About the project

A sustainable future for Norway relies on our ability to revitalize municipal planning. Municipal plans display efforts to ensure sustainability and architectural qualities, but despite the extensive legal frameworks, manuals and guidelines that support it, public planning often falls short when confronted with complex transformation and densification processes. Many conflicting interests have to be negotiated, and urban and rural development relies on collaboration between public actors, private developers and the general public. Consequently, municipal plans frequently fail to align and exploit synergies between actors, interests, and sectors or sustain quality within urban development processes. Therefore, the aim of developing more sustainable urban environments in Norway depends on our ability to enhance planning methods and improve planning tools. The research project on Norwegian Urbanism at AHO’s Institute of Urbanism and Landscape studies urban development through the optics of urban form, based on a selection of case studies. The project specifically investigates how architectural and spatial approaches can constitute a common platform for different interests and actors and support strategic planning processes and decisions. This research is based on European traditions of strategic planning as well as research built around architectural and landscape analysis and design understood as critical tools for understanding, exploring and solving complex planning challenges in cities and urban territories.

_{Photo © Peter Hemmersam.}