Overview
The city of Trondheim was the occasion for the revival of Growing Up in
Cities: In 1997, celebrations in honor of the millenium of the city's
founding included a large international Urban Childhood Conference, at which
the project was featured. In preparation for this event, the Norwegian
Centre for Child Research at the Norwegian University for Science and
Technology and Childwatch International of Oslo supported the project's
initial development and coordination. To explore the lives of children in a
Scandinavian city, it was natural to focus on this ancient capital of
kings–now a busy university and business center–which lies about one-third of
the way up the coast of Norway, inland along the Trondheim Fjord.
Hanne Wilhjelm, an architect and urban planner, directed the Trondheim
project with the assistance of students from the university's Institute of
Geography. Research was carried out in two locations. Mollenberg, an old
working-class district on the east side of the Nid, a river that rings the
historic city center, had retained much of its stock of attractive wooden
houses built in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the 1970s,
residents had successfully opposed a plan to run a highway through the
district, initiating a continuing effort of renovation and gentrification.
Elgeseter, a middle-class residential area on the south side of the river,
was built up around the close of the nineteenth century. It had been divided
by the highway, and is now dominated by two large and ever-expanding
institutions: the Norwegian University of Science and Technology on its east
side and the Regional Hospital of Trondheim on the west. Both districts had
been scheduled for renewal by the city government, and therefore the
information gathered through Growing Up in Cities was shared with the Office
of Planning in order to draw attention to children's needs.
Thirty-five nine through 13 year olds participated in Growing Up in Cities in
Trondheim, following standard project methods: structured interviews,
drawings, discussions, child-led walks, and child-taken photographs. In
addition, a photogrid was made to document the districts' appearance,
observations were made of children's activities in public places, and
interviews were conducted with some parents as well as staff in the Office of
Planning. At both locations, the children enjoyed considerable freedom to
move about and use local resources, including the city center. Their lives
were strictly scheduled, however, by school, after-school activities,
favorite TV shows, and for some, computer games, and confined by the long
hours of dark in the winter. Therefore during most of the year many children
stayed close to home and the nearby resources of their locality. They did
not face the hostility to adolescents found at the project sites in Australia
and England, but their stories reflected a losing struggle for open space in
competition with cars, in-fill construction, and adults' preference for
neatly managed and controlled gardens and grounds.
See also:
Childrens Landscape - Norway: