With regard to the building of the new Norwegian National Opera, should cultural matters or urban development have the upper hand?

The ‘Bilbao effect’ was a key argument in the debate over Oslo’s new opera house, which opened in April 2008. Geographer Marius Hofseth presents Norway’s largest urban development project in light of political debates on the role of culture in urban development.

Following the opening of the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao in 1997 and its widely acclaimed success as a stimulant for urban renewal, the argument about a ‘Bilbao effect’ in Oslo was widely cited. The city of Oslo hosted a ‘Bilbao conference’ in the city hall to develop these ideas further.

Thus, the debate on the new opera house revolved around sharply diverging views on the role of art and culture in society. In addition, discourses in the media have highlighted issues of urban planning and architecture, making the harbour areas available for other purposes, and issues concerning the motorway tunnel.

Belief in the ‘Bilbao effect’ was, however, not universal. Critics claimed that the proponents displayed an uncritical and ill-reflected belief in the applicability of imported theories, based on political and ideological grounds rather than professional expertise. In some critical discourses it has been argued that this way of developing cities cannot create open and inclusive urban spaces. The economic aspects of the development project, it has been argued, would run against the ideal of creating a district with a diverse population. Following the decision to build the opera house, leftist critics claimed that the share of moderately priced dwellings had become far too low. The development project could end up as a publicly sponsored eviction of low-income households from the area, it has been argued.

By uniting several discourses that may not have had sufficient impact in themselves, the discourse on the ‘Opera as a means for something more than itself’ managed to gain the predominant position. At the end of the day, the successful argument was the idea of achieving renewal for the challenged central-eastern districts while at the same time finding gainful use for a central but underutilised part of the city.

An analysis of the media coverage suggests that culture can be used as a lever for city development – not necessarily because of the inherent qualities of culture and art as such, but because of the role they can play by being coupled to other elements of urban development. It seems reasonable to assume that the development of the Bjørvika area and the rest of the ‘Fjord city’ would have proceeded at a far slower pace had the opera house been located on the site near to the city hall, in the western part of the city. The Bjørvika proposal clearly gained momentum through the combination of city- and national-level politics. Alliances were formed between politicians on the two levels, thereby increasing the general awareness of the urban development issues in question and securing the necessary political and financial support for the project to proceed.

01/03/2008

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Urban Policy > Urban environment > Urban renewal

City centre development