Day 2 Afternoon plenary

13:00 – 14:30

The 2050 Climate Change Committee: Implications for urban governance and urban development
– Gro Sandkjær Hanssen  

Through the Climate Act, Norway has legislated a goal of becoming a low-emission society by 2050. In 2021, the government appointed an official committee to investigate which choices Norway faces in order to achieve this goal. In 2050, Norwegian emissions will be 90–95 percent lower than they were in 1990. In 2020, the government appointed an expert committee led by Martin Skancke. The main tasks of the committee are to conduct an overall review of Norway’s choices for achieving its 2050 climate target, and to describe a pathway for the transformation to a low-emission society by 2050 that is as cost-effective as possible, resulting in a society where resource use is efficient and business and industry is competitive.

The committee hand over the report (NOU) to the Minister of Climate and Environment, Espen Barth Eide, the 27th of October, and the report will simultaneously be presented at the conference.

About the speaker:
Gro Sandkjær Hanssen is senior researcher at Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research (NIBR), OsloMet and Professor 2 at Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). She is a member of the 2050 Climate Change Committee, which releases their final report this very day.

Co-creation through sustainable partnerships: Universities dating urbanity
– Marianne Millstein and Aina Landsverk Hagen

Awkward moments, uncomfortable situations, conflicting realities turning into engaging conversations, humor, ideas, and free flow of thoughts – who or what should be thrown into the mix to make this cocktail of sustainable urban futures a reality?

Millstein and Landsverk Hagen ask who will need to give up power and control to make this transformative relationship not only functional but also fun? What habits need to be questioned, what values need to be rethought? How can we combine existing resources to make the city bursting with joy, energy, and freedom to care – for ourselves, each other, and the multispecies cities we co-inhabit?

Millstein and Landsverk Hagen invite to an interactive keynote session to co-think, laugh and engage together with the panelists, in an open-ended conversation on the co-creative potential in student-researcher-urbanities partnerships for sustainable futures. 

In the panel conversation, Millstein and Landsverk Hagen will be joined by Gavin McCrory (NIBR) and Mette Tollefsrud (OsloMet Holmlia.

Join them for an engaging and thought-provoking keynote interactive session at the Urban Futures Conference that explores the relationship-in-the-making between universities and urbanity.

About the speakers:
Marianne Millstein is senior researcher at Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research (NIBR), OsloMet. Millstein has a research record from urban studies, urban change, democracy and participation from cites in the Global North and cities in the Global South.

Aina Landsverk Hagen is senior researcher at Work Research Institute (AFI), OsloMet. Landsverk Hagen has published books, articles and reports on urban development, youth and participation and is an expert on experimental participatory methods for urban change.

Gavin McCrory is a doctor of philosophy in the field of sustainability transitions and transformations. His research interests concern the governance of change as multi-stakeholder learning processes. In particular, he is fascinated with how such processes are co-framed and co-designed, as well as how they unfold over space and time. In addition, he actively questions how dominant knowledge systems produce unsustainability, and explore new forms of knowledge that may be required for deep, structural transformations to sustainability. His training bridges theory and practice, as well as education and research, and is supported by fields such as geography, futures studies, learning sciences and sustainability science.

Mette Tollefsrud is the project manager for OsloMet’s work in Holmlia: OsloMet-Holmlia. She is a former head of Department at Early Childhood Education and manager of the interdisciplinary research network Citykids (Storbybarn). She has worked on several projects related to partnerships and collaboration in education and research at both local and national levels.