Ensuring Local Community Interests in Market-Oriented Urban Planning? The Role of Local Politicians

In this paper I discuss the role of local politicians in representing, mediating, and balancing growth interests and local community interests in Norway, a country that has introduced market-oriented reforms in urban planning, giving private developers a prominent role. On the basis of a broad survey and qualitative case studies I found that local community actors predominantly confront local politicians, not planners or developers, to have their voices heard. Local community actors have few institutionalized arenas for their voices in the early phases, as mandatory involvement (public hearings, complaints) is to be found only in later phases. Thus, the arenas are predominantly accommodating ‘passive participation’, the opportunity to react and protest only on already formulated proposals. Local politicians have an important role in channelling citizen input into decision making, even if the contact is mostly informal. Developers are given the proactive, constructive role, as almost all municipalities studied have institutionalized arenas for interaction between planners and developers.