Compact Urbanism in Small, Remote Settlements
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Compact Urbanism in Small, Remote Settlements: Decoupling Urban Theory from Scale Ryan Gever Master Thesis in Human Geography Department of Sociology and Human Geography Faculty of Social Sciences UNIVERSITY OF OSLO May 2019 II Compact Urbanism in Small, Remote Settlements: Decoupling Urban Theory from Scale Ryan Gever III Copyright Ryan Gever 2019 Compact Urbanism in Small, Remote Settlements: Decoupling Urban Theory from Scale Ryan Gever http://www.duo.uio.no/ Print: Reprosentralen, Universitetet i Oslo IV Abstract The compact city has become one of the staple concepts in 21st-century urban theory and policy, as it aims for a more sustainable future, considering contemporary global environmental and climate crises as well as rapid global urbanization. Meanwhile, urbanization is not only increasing its impact on the world but also resulting in an increasingly heterogenous global settlement pattern of urban spaces, including the mobility of theoretical and policy tools across this landscape of settlements. Nevertheless, like many urban theories and policies, the compact city is primarily discussed, practiced, and researched in cities that surpass scalar thresholds that some hold as required to be deemed urban and worthy of consideration, thus not capturing the full variety of settlements worldwide but, instead, a progressively smaller fraction of them. As a result, most smaller settlements – regardless of their recognition as a city or not – are less equipped to engage with compact city theories and policies. Bias towards large-scale settlements risks that smaller settlements will be overlooked entirely when it comes to compact transformations, or that smaller settlements will fail in attempts to do so because of a lack of understanding of small-scale settlements and how compact qualities uniquely interact with such scalar contexts. Therefore, this thesis reframes the compact city as a theory of compact urbanism, applicable in settlements of any scale, and builds a theoretical and policy platform for compact urbanism in small, remote settlements, which represent a scalar context that is furthest from those that dominate the urban field. This is done using qualitative and comparative analyses of data collected from walking interviews with laypeople in four remote settlements, each with under 10,000 inhabitants, in Northern Norway and the Scottish Highlands and Islands. The findings demonstrate how the scale of small, remote settlements uniquely influence many aspects of compact urbanism, framed through the characteristics of density, mixed land use, and non-car dependency, and how these qualities should be accounted for in compact transformations in small, remote settlements. Ultimately, this thesis makes a case for why scale needs to be decoupled from urban theory altogether in favor of an urban theory, including but not limited to compact urbanism, that recognizes the complexity of scale in the study of the material and social dimensions of global settlements. V VI Acknowledgements Sentimentality is not my strong suit, and I have rolled my eyes at numerous acknowledgements pages over the years. But now having produced a text of my own that would not have been possible without the contributions of others, I get it. Binding this document without proper recognition of those people would be simply wrong. First and foremost, I must thank my adviser Michael Gentile for keeping this ship steered, providing expertise throughout the journey, and vanquishing self-fabricated forecasts of storms ahead. Further, thank you to the entire faculty of human geography at the University of Oslo for your intellectual support, especially Per Gunnar Røe and Karen O’Brien, as well as the financial support for my fieldwork expenses. As an American immigrant in Norway, I feel obligated to thank the Norwegian state and public for your investment in higher education so that the decision to further your education does not require financial peril for education seekers like myself. I’d also like to thank my fellow master students, especially those who lived these past two years with me in our reading room, for the community and peer support. Next, no gesture of gratitude is enough to acknowledge my contacts in each of the case settlements who were the vital piece in the data collection process and tolerated my anxiety along the way. And last, I must acknowledge my husband for, well, just about everything in my life these days, and my family in both Norway and the United States. Having people who care, both near and far, has been an invaluable resource. In case anyone is reading this with a weakness for sentimentality like myself, I mean this. These people are more than deserving of a place in this text. Though, critiques and disagreements should be directed to me and not them! VII VIII Table of Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... V Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. VII Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................... IX List of Figures .......................................................................................................................... XI List of Tables ........................................................................................................................... XII 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Thesis Overview .......................................................................................................... 2 2 Theoretical Framework ...................................................................................................... 5 2.1 Urban Theory and the Notion of Scale ........................................................................ 5 2.2 Compact Urban Theory ............................................................................................. 14 2.3 Knowledge and Policy Mobilities ............................................................................. 25 2.4 Summary: The Theoretical Framework ..................................................................... 28 3 Methods ............................................................................................................................ 30 3.1 Abductive and Grounded Qualitative Research ........................................................ 30 3.2 Comparative Research ............................................................................................... 33 3.3 Case Settlement Selection ......................................................................................... 34 3.4 Data Collection .......................................................................................................... 38 3.5 Data Analysis ............................................................................................................. 45 3.6 Reliability, Validity, and Ethical Issues .................................................................... 48 4 Case Settlements .............................................................................................................. 52 4.1 Kirkwall ..................................................................................................................... 52 4.2 Stornoway .................................................................................................................. 54 4.3 Hammerfest ............................................................................................................... 57 4.4 Svolvær ...................................................................................................................... 60 5 Understanding Small and Remote .................................................................................... 64 5.1 Identity Spans Wide Area .......................................................................................... 64 5.2 Distance Perceived in Time, Not Length ................................................................... 66 5.3 Concern for Mobility Supply, Not Mobility Demand ............................................... 67 5.4 Feel ‘Too Small to Matter’ ........................................................................................ 68 5.5 Life with Available Land on the Periphery ............................................................... 70 IX 6 Small and Remote Perceptions of Compact Urbanism .................................................... 72 6.1 Access is Key to the Center, but Also to Nature ....................................................... 72 6.2 Mixing (Some) Land Uses Positive (Only) in the Center ......................................... 73 6.3 Compact Residence is for the Single and Elderly, Not Families ............................... 75 6.4 Subtleties to Built Form and Aesthetics .................................................................... 77 6.5 Compact Prospects Limited in a Car-Dependent Paradigm ...................................... 79 7 Comparative Findings and Provincialization ................................................................... 81 7.1 Placement in Economic and Demographic Cycles .................................................... 81 7.2 Degree of Material and Social Transformation Required ........................................