| dc.description.abstract | The main goal of the project ‘Housing needs and imbalances in large cities” is to enhance the knowledge underpinning the planning of housing and the built environment in the so-called “big Norwegian cities”: Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger, Kristiansand. The project’s three studies are presented in this research report. Lena Magnusson Turner’s study is an analysis of household headship rates and household formation among three groups: young adults (aged 20-35), seniors above 60 years and people with immigrant background. The study’s empirical backbone is a database constructed by Statistics Norway for the research projected ‘Neighbourhoods at risk’, funded by the Research Council of Norway. The database includes demographic-, geographic- and socioeconomic information for all inhabitants living in selected municipalities in the period from 1990 to2011, as well as data from the Norwegian census of housing and people for 2001 and 2011. Magnusson Turner asks what mechanisms drive population growth in the five largest cities in Norway, and analyses changes over time in household formation among young adults, individuals above sixty years old, and individuals with an immigrant background. She argues for the importance of focusing on both the number of households, the household composition and the household headship rate in analyses of housing needs. In addition, the heterogeneity that has emerged in Norway’s largest cities because of high immigration also has a profound impact on the housing market. Even among immigrants who have lived for several years in in Norway and their descendants, there is a tendency for traditional household and residential patterns to endure. In the Norwegian housing sector, this is a novel phenomenon. Viggo Nordvik analyses the preferences of the population in the large Norwegian cities for certain residential areas. He employs household mobility, house prices and rent levels as indicators for assessing a neighbourhood’s relative popularity amongst consumers. Based on these indicators he concludes that the peripheries play an important role in the ‘division of labour’ of residential areas: some neighbourhoods attract families with children, others are popular among couples and singles. Most importantly, Nordvik argues that there is commercial potential for housing construction in the periphery of the largest Norwegian cities. Jardar Sørvoll studies the political debate on housing construction at the national level and in the large cities between 2011 and 2013. He draws on an analytical framework, stressing that all relevant political actors accept, explicitly or implicitly, that the housing sector is conceptually situated between the market and the welfare state. Thus, even in the era of market based housing construction (1990 - ) and deregulated housing policy, politicians formulate political goals for the housing market. Sørvoll argues that there is a discrepancy between rhetoric and policy in the Norwegian debate on housing construction: the goal of increasing housing construction is not matched by powerful political reforms. In addition, he claims that both right- and left-wing politicians are in danger of obscuring the power of housing producers. Politicians do not have the necessary carrots or sticks at their disposal. Housing producers only build in where and when they find it profitable, regardless of the promises of politicians. | en |
