2021 Pecha Kucha from NLA Norway: A new Street Design Manual as tool towards a more RESILIENT, HEALTHY and ENDURING EVERYDAY streetscape in the City of Oslo, Norway
Norwegian Association of Landscape Architects Pecha Kucha: A new Street Design Manual as tool towards a more RESILIENT, HEALTHY and ENDURING EVERYDAY streetscape in the City of Oslo, Norway
The annual Norwegian Landscape Award for 2021 bestowed on the new Street Design Manual for the City of Oslo marks a clear break with Norway’s 70-year-old tradition of prioritizing cars before pedestrians. Thus laying the groundwork for others to do the same.
The new Street Design Manual for Oslo, dated March 2020, commissioned by City of Oslo, Agency for Urban Environment and Transport, is a revolution. The Street Design Manual is the first municipal mandatory guide for urban spaces and streets that puts pedestrians on top of the traffic hierarchy. The new Street Design Manual also sets the requirements for a more sustainable surface water management. From now on, the public can demand that vegetation, surface water management and pedestrians to be prioritized over cars and hard edges. This represents the “green revolution in full acceleration”, the award jury commented, and expressed faith in the contents of the projects and in its potential to inspire the rest of the country.
The new Street Design Manual represent a complicated interdisciplinary fieldwork. Landscape architects, along with biologists, water and sewage engineers, traffic planners and urban planners have freed themselves completely from old thoughts and created a very new way of thinking of “public streets” where holistic solutions are prioritized over individual field’s considerations. The City of Oslo takes a bold lead ahead of both the Norwegian Public Roads Administration and all other
municipal governments in Norway who are still stuck in car-based regulations.
For more information, please contact the City of Oslo, Agency for Urban Environment and Transport at postmottak@bym.oslo.kommune.no or COWI Norway firmapost@cowi.no
