Towards a new spatial perspective – Norwegian politics at the crossroads

Opportunities and challenges for future regional development

“…With this new environmental turn, it is clear that space is considered a scarcity. Spatial planning now has contraction as its guiding logic (Knudsen 2018). This is the opposite of the traditional rural policy where the logic of expansion prevails.…”

“…Within these, a paradigm shift with climate threat being the overarching trend has changed the perception of and policies for rural development. This shift in priority of policies includes: Less resources for rural and regional policy and higher priority to centralised sectorial policies referring to climate and sustainability, and second that policies being used no longer are legitimate in order to stimulate for spatial expansion due to climate change issues (Knudsen, 2018). This environmental turn, favouring urbanism, is the largest challenge to rural development in the Nordic region Grimsrud argues.…”

“…Furthermore, there has been a radical change in the logic of national spatial politics. While the traditionally strong rural development policy has been about expansion in space, spatial politics is now about contraction in space (Knudsen 2018).…”

“…Recommendations I am reluctant to providing policy recommendations based on this paper, because it is written up in a rather short period of time and without being founded on a thorough research project. Unfortunately, a reduction in public spending on rural development policies have also meant a reduction in the money set aside for rural research (Knudsen 2018). In turn, this means that there has not been a lot of research to build recommendations on; only a few reports from small-scale consultancy projects.…”

“…Costeffectiveness and climate mitigation efforts play on the same team; combined they strengthen the prospects for urban development and subsequently, marginalise rural regions. This new eco-spatial paradigm, a term coined by Knudsen (2018), is what I see as the biggest challenge to rural development politics in the Nordic region. In Norway (maybe in other Nordic countries too), regional policy has traditionally overruled the geographical rationales of any other sectoral politics such as communication, agriculture, fisheries, higher education, hospitals and local administration.…”