Swedish municipalities are taking an active role in shaping and implementing sustainability-related policies in urban development by initiating and governing sustainability-profiled district developments on municipally owned land. To drive sustainable development and innovation in these districts and develop future policies, municipalities use land allocation agreements to set project-specific sustainability requirements on housing development projects that go beyond the current national building regulations. Developers play a key role in implementing these municipal sustainability requirements. The purpose of this paper is to explore housing developers’ perceived barriers to implementing municipal sustainability requirements in their projects, which ultimately constrain possibilities for municipalities to drive sustainable development. Findings are based on case studies of two sustainability-profiled district developments in different Swedish municipalities. Main barriers perceived by the developers could be categorized into: (1) increased costs when adapting to unforeseen changes that constrain project budgets and (2) conflicting interests and objectives between interdependent actors. These barriers are contextualised within the relationship between the developers and municipalities. Contributions are made to literature on developers’ roles and perspectives in sustainability-oriented urban development. We illustrate how conflicting short-term and long-term interests between developers and municipalities complicate and impede problem solving in housing development projects. This calls for more research on these actors’ interests, and how they align and conflict in these types of projects. Findings also illustrate how developers resolve issues through interactions with municipalities, indicating collaborative problem solving processes to investigate further.

瑞典市政当局通过在市政拥有的土地上启动和管理具有可持续性特征的地区开发，在制定和实施城市发展中与可持续性相关的政策方面发挥着积极作用。为了推动这些地区的可持续发展和创新并制定未来政策，市政当局使用土地分配协议为住房开发项目设定了超出当前国家建筑法规的特定项目可持续性要求。开发商在实施这些市政可持续性要求方面发挥着关键作用。本文的目的是探讨住房开发商认为在其项目中实施市政可持续性要求的障碍，这些障碍最终限制了市政当局推动可持续发展的可能性。调查结果基于对瑞典不同城市中两个具有可持续性特征的地区开发项目的案例研究。开发商认为的主要障碍可分为：(1) 在适应限制项目预算的不可预见的变化时增加的成本和 (2) 相互依赖的参与者之间的利益和目标冲突。这些障碍在开发商和市政当局之间的关系中有所体现。对有关开发商在以可持续发展为导向的城市发展中的角色和观点的文献做出了贡献。我们说明了开发商和市政当局之间的短期和长期利益冲突如何复杂化和阻碍住房开发项目中问题的解决。这需要对这些参与者的兴趣进行更多研究，以及它们在这些类型的项目中如何协调和冲突。调查结果还说明了开发商如何通过与市政当局的互动来解决问题，表明协作解决问题的过程需要进一步调查。