planning are relating to modernist urban fabrics and landscapes.
I supervise both bachelor and master students within landscape architecture.
Engström, A. (2024). Scrutinising the Plan-Ability of Outdoor Recreation in the Swedish Compact City: Continuing and Discontinuing Modernist Planning Legacies. Planning Theory & Practice, 1-18.
Engström, A (2024) Fritidens landskap: en studie av landskapets roll och potential i fritidsförvaltningarnas strategiska arbete. Stad & Land, 197
Engström, A. (2023) Planning for an urban recreational landscape: tracing the geographies of outdoor recreation in the compact city. PhD thesis. Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet
Engström, A., & Qviström, M. (2022). Situating the silence of recreation in transit-oriented development. International Planning Studies, 27(4), 411-424.
Engström, A. (2019). Folkhemmets idrottsrörelse. Rörelserik stadsutveckling: Finns det plats för idrott och aktivitet när tätorten blir tätare?, Tankesmedjan Movium, Riksidrottsförbundet.