The planner's role and challenges in implementing shared space in Norway

Abstract

Planning as a profession is the link between vision and implementation. Planners, with their knowledge and expertise, are at the forefront of introducing and implementing innovative sustainable design solutions to local and national urban challenges. This might be particularly true for innovative planning designs that have scarcely been used in an urban city context. Shared space is an example of such an innovative planning design where the idea is to promote social activity, attractive spaces and sustainable integration of all traffic groups in a safe unregulated space. In Norway, with increased urbanization and population growth, shared space has been considered by planners as an option for safe space-effective development, but the design has previously been scarcely used in a larger urban context compared to other Scandinavian countries. The study argues how planners in Norway face a struggle with implementing shared space as a design because it challenges both their professional roles as well as conventional mindsets about traffic regulations. One of the latest examples of a shared space project in Norway, Universitetsgata, is used as an example to reflect this challenge through linking the planner’s role as a rational expert to his implementation of an innovative design into a society accustomed to conventional spaces.