On their road to sustainability?: The challenge of sustainable mobility in urban planning and development in two Scandinavian capital regions

Abstract

The metropolitan areas of Copenhagen (Denmark) and Oslo (Norway) both aim to facilitate economic development, opportunities for choice and growth in the building stock while limiting negative environmental consequences. Since the 1990s, the rate of consumption of land for urban development has been lower than the economic growth rate in both city regions. Land use policies in Oslo and to some extent in Copenhagen have been explicitly geared towards limiting traffic growth. In both cities, public transport improvements have been combined with road capacity increases. Traffic growth has therefore only been weakly decoupled from economic growth. In both city regions, lack of coordination between sectors, levels and administrative territories is conceived a barrier to sustainability.