Since 1979, the Regional Development Task at IIASA is engaged in a case study of economic and demographic development, land-use and related problems in the region of southwestern Skane in Sweden. The case study is the third in a series of attempts made by the Regional Development Task to apply systems analytic methods to regional planning problems in regions with different economic structures, resource endowments and organizational settings. 

The research in the Swedish case study is done in collaboration with the Southwest Skane Municipal Board, as a part of their ongoing work in physical and public transport planning for the metropolitan region of Malmo, and its neighboring municipalities. The research is partly sponsored by the Swedish Council for Building Research. 

In the case study an integrated systems analytic package of models is used which has been developed within the Regional Development Task in cooperation with a group of Swedish researchers and planners. In that package, separate models have been developed for interregional economic and demographic problems, and for intraregional land-use problems. 

The current paper sets the Swedish case study in relation to the three other case studies in the Regional Development Task. It is a first attempt to make a comparison of the variants of regional systems analysis adopted by the Task under different demo-economic and institutional settings. It should be followed by more careful comparative judgements in the future.