About the lectures
The first part of the lecture will discuss gentrification as a contested and strongly contextual phenomenon. Exploring the case of newly developed densification areas in Oslo, Cavicchia will discuss two main issues. The first concerns the concept of exclusionary pressure as a way to define how gentrification-like phenomena might take place in prevalent homeownership contexts. The second concerns the links between urban interventions and gentrification-like dynamics, which are context-dependent and strongly related to housing policy frameworks.
Grut will then discuss how area based policies and strategies can be used as urban development tools to strengthen the livability and upbringing environment in vulnerable areas in the city. Grut explores how place-based challenges may trigger ideas and joint capacities among inhabitants and other urban actors, across the public, civic, private and academic sectors through inclusionary social, structural and physical interventions.
About the speakers
Rebecca Cavicchia, is a research fellow at the Nordic research institute Nordregio. She has a background in Architecture and holds a Ph.D. in urban and regional planning from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Her research interests comprise urban sustainability, housing inequalities, housing affordability, gentrification, socio-spatial justice, urban policy, and governance. She is particularly interested in the social implications of urban sustainability strategies.
Kjersti Grut, is a social geographer with masters in urban development from the University of Oslo and the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. She has worked more than twenty years for Oslo municipality, with experience from the Planning and Building Agency, Gamle Oslo City District and the city council's department for urban development. For the past seven years, she has worked with urban revitalization through area based programs, in particular Områdeløft Grønland and Tøyen. She is also a board member of Habitat Norway, a branch of the Norwegian Housing and City Planning Association (Norsk BOBY).