Risks to communities and whole societies such as climate change, urbanisation, demographic changes due to ageing populations and migration, demand sustainable solutions for societal development. Sustainable planning and building is key aspects of the development of both cities and rural areas but sustainable development in smaller towns and sparsely populated regions have not received as much attention from researchers as have large cities and metropolitan areas. This symposia will shed light on the latter by hosting a number of presentations about cultural, ecological, economic and social sustainable development in the North of Sweden. Sustainability in housing research encompass the conditions that promote the production and consumption of environmentally friendly housing, fair distribution and consumption of housing resources and assets, good social relations within the housing system and acceptable housing standard. Housing studies used to stress disparities, such as in the quality of housing, between sparsely and densely populated parts of the country, but former problems with countryside surplus housing stock has turned into deficits, something that poses a particular problem for the elderly, young and recent arrivals from non-EU countries. Such complexities are especially pronounced in the peripheries, traversed as it is by multiple contradictory centre/periphery relations: their ambivalent peripheral status vis-à-vis Sweden’s southern metropolises fundamentally affects the regional centres of the north. The preliminary findings of our research shows that the strong image of economic determinants and governmental constraints poses challenges for the development of socially sustainable housing planning and building. It is during the chain from policy to planning and further on to implementation and construction good intentions are not implemented, creating a leaky process.