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Description
The article builds on two generations of Area Based Initiatives (ABIs) in Trondheim from 2013, that are being implemented in neighborhoods where the Municipality has identified quality of life challenges as well as urban physical degradation. The first program of this kind was implemented in the twin-neighborhoods of Saupstad-Kolstad from 2013 – 2021 and with three new ABIs ongoing in the neighborhoods of Tempe-Sorgenfri, Lademoen and Møllenberg from 2024. ABI as a methodology for urban regeneration has been adopted and promoted by the Norwegian Housing Bank and the State (including the Ministry of Municipal Affairs) for various urban neighborhoods that fare poorly on national quality of life statistics.
Goals of the ABIs in Trondheim have widely acknowledged that cross sectoral and public-private- civil society based partnership models for urban regeneration, such as in the Norwegian ABI model, require both institutional and societal learning and capacity building. Municipal staff involved in the first and second generation of ABIs in Trondheim often reflect more on the “internal” municipal learning than the tangible projects in the localities. Goals of the first generation ABI in Saupstad-Kolstad included: Contribution to interaction, collaboration and coordination across disciplines and sectors; Dialogue, communication and local anchoring and participation in connection with all public activities, competence development and learning.
This article is based on interviews with the municipal staff that have been involved in both generations of ABIs in Trondheim, supplemented by other documentations and evaluations of the first ABI completed in 2021, to present narratives that reflect learning – institutional, inter-institutional and community based – and analyse them in terms of the limits and potentials of their ability to be transformative.
The paper is position in literature related to territorial social innovation (e.g. Van Dyck and Van den Broeck, P., 2013), earlier discussion on the transformative potential of ABIs (e.g. in Hovik et al, 2024) and concepts of critical pedagogy applied to place-making and urban renewal projects (e.g. in Natarajan and Short, 2023).
Some of the findings from the interviews indicate that sustainability of community learning was dependent on the permanence of collective organisations and on individuals. Initiatives involving youth for example were dependent on their continued presence in the neighborhood, while initiatives involving housing cooperatives have led to more continued learning. Some of the barriers to achievement of community learning have been the gap between the strategic goals of the program to build local responsibility and the perception of the community actors that the support and resources made available would support long-term direct transfers. In terms of inter and intra-organisational learning, the impact of the first generation of ABI has been the acceptance of iterative engagement with community groups, anchored in neighborhoods rather than as sectoral engagement at city level. However, despite the demonstration of the benefits of cross-sectoral, place-based engagement in the ABI, the project management group has still had to use substantial resources for anchoring the second generation ABIs internally within the municipality and among the various public and private institutions in the city, putting in doubt the sustainability of organisational learning.
Van Dyck, B, Van den Broeck, P. (2013), Social innovation: a territorial process, chapter 2.4 in “International handbook on social innovation” Eds Moulaert, F., MacCallum, D., Mehmood, A., Hamdouch, A., Edward Elgar
Hovik, S., Legard, S., & Bertelsen, I. M. (2024). Area-based initiatives and urban democracy. Cities, 144, 104638.
Natarajan, L., & Short, M. (2023). Towards an engaged urban pedagogy. Engaged Urban Pedagogy: Participatory practices in planning and place-making, 1.
| Keywords | Transformative participation, social innovation, institutional learning, community learning |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
