In many countries, cities are expected to stimulate compact city development by the government, while at the same time develop healthier and more social sustainable cities. In Norway, national policy and planning regulation aim at stimulating a development that ensures active urban childhoods. In order to ensure this, the Planning and Building Act ensure particular participation rights for children and youth in the planning process. In this article, we will present how these rights are understood and implemented in practice. Then we will discuss how local government can enable children to participate in a meaningful way and where their input actually contributes to the plans and urban design being developed. This last discussion will be elaborated by studying a case about the Children Track Methodology.
In many countries, cities are expected to stimulate compact city development by the government, while at the same time develop healthier and more social sustainable cities. In Norway, national policy and planning regulation aim at stimulating a development that ensures active urban childhoods. In order to ensure this, the Planning and Building Act ensure particular participation rights for children and youth in the planning process. In this article, we will present how these rights are understood and implemented in practice. Then we will discuss how local government can enable children to participate in a meaningful way and where their input actually contributes to the plans and urban design being developed. This last discussion will be elaborated by studying a case about the Children Track Methodology.
This article examines challenges related to the political steering of New Public Management-inspired planning practices in Norway and asks if local politicians have sufficient and adequate instruments to hand, and if they are willing and have the knowledge to use them. The discussion is based upon a broad survey of the 145 largest municipalities and qualitative interviews in the three largest cities. It is found that local politicians do not lack steering instruments, as the different managerial practices represent a spectrum of suitable tools for giving direction to urban development. However, the data indicate that local politicians do not utilise the full steering potential of the instruments due to lack of knowledge and will. These findings contribute to the discussion of the strategic steering role of local politicians. Adapted from the source document.
This article examines the extent to which local politicians use digital channels in their contact with citizens and stakeholders, in comparison with traditional forms of communication (i.e. face‐to‐face and telephone contact) and which politicians are using digital channels the most. By analyzing a national survey of municipal politicians and mayors in Norway, findings show that e‐mail has become an important channel of communication between local politicians and citizens, while e‐debates have not. More surprisingly, the digital divides related to age and levels of education, which are reported in other studies, are less obvious in this study. Variations, however, in e‐mail usage do exist in municipal hierarchies; Mayors, more than other politicians, use e‐mail in work‐related communication. The article also discusses whether digital channels are able to transfer the all important 'local' tacit knowledge from citizens to local politicians, and concludes that most politicians do not consider e‐mail to be as capable at doing so as the traditional channels. The article indicates that the informality of e‐mail lowers the threshold for contact, increasing the politicians' knowledge about the experiences, problems and preferences of the citizens, thus broadening their pattern of communication and reaching new interest groups. E‐mail, therefore, seems to increase contact and strengthen the ties between politicians and citizens. Politicians are aware, though, of the relationship between the electorate's lack of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) competence and usage of e‐communication channels, and they stress that their use of digital channels is a supplement to traditional channels – not a replacement.
In order to meet the challenges of an increasingly fragmented public sector and severe wicked problems, network structures have become an important part of contemporary public administration. Thus, managing networks is a central concern for public managers. The article focuses on networks being established in Norway in accordance with the EU Water Framework Directive. The mandatory networks consist of actors representing different levels of government and several policy sectors, having highly asymmetric interests, interdependencies, and power relations. Based on comprehensive survey material, the article illuminates how the important role of network management on multi-level coordination is conditioned by complexity. Rather surprisingly, the more complex networks score better on coordination, and the most promising management strategy seems to depend upon institutional complexity. Direct and connecting strategies seem to be required in the most complex settings, while in less complex settings, indirect facilitative strategies are more effective to achieve coordination. Adapted from the source document.
The article expands citizen participation research by tackling participation from the viewpoint of elected officials – the recipients of citizen input. The article studies the role citizen input plays in elected officials' decision making. Citizen input is defined as information elected officials obtain through direct contact with citizens and representatives of local associations. Using survey data from Norwegian local government, the article assesses how much citizen input councillors receive, and to what extent they use it to set local agendas. It is demonstrated that Norwegian councillors have a high degree of exposure to citizen input and that citizen input constitutes most councillors' primary source of agenda‐setting inspiration. The article also examines differences in the extent to which councillors use citizen input, and draws on existing theoretical and empirical research to discuss how these differences can be explained. For example, findings that local government frontbenchers and highly educated councillors consider citizen input less useful than others do are explained by an analytical perspective emphasizing councillors' varied needs for such information.
