Tim Richardson

What role does visualisation—such as images and maps—play in environmental and landscape governance? As pointed out by our late colleague Eirin Hongslo, surprisingly little research has been conducted on what ‘work’ images and maps do in these fields. This special issue draws on her insights, and the wider scholarship on critical cartography and political ecology, to explore how images and maps act as technologies of governance through creating and rationalising space. Through empirical studies ranging from forest governance in the Congo, petroleum exploration in the Arctic, regional planning for coastal zones and mountain areas in Norway, and pastoralist rangelands in southern Africa, the contributors to this special issue bring to light the various ways in which maps and images are visual manifestations of particular assumptions about socio-ecological causal relations, shaping notions and practices of authority and access. We conclude through emphasising the potential for further inquiry.

In conservation planning, maps do important work in producing territories of stronger and weaker protection, and spatially fixing special handling of development. Because of this, mapping and maps are contested, yet there have been few studies of their roles in planning conflicts. The performance of maps in planning processes affecting a wild reindeer habitat in Setesdal, Norway is analysed, asking what is the productive work of maps in planning, how is this work contested, and what are the consequences for the status of the plan itself. The case study centres on a proposal for wind power development, in an area designated in regional planning as a wild reindeer area of national significance. The analysis combines empirical material from interviews, planning documents and observation. The findings show the work that maps do in producing a new conservation territory, changing the basis of planning, yet failing to resolve deep-seated conflicts of interest.

In addition to a primary dwelling, having access to a non-primary dwelling for leisure activities is a mass phenomenon with a long tradition in Norway. This paper questions the Norwegian multi-dwelling lifestyle by critically discussing its climate implications. Based on a questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews with persons having access to non-primary dwellings, the paper analyzes the mobility pattern and housing consumption pattern of the multi-dwelling lifestyle. Two lifestyle groups are distinguished: traditional, and modern multi-dwelling lifestyles. A discussion of the climate implications of the two multi-dwelling lifestyles suggests that the traditional non-primary dwelling lifestyle is less climate harmful than the modern one. Furthermore, informed by the weak and strong sustainability perspectives, the paper suggests two climate policy pathways in order to raise and enrich the debates on climate-friendly development of the multi-dwelling lifestyle.

Urban densification has for some decades been considered as the most relevant strategy for ecological modernization within the field of urban spatial development. Compared to outward urban expansion, densification has important environmental merits, but is not without negative environmental impacts. This paper critically examines how urban densification policies contain an assumption – implicit or explicit – that continual growth, expressed in per capita consumption of building stock and infrastructure, should be accommodated. This is argued to lead to a weakening of environmental sustainability. The Norwegian capital Oslo is used as an example, illustrating the environmental achievements and limitations of the densification strategy. These achievements and limitations are then discussed in the light of theoretical literature on tensions between economic growth and environmental sustainability. The paper concludes with a call for further critical scrutiny of how growth assumptions influence/subtly shape urban sustainability policies.

This paper seeks to contribute to debates on the potential for conservation planning to engage actively with conflict. Current research in conservation planning generally approaches conflict by concentrating on the challenges of securing agreement and consensus. Recent planning literature advocates approaches that are more open to conflict. In the analysis of a Norwegian regional planning process for wild reindeer conservation, we examine how planning authorities handled conflict, and in particular how planning documents portrayed conflicts expressed during the planning process. Findings show that the aim of reaching regional consensus limited the scope of planning, and led to the exclusion of difficult issues and opposing views. Instead of engaging actively with conflict, the planning authority framed opposing positions as unplannable, and failed to recognise them as legitimate. This contributed to weakening of the legitimacy of the regional plan when put to the test.

This chapter analyses the role of the Oresund Region in the new spatial policy of the European Union. The main argument develops around an understanding of the interplay between new representations of space, institutions and practices of European spatial planning and their potential contribution to European political integration. The chapter looks into the Øresund Region as a 'transnational laboratory' for the making of European space. It focuses on the potential of the new spatial scale of cross-border institution building, transgressing national boundaries, to contribute to European integration. The chapter looks into two ways of branding the territorial identity of the region, namely as 'Medicon Valley' and as a 'Human Capital'. It closes with some reflections on the significance of this new context for policy development to European integration at the regional level in general, and on the meaning of such a development for the Nordic regions in particular.

This chapter focuses on how spatialities get constructed in spatial policy making, and considers how these construction processes might be conceptualised and analysed. The overall argument is that the analysis of spatial policy discourses will benefit from using a combined framework of concepts and techniques of discourse analysis, together with an understanding of the social construction of space and spatiality. The chapter illustrates how new spatial policy discourses create new systems of meaning about space, based in this case on the language and ideas of polycentric urban systems and hyper mobility. It shows how this discourse becomes institutionalised in a new set of spatial practices shaping European space and identity. The chapter examines the treatment of frictionless mobility in emerging spatial policy discourse in the European Union. It aims show the benefit of bringing cultural sociology to bear on the analysis of spatial policy discourses.

The article scrutinizes planners’ stories of innovation in contemporary public transport planning in three Scandinavian contexts (Denmark, Sweden and Norway). This analysis is accomplished by adapting Judith Butler’s post-structural feminist critical theory on performativity to the planning context. This theoretical framework is used to illuminate how planning is dynamically renewed, revised and consolidated over time by the individual routine actions of planners. From this perspective, the research identifies a set of repetitive acts – as recognizing specific windows of opportunity, anticipate and respond to political signals and create arguments and means of communication and persuasion – that constitute the contemporary transformation of professional practice in relation to planning politics. This analytics of performativity reveals how professional planning practices engage with transformative capacities of reshaping, re-enacting and re-experiencing guidance for the future within a set of meanings and forms of legitimation. These findings are intended to contribute to present and future planning practice and education in Scandinavian countries and elsewhere.