Public Sektor PhD-Project
The Municipal Room of Arendal
The overall strategic societal plan for Arendal based on the civil society strategy;
“Co-creation in Arendal” and the 17 UN Sustainability goals.
This case has to do with the civil society strategy as the basis for the Municipal Societial Plan. In the planning strategy for the municipality of Arendal 2015-2019, it is pointed out as mentioned in the introduction, that the societal goals in the overall municipal plan should undergo a revision in order to better interact with the citizens. Politicians and the administration in the municipality want to collaborate and involve the civil society in this process. It is a more abstract process than a land-use plan. The last overall societal plan was implemented in 2012, but without a broad involvement in the process of the definition of goals for the municipality as a whole, and for future development. What was adopted was the establishment of the collaborative project “With a Heart For Arendal”, based on a desire to establish a common meeting place for knowledge sharing and efforts to make Arendal a better place to live for everyone.
I have called this case ”The Municipal Room” or the “The Demos-space” because it is framing the future of the inhabitants in many ways. It has to do with their possibilities to have an impact on the goals and strategies, which is maybe not always developed in the most democratic and informative way. The municipal planning committee and city council has therefore been drawing up a strategic plan for this process, a civil society strategy; “Co-creation in Arendal”, where experience from resource mobilisation in the projects With a Heart For Arendal has been forming the basis for a collaborative and inviting planning process. The planning process is based on UN’s sustainability goals, and with topics and actions chosen together with the inhabitants.
The process of the renewal of the overall municipal societal plan started by the end of 2018. Working groups from administrative and political groups, and from organisations have worked together, and I have taken part in the process through action-research. The overall research questions of this PhD-project will be addressed, and interviews, document analysis and close readings, together with other project and planning documents will be analysed. Participation both in the process and through the methods of collection of data, collection of historic narratives and the discussion of new future narratives is going to be fasilitated as part of this PhD project, and the action research connected to this project. Several workshops have been conducted with broad involvement, in addition to a study trip to Aarhus 12.-13.th of March 2018 for the working groups. Various methods and tools will be tested out in the mobilisation process and the collection of data including a digital public meeting that has been open from the start of the process until the proposal of the final plan. The project wishes to explore how experience from ongoing mobilisation and planning processes in the other cases could inspire and guide the form and content of the new societal plan in Arendal. The UN’s sustainability is downscaled to the local level, and through the process the goal is to have a shared understanding of how to achieve sustainable results, quality and attractivity.