Doctor Thesis

Doctoral theses at NTNU, 2019:74 Savis Gohari Savis Gohari Governance in the planning and decision-making process. The co-location case of university campuses in Trondheim, Norway (2000-2013) ISBN 978-82-326-3750-8 (printed version) ISBN 978-82-326-3751-5 (electronic version) ISSN 1503-8181 Doctoral theses at NTNU, 2019:74 NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology Faculty of Architecture and Design Department of Architecture and Planning Savis Gohari Governance in the planning and decision-making process. The co-location case of university campuses in Trondheim, Norway (2000-2013) Thesis for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor Trondheim, February 2019 Norwegian University of Science and Technology Faculty of Architecture and Design Department of Architecture and Planning NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology Thesis for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor Faculty of Architecture and Design Department of Architecture and Planning © Savis Gohari ISBN 978-82-326-3750-8 (printed version) ISBN 978-82-326-3751-5 (electronic version) ISSN 1503-8181 Doctoral theses at NTNU, 2019:74 Main supervisor: Professor Tor Medalen Department of Architecture and Planning Faculty of Architecture and Design Co-supervisor: Professor Rolee Aranya Department of Architecture and Planning Faculty of Architecture and Design Printed by Skipnes Kommunikasjon as Dedicated to my lovely parents “Without the inspiration, drive, and support that you have given me, I might not be the person I am today.” III Executive summary Trondheim's identity has been closely associated with the development of knowledge and education. To put sustainable knowledge-based development into practice, the political mainstream is to open up the campus areas of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) to the outside world and integrate their activities and functions with the rest of the city. Correspondingly, a large part of the higher education and research institutions is located in the area close to Trondheim city center, which can facilitate the goal of integration between city and campuses. Since NTNU was built in 1996, a co-location of campuses in the Gløshaugen-Elgeseter-gate area, (close to the city center) has been on the agenda. The co- location of campuses was also seen as a strategy for increasing the synergy and collaboration between different disciplines, under the influence of the Norwegian higher education reform, the Hernes Commission. In 2000, the desire to co-locate the campuses was reinforced by the new trend of knowledge-based urban development in Trondheim. Therefore, the campus development has been undertaken through the cooperation of different actors, in order to work and collaborate on the co-location plan. One of the most challenging issues of the co-location idea has been to move (re-locate) both the administration and education affairs of NTNU’s Dragvoll campus to the Gløshaugen- Elgeseter-gate area (a distance of 5 km). Such a process of moving has been an intricate evolution that has brought different social, economic and ecological interests into conflict with political interests and power issues. In 2006, the case of co-location was stopped, and, instead, the rehabilitation of Dragvoll campus (the two-campus model) was raised. After six years of inaction, the idea of the co-location of campuses was revisited and approved by the government. Today, the co-location of campuses is in the process of implementation. The latent conflict between these contrasting interests and power levels has led to prolongation, recurring controversies, stagnation, and moments of adaptation in the planning and decision- making processes for more than 15 years. This reflects the complexity of inter-relationships among actors, the way actors affect and are affected by negotiation and renegotiation procedures and discourses, and their asymmetrical power relations (Healey, 1997). In this regard, strengthening the institutional governance, the positions of actors in a network, in which they interact to influence the outcomes of public policies, is critical for taking cooperative action, and for the implementation of the policies. IV The main focus of this research is on ‘governance’ in a complex planning and decision-making process. The co-location of university campuses is the typical case of governance, which represents a complex, uncertain and multi-layered system. The main research question is how the governance structure and process influenced the campus development in Trondheim from 2000 to 2013. In order to understand governance in a complex, multi-layered and non-linear context, this thesis focuses on the transformation of governance structures and functions in the planning and decision-making processes of the co-location case in Trondheim. Looking at the planning and decision-making process conveys how the original intentions have deviated towards more biased goals or even turned in a distinctly different direction over time. In this regard, the researcher needs to go beyond legal frameworks and formal institutions and processes, to understand the political structure underpinning the (informal) functioning of governance in terms of different actors’ roles, interests, resources, potential conflict and power/influence. This thesis tries to identify how different influential actors have fostered or inhibited the process of co-location at different rounds of planning and decision-making and in response to the social and political dynamics behind the university development. The transformation of governance structure and function in different periods can demonstrate the extent to which governance models were/are impractical, inefficient or misunderstood. To answer the main question, the researcher needs to understand the change/halt of the co- location plan in 2006 and identify why and how the process departed from such a formally approved decision (in 2006) afterwards. Therefore, the sub-question is ‘Why did the planning and decision-making process in the case of co-location change direction overtime?’ This question explicitly means: Why was the co-location case stopped in 2006 and why had no major change/development taken place at Dragvoll between 2006 and 2012? Why and how was the case of co-location raised again in 2012? Why was the opposition silent in the last round? The theoretical framework of this is based on the assumption that governance structure and function are interconnected and dynamic and that an in-depth understanding of a complex governance system requires a temporal, iterative and interactive approach. In this regard, this thesis combines the ‘structural-functionalism’ planning approach and the temporal-iterative ‘rounds model of decision-making’ to investigate the transformation of governance structure V at different levels (of university governance and urban governance) and governance process at different rounds of planning and decision-making. The functional components of governance include interest, resource, power, conflict and resolution methods. In this research, 25 interviews were taped, transcribed, coded and analyzed, both qualitatively and quantitatively, through a ‘Qualitative Data Analysis’ tool. The coding process was inductive, as new fragments of data were constantly compared to previous segments of data in terms of similarities and differences. This thesis adopts an embedded single case study, which looks at three levels of governance: understructure, middle structure, and superstructure. The units of analysis are the individual and collective actors’ discourses and artefacts (official documents, newspapers, books, etc.). Through discourse analysis, first, the actors, who played key roles in each period, then, their goals, interests, resources and power relations are identified. Interviews, archival records and documentation data are combined to trace down and illustrate the informal networks, leverage practices and coalition networks of different actors, in order to understand the change processes over time. Lastly, the casual interrelations between actors’ attributes are analyzed, and the external and internal factors that shape the transformation of governance for ensuring the city-regional development are discovered. This has come under the scrutiny of the social and political dynamics behind the university’s development in the case of Trondheim/Norway. This thesis has discovered that the university governance failed in 2006, due to the misalignment of leadership and power between NTNU and the Ministry of Education and the ensuing uncertainties, on one hand, and internal conflicts at the university, on the other. In that time, the governance structure of different levels was horizontal and self-organized, in which the university had dealt with the planning process autonomously. NTNU, however, did not alone have sufficient knowledge or capacity to control the process alone, and its freedom, power and authority were limited by its legal and financial dependency on the Ministry of Education. On the other hand, despite the positive collaboration between the university administration and city-region partners, the academic staff considered the involvement of the city and region a gross interference and felt estranged from the administration. This resulted in a bitter and highly problematic split within the university. Simultaneously, the ministry had difficulty in controlling the process because NTNU’s norm was to have a large degree of discretion to deal with its work. Therefore, there were some

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