Invisible Infrastructures: Socioecological Transformations in the Postindustrial Metropolis

How do we build functional cities? A multidisciplinary group of researchers and practitioners, with backgrounds in architecture, biology, anthropology, and sociology, aims to tackle this question over the next three years. In order to understand how to build cities that work, they aim to carry out an intensive case study of the Gamle Oslo District in Oslo, Norway. This rapidly changing district offers a unique opportunity for understanding the dynamics of urban transformation. The project aims to address several questions. First, how do the decisions made by residents, politicians, municipal planners, property developers, and others affect the fabric of urban life? A city is the realization of multiple and sometimes conflicting preferences. One task is to understand how conflicting preferences are managed so that future conflicts might be resolved more effectively. Second, how are the competing needs of human and natural systems managed in a dense and rapidly expanding urban environment? Part of what makes cities successful lies in accomplishing the delicate balancing act between competing social forces and biological structures: Many want the convenience of urbanization combined with the attractions of green spaces, and cities that find ways of resolving the tension between social and biological structures are often deemed more habitable. Finally, what can urban planners and property developers learn from residents? The world is facing severe challenges related to climate change and social justice. We aim to produce an online suggestion for an urban development that 'works'.

Gjennom prosjektet, så har deltagere fått omfattende erfaring med tverrfaglig forskningssamarbeid. Blant annet har arkitekt gjort etnografisk feltarbeid sammen med sosialantropolog, og sampublisert. Arkitekter og biolog har gjort økologiske feltstudier sammen. Biolog og sosialantropolog har sampublisert. Det tverrfaglige samarbeidet har også resultert i rapporter for offentlige myndigheter som kunnskapsgrunnlag for områdebaserte satsinger. Arkitekt bruker i dag aktivt resultatene fra prosjektet inn i sine egne prosjekter, og fortsetter å videreutvikle tverrfaglig forskning på arkitektur.

By focusing on the neighborhood of Tøyen in Oslo, Norway, this project addresses the challenges of urban injustice by analyzing invisible infrastructures - including social forces, ecological systems, and the mutual embeddedness of the former in the latter, and vice versa. At a time when social scientists are increasingly confronted with the limitations of their insights generated by the workings of social power and ecological degradation, and when natural scientists are confronted with the limitations of their disciplinary achievements through the intrusion of the social dimension in problematics previously assumed to reside within their disciplinary scope, the need for transdisciplinary approaches, is becoming increasingly urgent. Two major crises confront the world today. The first is the crisis of ecological degradation. The second is the crisis of inequality. This threatens to undermine economic growth, political stability, and act as a hindrance to the implementation of policies needed to counteract environmental degradation. Both of these ongoing and potentially enlarged crises intersect in urban space. Their causes and imprints are evident in cities around the globe. Redesigning cities will play a major role in counteracting socioecological existential risks. The novelty inherent in this project resides in its combination of transdisciplinary research, involving the collection and analysis of a broad range of data sources, drawing on the disciplinary toolboxes available in the natural sciences, social sciences, and architectural design; and the implementation of user-driven and constructive interventions in the realm of urban planning and policy development through community exhibitions, investigations of public sentiment, and architectural design. The timeliness of the project lies in its efforts to explore and analyze the role played by cities in contributing to several of the most profound problems confronting humanity today.