Abstract
This paper elaborates on how policies and strategies for sustainable urban development can be understood and shows how development programs can be strategically important and flexible tools in the creation of the modern city. We examine two typical contemporary cases for urban development, inner city/waterfront and modernistic suburbs, using the two areas of transport and cultural heritage as prisms to explore divergences or convergences between the two programs, and ask: How come two urban development programs within the same city turn out so differently? By comparing these programs, urban development trends relating to entrepreneurialism are highlighted. There are clear differences between the two programs under study, and the paper tries to grasp their internal logic in order to shed light on their strengths and weaknesses. While the city center program has much to do with realizing the commercial potential of the area and strengthening sustainable transport through large-scale changes in infrastructure, such means seem to be outside the scope of the suburban program. Meanwhile, cultural heritage is interwoven with entrepreneurial projection-strategies in the city center, whereas heritage sites and projects are used more as a means for social cohesion in the suburb. The paper concludes that the programs vary in the two policy fields in accordance with the institutionalized and anticipated potential of the urban areas in question.
Highlights
A focus on urban competitiveness and attractiveness has become an integral part of urban policy.In discussions of urban challenges and opportunities, both attractive historic environments and beneficial transport solutions are high on the agenda
By comparing the urban development program in Bjørvika with the environmental and living condition program in the Grorud Valley, this paper has demonstrated how using transport and cultural heritage as prisms provides new ways of understanding urban development
We find that both transport and cultural heritage is highly relevant in local authorities’ strategies aiming at increasing urban attractiveness
Summary
In discussions of urban challenges and opportunities, both attractive historic environments and beneficial transport solutions are high on the agenda. Cultural heritage and sustainable transport are central to the attractiveness of cities. Contrasting two cases of urban development, one in the inner city and one in the suburbs of Oslo, the paper seeks to highlight the ways in which transport and cultural heritage are embedded in urban strategies. The use of transport and cultural heritage as prisms to study urban development provides new ways of understanding urban development. The paper illustrates how transport and cultural heritage are being handled differently in accordance to the geographical context of the urban development program in question
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