By focusing on the neighborhood of Tøyen in Oslo, Norway, this project addresses the challenges of urban injustice by analyzing invisible infrastructures – including social forces, ecological systems, and the mutual embeddedness of the former in the latter, and vice versa.
At a time when social scientists are increasingly confronted with the limitations of their insights generated by the workings of social power and ecological degradation, and when natural scientists are confronted with the limitations of their disciplinary achievements through the intrusion of the social dimension in problematics previously assumed to reside within their disciplinary scope, the need for transdisciplinary approaches, is becoming increasingly urgent.
Two major crises confront the world today. The first is the crisis of ecological degradation. The second is the crisis of inequality. This threatens to undermine economic growth, political stability, and act as a hindrance to the implementation of policies needed to counteract environmental degradation. Both of these ongoing and potentially enlarged crises intersect in urban space. Their causes and imprints are evident in cities around the globe. Redesigning cities will play a major role in counteracting socioecological existential risks.
The novelty inherent in this project resides in its combination of transdisciplinary research, involving the collection and analysis of a broad range of data sources, drawing on the disciplinary toolboxes available in the natural sciences, social sciences, and architectural design; and the implementation of user-driven and constructive interventions in the realm of urban planning and policy development through community exhibitions, investigations of public sentiment, and architectural design. The timeliness of the project lies in its efforts to explore and analyze the role played by cities in contributing to several of the most profound problems confronting humanity today.