IN-PERSON Manchester Livable Cities

Abstract

Politicians can set lofty plans for how a city is to transform and planners can create opportunities for this to happen in the plans they create. However, it is the property owner and developer that can give effect to these plans and hopefully achieve the ambitious targets that have been set. The reality is often quite different to this. One of the pitfalls of regulatory planning in this context is that individual development proposals are evaluated up against the prevailing plan and ultimately against the politicians understanding of how this fits with their ambitions for the city’s future. Decisions are made in the context of the existing environment and perhaps an unclear idea of how adjoining sites might change within the framework of the municipal plan. Unless plans are available this is based on pure speculation. The paper will explore opportunities for collaboration between local property owners. It will consider the case of Haakon VII street in Trondheim Norway. The project has convened a series of dialogue meetings between property owners along the street, county officials who are managing transformation of transportation through the area and municipal officials. This forum is a unique setting for open dialogue between key actors in efforts to make the place more attractive to walk and spend time in. The research highlights the conditions that foster and support open dialogue and examine how this has led to at least one (to date) areawide collaboration. in a context of stretched municipality resources, this bottom up initiative is welcomed by local body planners and prepares the ground for development that is coordinated across private boundaries and along street frontages.