Structuring neighborhood space : An investigation into the production of neighborhood space as planned, practiced and lived in post-industrial Norway

Abstract

Daily life has subsumed a multiplicity of city environs and appropriated urban space as the stage for everyday life while global forces have reciprocally subsumed the city as an economic space for the investment of accumulated capital and restructured urban space as a global phenomenon. On the one hand, daily life has expanded beyond the traditional conceptualization of nearness and appropriated the city as an everyday space. And on the other hand, capitalism has expropriated the city as part of the global market and altered the space in which everyday life is practiced. The relationship between these two polarization of urban space is the focus of this inquiry. The research specifically explores the subject of neighborhood as situated within this paradoxical dualism, analyzing the production of neighborhood space as informed by urban development and daily life.

The research examines the social forces structuring contemporary neighborhood space, specifically, asking how development practices produce neighborhood space as an architectural phenomenon and conversely, asking how daily life appropriates the physical space of nearness as an everyday phenomenon and structures the identity of place. As daily life continues to expand beyond the neighborhood and global markets continue to produce urban form, how is neighborhood space structured?

The question is purposefully structured as a dualism to reflect the structuralism of global society and the agency of everyday life. The research examines urban space as both created by the capitalistic processes operating on the city and by the people living everyday life within the city.