Sustainable urbanisation requirements of small and medium sized urban settlements and their surroundings

Informations

Funding country

Norway

Acronym

-

URL

-

Start date

1/1/2018

End date

12/31/2022

Budget

1,185,966 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

Urbanisation is one of the most conspicuous features of our time. So much as 81 per cent of Norwegians currently live in urban settlements. This has environmental as well as societal impacts, not only in the cities themselves, but also in their semi-urban and rural surroundings. The research project Surround aims to provide insight into how urbanisation affects environmental and cultural assets both in and around small and medium-sized urban settlements, whilst shedding light on the driving forces behind such processes, in order to gain a better understanding of the preconditions for sustainable urbanisation. For a long time, urbanisation was characterized by poorly planned urban sprawl, resulting in space-demanding settlements. In the 1980s, densification was introduced as a counter-strategy. In Norway this principle was introduced i.a. through the research project Nature and Environmentally Friendly Urban Development (NAMIT) (1988-1992), which applied a number of sustainability indicators to examine the municipalities of Sogndal, Horten, Malvik and Trondheim. In Surround, NAMIT's findings function as a basis for comparison, enabling researchers to analyse the processes of change that have taken place during the last three decades in the realms of biodiversity, landscape quality, access to recreational areas, and the historic urban landscape. Mapping of planning processes and attitudes towards these, provide insight into driving forces that may explain how various assets have been managed. Findings will be disseminated in scientific and popular forms and will be integrated in bachelor's and master's programmes. Land use in 1990 and 2017 was compared by means of analyzing aerial photographs for both Sogndal, Horten, and Malvik in 2019, and for eastern parts of Trondheim (the fourth case) in 2020. The analyses are restricted to the core and a surrounding zone within a radius of 1 km from the built-up area. Land-use categories have been developed on the basis of the Nature in Norway (NiN) system at 1:20 000 scale and minimum mapping area of 2 500 m2. Analyses have brought figures of overall land-use changes between three main categories: developed areas, agricultural land, and natural areas. The most significant land cover transitions are linked to arable land being developed or becoming overgrown, and to the transition from natural to urban land. On a more detailed level, we have studied changes in the green infrastructure in the urban centres of Sogndal and Horten. In addition to quantifying transitions between buildings; grey areas; and green areas, we have detected interesting changes in the amount and composition of urban trees. Rephotography has been used to visualize the changes that have taken place. The project’s PhD scholar that will hand in her thesis during 2022. She will be the sole author of two of the four papers that form the thesis. So far, one scientific article has been published, that analyzes driving forces behind the land use development in the four case municipalities. In January 2020 MILJØFORSK consented to prolong the project by one year, till the end of 2021. Because the pandemic has led to significant obstacles in project progress, an application has now been made for the project to end in December 2022. The last year will be used for publishing, arranging research findings for dissemination via planning educations, conducting the final conference, and doing popular science dissemination work. Seven bachelor students attending the course «Landscape Planning with Landscape Architecture» at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences have contributed to Surround through three student assignments. These comprise mapping of land-use changes in the municipality of Sogndal, and an analysis of the connections between green infrastructure and biodiversity. In October 2021, a master's student in Climate change management at HVL will start work on a master's thesis which, in collaboration with local planning authorities, builds on the land use analyzes from Surround in a study of transformation (densification on gray areas). These examples indicate that the project will fulfill its goal of building a bridge between planning practice, research and education.