09:15 – 09:45
Diversifying the understandings of the compact city
– Per Gunnar Røe
The compact city is contradictory: The model has become part of the policy and planning orthodoxy in dealing with climate change and other sustainability challenges, and scholars from a diverse set of disciplines have informed this policy through empirical research. In this talk Røe argue that there is a need to ‘diversify’ the understandings of compact urbanism in ways that advance social and ecological justice. Research has revealed that the compact city has been conceived primarily through the lens of territorially bounded physical urban form, and thereby many of its social, political, and ecological implications are overlooked. Based on this critique, a renewed agenda for compact urbanism is suggested, re-articulating it as a strategy for sustainable transformation by bridging socio-material and relational approaches. The agenda is organized around three themes: commoning the compact city, metabolism of compact cities, and antagonism in the compact city.
About the speaker:
Per Gunnar Røe is Professor at Institute for geography and sociology, Oslo University with a special interest in urban studies and urban planning, the linkage between the city and the suburbs and place development. He is head of Include – an international research center for socially, inclusive energy transition.