How Nostalgia Is Used to Shape the Image of the Suburb
In a new artistic doctoral thesis at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, designer Maryam Fanni examines how 1950s nostalgia has become a tool in the urban development of various Stockholm suburbs. Through design, marketing, and storytelling, a backward-looking image of Swedishness is created—one that simultaneously risks obscuring other experiences.
In the early 2010s, 1950s nostalgia was prominent in Swedish popular culture, seen in the housewife trend, fashion bloggers such as Elsa Billgren, and real estate listings featuring Olle Eksell’s iconic “Ögonkakao” poster. The same aesthetic also appeared in urban redevelopment projects. In place marketing for several Stockholm suburbs, nostalgic narratives surfaced both implicitly—through stock photos of people styled in retro fashion—and more explicitly.
– One example of the latter could be found in my hometown, Hökarängen, where the municipal housing company launched an initiative to ‘enhance the 1950s feel.’ Since then, I’ve been interested in exploring the mechanisms of nostalgia—particularly the nostalgia surrounding the 1950s. Why does that decade return as an ideal, both aesthetically and in narratives about comfort and safety? says Maryam Fanni, recently awarded her PhD at HDK-Valand.
Several of the thesis’s case studies show how 1950s aesthetics recur in marketing and design concepts, including signage guidelines and store design programs inspired by the era. Local newspapers often reinforce these narratives with headlines about the suburb’s “1950s transformation.”
– Over time, the idea of a place’s ‘1950s identity’—along with associated notions like ‘sustainability’ and ‘coziness’—becomes normalized. My thesis demonstrates that nostalgia, as a design concept, serves as an effective vessel for ideologically charged ideas and values. The nostalgic ‘1950s concept’ legitimizes a discourse focused on raising a neighborhood’s status and washing away the suburb’s previous reputation, says Fanni.
Nostalgia Is Effective—But Selective
Swedish 1950s nostalgia is a welfare-state nostalgia, tied to the golden age of the folkhemmet (the “people’s home”). Suburbs linked to the 1950s are portrayed as genuine and safe, while others are assigned a very different social status.
– Nostalgia offers an image of something lost that we should restore, but that image is selective. It forgets experiences of migration and pluralism, instead reproducing a narrow notion of Swedishness and belonging. In this way, nostalgic narratives can reinforce distinctions between suburbs presented as closer to an imagined ‘authentic’ Swedishness, and those that are stigmatized, racialized, and described as existing outside both that imagined identity and ideas of progress, says Fanni.
An Era Overflowing with Nostalgia
In her thesis, Fanni combines traditional discourse analysis with artistic interventions consisting of locally rooted projects and experiments. These include collage posters made from newspaper clippings showing how nostalgic discourse is projected onto public space in southern Stockholm suburbs, a reactivation of a community-run archive, and documentation of a guided walk through Hökarängen.
Through her research, she hopes to encourage urban planners, designers, and policymakers to reflect on the narratives that shape our cities—and to illuminate how public imagination is influenced by everyday environments and stories.
– We live in a time overflowing with restorative nostalgias—in politics, culture, and daily life. I hope my research can serve as a tool for scrutinizing even the less obvious varieties, says Maryam Fanni.
