Planning In Norway Research Articles

Implementation of Advance Care Planning in Norway

Advance Care Planning has a relatively short history in the Norwegian health care services. This article gives an overview of advance care planning research and its implementation in the health care services in Norway. Advance care planning has received increased attention from policymakers and the health care services. Research projects have been performed, and several are on-going. Implementation has largely treated advance care planning as a complex intervention, with a whole-system approach that puts emphasis on the conversation and patient activation. Advance directives have a peripheral role in this context.

“Sustainability is not a vegan coffee shop.” Eliciting citizen attitudes and perspectives to localize the UN sustainable development goals

Integrating the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into national legislation includes a need for their localization. The authors posit that this concept of localizing the SDGs is achieved if the goals are appended to an existing policy process with local implications, termed a “policy vehicle.” For this study, Q-methodology was used to gather local perspectives on the legislative process for coastal planning in Norway (the “policy vehicle”), the “proxy” legislation through which the SDGs are localized for the case study municipality of Andøya, Norway. The overall aim of the study was to understand potential pathways for enabling approaches to societal transformations where focus is placed on fostering human agency and capacities. The authors demonstrate how Q-methodology can be applied for enhanced stakeholder engagement in local decision-making processes as a starting point to enable social transformations for sustainability in a social-ecological system.

Goals à la carte: selective translation of the Sustainable Development Goals in strategic municipal planning in Norway

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are promoted as a global action plan for transformational change. Through calls to localise the global agenda, local governments have been made key actors in implementing the agenda. In Norway, the government ascribes municipalities a formal role in the national effort to implement the SDGs. Drawing on the concept of policy translation, we explore localisation processes at the strategic level of planning in Norwegian municipalities. Through analysis of municipal master plans and interviews with planners, we find that municipalities use a selective approach, prioritising goals that largely support existing policies, while more challenging goals become lost in translation. We argue that while the Norwegian planning system provides an institutional framework for implementing and following up on the SDGs, new rounds of translation will be needed to also handle difficult goals, if the SDGs are to create actual and much-needed policy change.

Hazard and risk assessment for early phase road planning in Norway

Road construction in rugged terrain and variable, partly harsh climate is challenging. Proper assessment of natural hazards at an early planning stage can give large cost savings and safer roads. In assessing natural hazards along 720 km of planned roads in Norway, a GIS-based tool was developed to utilize publicly available data and dynamic runout models. The output is an outline of the most critical locations and serves to limit the extent of necessary field work. The Norwegian national susceptibility maps are generally conservative and using only these in the planning would give unrealistically high hazard levels. Various optimizing techniques were therefore implemented in the GIS tool and the outputs further calibrated against existing detailed hazard maps in selected locations and further validated during field work at the defined 'hotspots'. The field work comprised assessing return periods of unwanted events, probable road closure time, and relevant mitigation measures, all within sets of pre-defined ranges of values. The following consequence evaluation quantified the indirect economic consequences of closed road and assessed the consequence for emergency preparedness qualitatively. Other consequences were not considered in the study. Climate change was considered and evaluated to affect the probability for flooding and debris flows, whereas the link between climate change and the other assessed hazards was considered too uncertain to impact on the risk estimates. Results of the study were communicated through an interactive map solution, with key results presented as fact sheets activated in the map for each risk section of the roads.

Multiobjective Timetable Development Tool for Railway Strategic Planning in Norway

Strategic planning is critical in helping railways develop optimal programs for improving their business by making service more attractive and efficient. Preparing a strategic plan requires comparing multiple alternatives and options, each requiring time-consuming planning, evaluation, and analysis. To improve this process Jernbanedirektoratet, Norway’s Railway Directorate, began a research project to develop a state-of-the-art railway timetable generation tool that could be integrated into the agency’s existing timetable-planning process. The new tool, called Automatic Timetabler with Multiple Objectives, is designed to transform conceptual passenger and freight service requirements into working timetables, while ensuring robustness and minimizing time losses. It is designed to bridge the gap between less detailed (macroscopic) models used in timetable development and detailed (microscopic) traffic simulation models. More specifically, it is a mesoscopic model, simplifying some infrastructure elements while using more detailed representations of others (e.g., using specific track allocations in stations). In practice, the tool quickly provides planners with many feasible and good timetables using high-level timetable requirement data. This ability is very useful for strategic planning because it enables planners to quickly evaluate alternative timetable concepts. This paper describes the new timetable generator tool, its development, and the results of a case study application.

Transparent and consistent? Aquaculture impact assessments and trade-offs in coastal zone planning in Norway

Strategic environmental assessments (SEAs) are used in coastal zone planning in Norway to assess how changed area-use can impact a variety of uses and interests and make recommendations for trade-off decisions between them. The transparency and consistency of the SEAs are important for their throughput legitimacy. This paper analyses how the set up and practices of SEA processes affect their transparency and consistency, how they can be improved, and what trade-offs there may be between the two. This is based on cases studies of SEAs in two intermunicipal planning processes involving 143 proposed aquaculture areas in 18 municipalities in Northern Norway. Marine aquaculture in the form of salmon farming has grown into a major industry on the Norwegian coast, and there are ambitions for further growth. Salmon farming is a major driver for coastal zone planning in Norway as many municipalities hope it will provide jobs and income and fish farms must be placed in accordance with municipal coastal zone plans. The paper specifically analyses how proposed aquaculture areas were handled in the SEAs, including their knowledge base, assessment methods used and actual trade-offs, and how this impact transparency and consistency. Consistency is considered both across geographies and SEA processes and through the individual SEA processes.

Addressing the adaptive challenges of alternative stormwater planning

ABSTRACT Municipal water sectors shift from building traditional grey stormwater infrastructure to ambitious plans for holistic blue–green infrastructure due to climate vulnerability. The shift requires new ways of thinking, working, and collaborating, and we need to understand and address the new planning challenges the shift creates. While existing stormwater literature explores a range of technical, institutional, and financial barriers to alternative stormwater implementation, we hold the shift requires a deeper understanding of holistic and flexible stormwater management approaches. In this context, we investigate adaptive challenges like norms, practices, uncertainty, and new ways of collaborating across sectors in alternative stormwater planning in Norway. The studied planning processes exemplify how the need for making stormwater measures legally binding in municipal planning changes work practices in municipal water sectors. A novelty of the paper is that it shows how water departments take leadership of formal planning processes and adopt the planning department's language and working methods. We find that the studied municipalities promote cross-sectoral collaborative approaches that create space for professional negotiation and mediation and invite a deeper understanding of other's interests and views. We hold that such approaches could contribute to more holistic and flexible planning approaches, securing long-term sustainable stormwater management.

The Impact of Changed Structural Conditions on Regional Sustainable Mobility Planning in Norway

A primary impediment in achieving sustainable mobility objectives is the multi-level and cross-sectoral nature of land-use and transport planning. This paper investigates whether changes in structural conditions have affected the ability of Norwegian regional authorities to succeed in sustainable mobility planning. The effects of the changes were minor, as the national government acted in ways that undermined the power of regional authorities. By analysing the fine-grained inter-agency dynamics, this study contributes richer and more nuanced theoretical understandings of the challenges involved in sustainable transport planning. The new insights could assist discussions in many countries on how land-use and transport planning can be organized to facilitate more sustainable mobility patterns.

Norway plans to exterminate a large reindeer herd to stop a fatal infectious brain disease

Norway plans to exterminate a large reindeer herd to stop a fatal infectious brain disease

Market-Oriented Urban Planning – Constraining Citizen Participation

Urban planning in Norway can be characterised as market oriented, with responsibilities for the formulation of planning largely delegated to private developers. Even though the principle of citizen participation has a strong and longstanding tradition in Norway, the market-oriented practices challenge the ability of citizens to influence their spatial surroundings. Based on broad surveys and qualitative case studies, this article maps the attitudes of developers, councillors and planners towards citizen participation and studies the strategies of local community associations. Our analysis shows that developers value citizen participation to a much lesser degree than councillors and planners, which can explain the lack of participatory channels in early phases. Official avenues for participation occur later, primarily through hearings. Local associations find this to be too late, characterising urban planning as a path dependent process; as a consequence, local associations attempt to influence planning processes in a more informal way by contacting councillors directly.

Impacts of sea level rise on coastal planning in Norway

This paper shows that despite today's most popular climate models indicating that sea levels are generally rising and accelerating and that the coastal management in Norway may face sea level rises from 16 to 116cm by the year 2100, all the local and global tide gauges and the satellite radar altimeter reconstruction of global mean sea level consistently show that there is no accelerating behaviour, with negative sea level rises for the specific of Norway because of the post-glacial rebound. This suggests the sea level rise of this century will very likely be the one from the past century.

Use of LCA to evaluate solutions for water and waste infrastructure in the early planning phase of carbon‐neutral urban settlements

PurposeThe paper aims to discuss how life cycle assessment can be used in the early stage planning phase of new settlements.Design/methodology/approachBy applying the life cycle methodology on the waste, water and wastewater system of a new carbon‐neutral settlement under planning in Norway, the authors discuss the pros and cons with applying this methodology in an early planning phase.FindingsThe LCA methodology enabled the authors to compare suggestions from interdisciplinary planning teams, relate them to the existing systems in Trondheim and provide quantitative results back to the decision‐makers, in this case the municipality. The environmental benefits of implementing alternative solutions in the waste, water and wastewater systems were found to be small.Research limitations/implicationsData availability and uncertainty can be limitations in the early planning phase.Practical implicationsBy applying this methodology, the life cycle environmental impact of different solutions can be assessed at an early planning stage.Originality/valueEven if life cycle assessment has been used for years in the research community, there is too little experience with applying the methodology in the early planning phase of new projects. This paper discuss how life cycle assessment can be used to compare suggestions from interdisciplinary planning teams, relate them to existing systems and provide quantitative results back to the decision‐makers.

Democracy or efficiency: contradictory national guidelines in urban planning in Norway

Planning and building legislation is often divided between two institutional systems and mutually contradictory discourses. While the discourse related to building legislation focuses on efficiency, the planning discourse focuses on democracy. The two discourses are institutionally divided with two national governance systems in Norway. These governance systems meet in local development plans where planning and building are often fully integrated. How do these two discourses affect the development of national legislation and local planning? We find both the planning and building systems increasingly framed by the discourse related to efficiency.

Private Influence Preceding Public Involvement: Strategies for Legitimizing Preliminary Partnership Arrangements in Urban Housing Planning in Norway and Finland

Neoliberal ideas have inspired new forms of public–private partnerships in urban development. Early preliminary agreement on planning goals and related investments change the possibilities for public participation while offering a privileged position for developers. The aim of the article is to investigate the way power is used in these processes and how such power is legitimized. A new framework for empirical analysis is developed applying theoretical categorizations of power and democratic legitimacy. Housing planning in Norway and Finland is studied and compared. Lukes's three dimensions of power allows the structural power relations embedded within habitual planning practices and legal frameworks to be identified, while authority and manipulation are observable empirically in case studies involving conflicts. As the study reveals, output legitimacy is emphasized, and discussion of procedural aspects of the cases is avoided.

Challenges to Democracy in Market-Oriented Urban Planning in Norway

Neo-liberal ideas have resulted in a planning practice characterized by an informal phase in which early agreements are reached in closed negotiations between municipal planners and private developers. This challenges norms of legitimacy and accountability found in traditional democratic theories, as well as deliberative planning and network governance theories. Input-based legitimacy may be weakened by the lack of participation as well as by asymmetry in resources available for participation (voice). The representative democracy's (vote) responsiveness to the electorate may be weakened due to the lack of knowledge of the views of those affected, early lock-in to agreements and weak meta-governance due to the lack of adherence to overall plans. Throughput legitimacy is reduced by the lack of transparency, and thus accountability, in the informal phase. Output legitimacy might justify the privileged position of developers if tangible results are achieved. However, lack of participation weakens the quality and long-term lastingness of decisions, and lack of deliberation weakens the acceptability of justifications for those burdened by the decisions. We argue that two different types of reforms are necessary to increase the input legitimacy of planning practices: representative democracy reforms that strengthen the role of politicians and reforms that strengthen the direct participation of stakeholders in planning.

Can parallelingualism save Norwegian from extinction?

Language extinction is one of the most pressing issues in linguistics today, and the literature is full of discussion about how to combat it. Statements that Norwegian is amongst the languages that are already extinct are merely examples of a widespread tendency in the literature towards erroneous information about Norwegian. Nonetheless, there is clear evidence that Norwegian is undergoing a process of ‘domain loss’, and policies to address this form of language shift lie at the heart of the most recent developments in the history of language planning in Norway. A policy of parallelingualism is widely advocated, but without proper sanctions in higher education and in the business world for infringements of the parallelingual strategy, it is unlikely to have much effect.

Techbits: Technology Strategies Highlighted at Norway Conference

Techbits From 15 to 16 October, more than 120 oil and gas professionals converged in Bergen, Norway for the fourth SPE Norwegian Petroleum Technology Conference (PTC). The conference, which was held in conjunction with Norway's Offshore Technology Days Exhibition, allowed managers, engineers, and business development planners to discuss how Norway plans to maintain its status as a global energy technology leader and incorporate innovations from companies big and small, far and wide. "The conference was really focused around StatoilHydro's dominant role in the Norwegian oil and gas industry and how they plan to ensure continual development of new technologies and put them to use," said Jan Roar Drechsler, Chairperson of the PTC Program Committee and the SPE Stavanger section, as well as a Principal Engineer and Technical Representative for Completions with StatoilHydro. "In the past [prior to the merger of Statoil and Norsk Hydro], there was a sort of competition between Statoil and Hydro to be first in the development of a new technology. There is concern that now some development programs, either within the company or with different partners, might be put aside or altered. People wanted to know how these would go on in the future." The first two presenters elaborated on this concern by outlining the role of technology in developing the reserves on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) and the dangers of scaling back future technology development programs. Roy Ruså, Vice President of Technology for Petoro, discussed upcoming technology challenges for operators and service providers in his talk "Technology Critical—Do We Act Accordingly?" Ruså pointed out that the mature NCS province still has many significant business opportunities, but they are linked to even greater technical challenges, such as realizing remaining reserves from smaller prospects, reducing nonrecoverable reserves, and finding and developing new recoverable resources. He acknowledged StatoilHydro as the major driver of technology development on the NCS, but added that the company must continue making significant investments in R&D and increasingly diversify its portfolio of production solutions by pulling in more technologies from other industries and geographic regions.

Network Governance in Contested Urban Landscapes

Urban planning is one of the policy fields where new forms of governance are developing. The article focuses on governance networks as one emergent form of governance in urban planning. In governance literature, discourse networks are seen as a threat to representative democracy. This article argues that the consequences for democracy depend on the type of network that develops and its performance in relation to democratic norms. Governance networks are discussed through the lens of democratic network governance, the utility of which is explored as an analytical tool in a case study of urban planning in Norway. In this context a governance network was constructed as a response to market-orientated planning practice in order to enhance citizen participation and public debate. The aim of this article is to discuss the relevance of the theory of network governance relating it to new forms of participation in public planning processes. The study shows that governance networks could strengthen democracy, though important questions about meta-governance, however, remain unsolved. The article also shows that networks operating in an institutional vacuum tend to fail in institutional capacity building.

Svalbard Global Seed Vault: a ‘Noah's Ark’ for the world's seeds

News about Norway's plans to establish a ‘doomsday vault’ for seeds in the permafrost of the Artic archipelago of Svalbard as a back-up for conventional gene banks reached the world press in 2006. The idea of a Global Seed Vault, which today is considered a ‘Noah's Ark’ for seeds, was previously regarded with suspicion and considered to be unrealistic. In 1989 the Norwegian government offered to construct an international depository for seeds in permafrost, but the initiative was sidelined in the agitated debates between developed and developing countries over access to and control of plant genetic resources. The realisation of the FAO International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (2004) resolved some of the most difficult issues and made possible the launching of a new Norwegian initiative to safeguard some of the world's most important plant genetic resources for the future.

Network Governance and Policy Integration—the Case of Regional Coastal Zone Planning in Norway

Integrated coastal zone management is characterized as a complex management situation, demanding integration across geographical borders, different policy sectors and levels of government. In Norway, the county municipalities are encouraged to take responsibility for achieving integration through regional coastal zone planning. Inspired by literature on network governance, the authors elaborate on how integration capacity might depend on an open and inclusive planning process and on the importance of conditions influencing the actors' perceived payoffs from participation. The result indicates that central actors benefiting from cooperation are more important in explaining the integration capacity, than the characteristics of the planning process itself. This illustrates the importance of the distribution of power and interdependencies among the actors in such processes.