There are many positive things to say about the newly built areas along the fjord in Oslo. The so-called Fjordbyen has opened up new, beautiful urban areas – squares, bathing areas, restaurants, culture and play areas – for the whole city. The enormous urban development projects have made Oslo a richer city.
Oslo has many challenges, most of them in the east.
At the same time, there is no doubt that Fjordbyen has become an exclusive area, where only the most well-off can afford to buy a place to live. The area is poorly connected to the rest of the Gamle Oslo district, which is struggling with living conditions challenges. A golden ghettoAp politician in the district Mats Kvaløy-Bjørbekk has called Fjordbyen. Unfortunately, that is an accurate description.
Now the last parts of Fjordbyen are to be developed, at Filipstad and Grønlikaia. SV proposed in Dagsavisen this week that at least 25 percent of the homes in the remaining development areas should be non-commercial, in order to create a more diverse living environment. Any proposal that makes it possible even for people without the most well-stocked bank accounts to live in these new districts should be welcomed with open arms. But the bourgeois city council is of a different opinion.
“I don’t buy SV’s premise in this matter; that the areas along the sea are uniform and exclusionary”, says city councilor for urban development, James Stove Lorentzen (H) to Dagsavisen. That is an absurd statement. All statistics show that SV’s premise is correct: the population in Fjordbyen is prosperous and well-grown, fewer children live there than the average for the city, and there is little diversity.
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Stove Lorentzen’s statement is a good example of social blindness in the right-wing city council. On the eastern edge, which struggles with a number of social challenges, high and dense buildings are to be built, while residents on the western edge are listened to when they do not want high-rise buildings in their area. The examples are several.
It is perhaps not so strange, considering that as well the entire city council lives on the west edge. It probably has something to do with the perspectives. Oslo is a divided city, in many ways. And it is mentally far from west Oslo to the district problems in the inner city on the eastern edge.
It is not certain that SV’s proposal is the solution to make Fjordbyen more diverse. But it is consuming that we have a city council for urban development that does not even recognize the problem that the districts along the fjord are becoming a rich man’s ghetto.
Oslo has many challenges, most of them in the east, and needs a comprehensive policy to combat the problems. Instead, the city is ruled by people who apparently do not realize how life is for many in the city, and are more concerned with cut property taxes for the wealthiest than building a city for everyone.
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