Governing urban change
Democratic Politics of Climate Urban Governance
10.00 – 10.10 Introduction to the theme and to the research project DemoClim
– Marianne Millstein
10.10 – 10.25 Democratic dilemmas of densification as a pathway to reform
– Håvard Haarstad, Hege Hofstad & Gro Sandkjær-Hansen
Densification is a strong and conflict-ridden ideal in current sustainable urban development policy and practice. Based on research in the largest cities in Norway and Sweden, we argue that densification activates a set of democratic dilemmas:
- Individual vs. collective interests
- Reactive vs. proactive involvement
- Scientific judgement vs. lived experience
The presentation will reflect upon these dilemmas; if they can explain the prevalence of conflicts and controversy around densification, and how planning may be reformed to better cope with them.
Håvard Haarstad is a Professor of Human Geography. His main research focus is social change towards sustainability, particularly in relation to climate. He is interested in how we can transform cities and urban life – materially, socially and culturally – in order to meet the climate and sustainability challenges that face us.
Hege Hofstad is a senior researcher at NIBR. Her research centers around governance and co-creation at the intersection of public authorities at the local, regional, and national levels, the organized civil society, various types of business actors, and knowledge environments to develop and implement overarching and long-term goals such as public health, climate, and sustainability. She studies how such processes unfold at the local level, in community development, social and spatial planning, or in specific political decision-making processes. Who takes leadership and how it happens is of particular interest.
Gro Sandkjær-Hansen is a senior researcher at NIBR. She is a trained political scientist (Ph.D., UiO), and her research interests are related to participation, co-governance, and governance challenges at the local and regional levels, especially in the context of urban planning. She has also addressed these topics in projects related to regional planning, climate adaptation, and water management
10.25 – 10.40 The politics of value pluralism in compact urbanism –– Marianne Millstein, Hege Hofstad & Håvard Haarstad
10.40 –10.55 Sustainable participation – can citizen involvement increase the legitimacy of controversial transport measures?
– Anders Tønnesen, Jens Portinson Hylander, Claus Hedegaard Sørensen & Tom Rye
A central aspect of implementing new sustainable social practices and technological systems is building and maintaining their legitimacy. Disruptive measures to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, potentially causes strong reactions. In recent years researchers have observed tendencies of a backlash for low-emission policy (Patterson 2023). The ongoing TRANSPOL project, financed by the Norwegian research council, studies the relationship between politics, citizens and legitimacy of potentially controversial measures in transport systems.
The project highlights measures implying redistribution of road space from cars to other modes of transport. In this part of TRANSPOL, we explore the potential for building legitimacy for controversial measures through innovative methods of citizen participation. While this for long has been a theme within transport planning research (see e.g. Banister 2008), the focus has often been on financial instruments (e.g. congestion tax and fuel prices) rather than physical changes to urban transport networks. Further, small and medium-sized cities have been rarely studied. This study addresses both research gaps.
Applying a case-study approach, we compare three cities that have implemented (potentially) controversial measures: 1. Helsingborg in Sweden where the introduction of a so-called ‘superbus’ redistributed the space for cars and buses on the streets, 2. Sandnes in Norway where a large and central square with parking has been transformed into a public square, and 3. Copenhagen in Denmark where processes are underway to drastically reduce the number of parking spaces in the medieval city centre. The purpose of this selection is to draw lessons from success, and to explore whether there is something intrinsically valuable in innovative approaches to citizen participation. The data are analyzed to identify lessons about factors influencing the implementation of contentious measures. Preliminary results concern issues such as inclusion, representation, and justice, but also power factors such as property ownership.
Anders Tønnesen is human geographer and senior researcher at the CICERO – Center for International Climate Research, Oslo. His research focuses on multilevel governance, environmental policy-making and climate-friendly urban land-use and transport system development.
Jens Portinson Hylander is researcher at the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, VTI. He has a PhD in Environment and Energy systems and his research interests are primarily just and sustainable transport systems, focusing on transport governance and transport planning.
Claus Hedegaard Sørensen is senior researcher at VTI (the Swedish Road and Transport Research Institute). He is mostly doing research on governance aspects of the sustainable transformation of the transport sector and has been publishing within this field since 2000.
Tom Rye is Professor of Transport Policy at Molde University College. He has long experience in research into planning, decision-making, and implementation of transport policy, having been publishing in this field since 2005.
10.55 –11.10 The case of the vase – the role of digital memes in debates about climate issues
– Hanne Cecilie Geirbo & Johanne Hammersland
This paper will discuss the role of social media platforms’ algorithms and affordances in shaping public debate about climate issues. Social media platforms function as lenses through which we perceive the world and are, for this reason, important for meaning-making. Their algorithms and affordances (what their design enables or invites us to do) (Gibson, 1966; Norman, 1999) make some things visible and available to us and hide other things.
Given that much political communication and debate take place on social media platforms, it is critical to investigate to which extent and how their algorithms and affordances influence the way political issues are presented and discussed in society. The rise of social media has been connected to the emotional turn in public discourse, bringing about “affective statements that mix fact with opinion, and with emotion” (Papacharissi, 2014, p. 27). During the last decade, social media companies have tweaked their algorithms to prioritize content that generates emotional responses (such as emojis) over neutral ‘likes’. It has been observed that some actors adopt emotionality as a strategy in their production of social media content (Zou, 2020).
The empirical basis of this paper is the tracking of a digital meme that emerged in 2019 during a local campaign against building a bicycle lane in a street in Frogner, Oslo. Four years later, the meme still circulates in the context of urban planning and climate adaptation. Memes travel easily, but they also have interpretive flexibility (Orlikowski, 1992), which means that different people will understand them differently. Memes are generative, which implies that new layers of meaning can be added to them. For activist groups, a meme can lead to increased attention to their case, but it can also reduce the complexity of the issue and thus inhibit informed, nuanced debate. Moreover, the meme can be appropriated by opponents and used to weaken their case. Memes combine explicit and implicit communication. The receivers will be divided among those who know the references and can grasp the complete set of connotations embedded in them and those who do not know. Because of this, memes are efficient tools for creating and confirming community among those “in the know” and for marking distance from others. Based on the case of the ‘vase meme’ in Oslo, the paper will discuss the implications of social media algorithms and affordances on how public debates about climate issues unfold.
Hanne Cecilie Geirbo is an associate professor at the Department of Computer Science, Oslo Metropolitan University. She has an interdisciplinary background from social anthropology and informatics. Her research interests include the role of information infrastructures in shaping society, and issues of sustainability related to this. Johanne Hammersland works as a research assistent at The Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research (NIBR), Oslo Metropolitan University. She holds a MPhil in Global Development and bachelor’s degree in Comparative Politics from the University of Bergen. She is especially interested in topics of climate politics, sustainable development, food security, social justice and human rights.
Johanne Hammersland is a research assistant at NIBR and has a MPhil in in global development with specialization in health promotion from the University of Bergen. Furthermore, she has a bachelor in Comparative Politics from the same university. She is particularly interested in climate and energy policy, sustainable development, food security, social justice and human rights.
11.10 –11.25 Leave no-one behind: Promising steps towards a co-created sustainability transition
– Trond Vedeld & Hege Hofstad
To succeed with a sustainability transition which leaves no one behind, related social change processes need to include not only the small congregation of willing actors, but also wider groups of unconvinced and indifferent citizens, citizen groups, experts, and businesses. This paper uses insights from a diverge set of experimental initiatives (and from different research projects) evolving in cities to identify promising avenues for a collaborative approach to socially just sustainability transition. We suggest that the quality of institutions and sound governance of interactional relationships are paramount for mutual empowerment of relevant and concerned actors, and thus for effective and fair policies of place-based climate transitions.
Trond Vedeld is a research professor (Forsker 1) at NIBR in international studies. He is specialized in collaborative governance, political economy, urban climate policy, international development and sustainability. Vedeld has worked extensively on large research projects in Scandinavia, Africa and India
Hege Hofstad is a senior researcher at NIBR. Her research centers around governance and co-creation at the intersection of public authorities at the local, regional, and national levels, the organized civil society, various types of business actors, and knowledge environments to develop and implement overarching and long-term goals such as public health, climate, and sustainability. She studies how such processes unfold at the local level, in community development, social and spatial planning, or in specific political decision-making processes. Who takes leadership and how it happens is of particular interest.
11.30 – 12.00 Discussion