Characteristics and challenges of Norwegian planning in a European context

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen

Let me first of all welcome you to the Norwegian Pavilion here at EXPO 2000.

On behalf of my minister, Ms Siri Bjerke, I wish you all very welcome to our seminar. I am pleased to see that so many of you have sacrificed your day off to attend.

My name is Jo Stein Moen. I am political advisor in the Ministry of Environment. In Norway there are three politicians in each Ministry; the Minister, the State Secretary, and the political advisor. I am political advisor.

I am pleased to introduce our chairman for today, Mr Terje Lind from my ministry and present chairman of the VASAB Committee on Spatial Development. He will take us through the day, make sure we get our lunch and - finish on time.

Let me first remind you of our intention with this seminar

The theme of the seminar suggests a development that is either " sustainable" or " efficient". I would like to question that. May be we are able to manage both a sustainable development and an efficient development - i.e. " sustainableefficiency" - by careful planning? If that is the case we must obviously make the planningitself more efficient.

According to the European Regional/ Spatial Planning Charter, spatialplanning gives geographical expression to the economic, social, cultural and ecological policies of society. And - for two days, the Conference of European Ministers responsible for Regional Planning has been discussing the "Guiding principles for sustainable spatial development of the European Continent".

Today, we would like to discuss how the principles could be applied to improve our planning and make it more efficient in a sustainable way.

Then, a few words about the seminar programme

Before lunch, we will give you a brief impression of how we are thinking and working in Norway, and how this relates to other Nordic countries and Europe.

After lunch, we want to look into the notion of sustainable development in Central and Eastern as well as Western Europe. We have common goals of a balanced economic, social and environmental development. However, after 50 years of separate development paths the present disparities imply different approaches – just because our points of departure are so different. In my opinion, we should therefore organise networking and exchange of experiences and ideas between east and west. Hopefully that will enable us not to repeat all of each other’s mistakes.

Finally, we are going to discuss what VASAB co-operation may have to offer in this respect. VASAB, as a matter of fact, is just now looking for its way to the future. And, may be the role of VASAB co-operation lies along just that path!

Before leaving the floor to you, Mr Chairman I will give you some figures and facts about the planning situation in Norway

People often claim that Norway is a small country. That is not true. On a European scale we are a big (at least very long) country – with a small population, We are 4 million inhabitants - an average of only 14 persons per square km.

Picture: Norway in a European context

As shown on this map, it is 1800 km from the south to the north of Norway, and imagine Norway turned "upside-down" we will reach Rome...

Picture: Population densities (county wise)

So we are a long country. People think that leaves us plenty of space. That is not true either. About 75% of the country is unsuited for human settlements (mountains, altitude, natural hazards etc.), leaving the options for land-based spatial development to narrow strips of land along the fjords and valley bottoms. On these narrow strips you also find our very scarce arable land and expanding towns and cities. Most people live in the central-eastern parts of Norway

Picture: Altitudes, mountains etc.

Now, to the system:

As a politician, I must admit that we have a planning legislation that we are quite proud of.

Picture: Levels of government, planning responsibilities

• We have a decentralised system. This is subsidiarity in practice. 435 municipalities (ranging from 250 to 500 000 inhabitants) and 19 county councils are equally responsible, regardless of size, for the planning within their territories.

• We have a comprehensive system. Municipal and county planning is not confined to land use alone – it comprises the overall physical, economic, social and cultural development.

• National sector policies are to be co-ordinated at local and regional level by the municipal and county comprehensive planning. Central government has no overruling comprehensive plan at national level.

However, the system also has some weak points

• The national sector systems usually overrule the comprehensive planning undertaken by local and regional authorities – i.e. state agencies are not always serious about being co-ordinated, at least not by municipalities or county councils.

• Some municipalities do not emphasise, or are not staffed for broad comprehensive planning. Many are prone to grant exemptions from prevailing plans rather than updating their plans to current policies.

• There are no good mechanisms for co-ordinating planning and plan decisions across municipal boundaries. This often causes a fragmented overall development and detrimental competition between municipalities.

• Our present county planning is not sufficiently appreciated - neither by central government nor the municipalities. It is not always efficient enough, and sometimes it takes too long.

The result of this planning is not all together sustainable – nor is it efficient

We are missing an over all vision and strategies for a sustainable spatial development. Everybody is pursuing one’s own goals. But - when everybody is pursuing one’s own goals only - we seem to end up with an accumulated total that nobody really wants.

The are many negative aspects connected with our present development. I will give you some examples:

• Our spatial development is out of balance. Ever since the Second World War we have experienced centralisation to a few parts of the country. This is draining the periphery and deteriorating the social environment and levels of services.

In central areas, the pressure on land and cost of housing become prohibiting to more and more people. And municipalities and county councils foresee that the rising population is going to cause an increasing gap between the demand for public services and available funding.

• We use a lot of land and a lot of energy to move about. The result of urban sprawl and a random urban development is widespread and scattered built up areas, which require extensive everyday transportation - to work, schools and leisure activities - and largely by private cars.

• Technical installations - such as road, rail and power transmission lines - split up the remaining natural environment to an ever-increasing extent. This is impeding the habitat for many species and threatening the biological diversity.

But we have for some time been working on improvements

Presently, a government appointed commission is looking into the planning regulations in our Planning and Building Act. The chairman of this commission (Professor Hans Chr. Bugge) is participating today, and will elaborate on this theme afterwards.

In particular we are looking for keys and enhanced planning at regional level. First of all we would like to:

• Strengthen the horizontal sector co-ordination at regional level
• Take better care of over all national issues in municipal planning and land use decisions
• Strengthen co-ordination of spatial policies across municipal borders, particularly aiming at integrated policies for urban development, land use and public transport.

In this context we find the CEMAT Guiding Principles on horizontal co-operation with sector policies having significant geographical impacts, very reassuring. This should enable the planning authorities to assess the spatial compatibility of infrastructure, economic, financial and social policies.

We also find inspiration in the principles of subsidiarity, reciprocity and vertical co-operation between the tiers of government. According to the principles, the regional tier should be the one responsible, in conjunction with local authorities and the population, for ensuring that spatial development is sustainable and coherent.

• Also in our own country we must work continuously to strengthen local and regional democracies. In our regional planning, we are now encouraging the establishment of regional arenas and partnerships among the actors concerned. On these arenas the regional actors themselves should carry out the analysis required, define the spatial goals and commit themselves to implementation.

• The regional policy decisions must influence on national sector policies and municipal policies, according to the principles of reciprocity. This is going to impose a great challenge on many government sectors and municipalities. They shall have to lift their horizon, widen their outlook and consider how their activities may gain strength by being applied in conjunction with the actions of others.

We are going to translate the final version of the CEMAT Guiding Principles into Norwegian. Then there is no excuse left for not knowing the content and ideas.

This document will be:

• distributed to relevant ministries, regional and local authorities, and appropriate research or educational institutions.
• integrated in policy proposals on regional development to our national parliament.

I foresee that this could be the start of a process, in which we elaborate guidelines for the national application of the CEMAT principles in Norway.

And now to conclude

In my opinion, it is very important that we keep these issues on the agenda. By networking nationally and internationally, we should exchange experiences and facilitate mutual learning. On our part, we would like to follow up through our co-operation within the North Sea, VASAB, CEMAT etc.

Thank you very much for your attention, and I wish us all the best of luck with our seminar.