Marigold beds and villa horses

Abstract

A number of rural municipalities in Norway suffer from population decline. In an effort to attract new residents, local authorities would like to offer large, attractive and secluded building sites. Moreover, such developments are occurring at the same time as Norway is attempting to reformulate its agricultural policy. The new multifunctional agriculture policy (‘Landbruk pluss’) denotes the Norwegian Government’s new thinking. It seeks to promote new business, jobs and attractive housing schemes – in addition to reducing regulatory complexity. However, local councils may potentially run into problems putting this new policy into practice because the low -density housing model that they espouse in many ways contradicts traditional planning policy, which has tended to favour highdensity housing. Does this mean that low-density housing could become a ‘planning problem’? This is the question discussed in this article. The article also focuses on the question of population change in Norway over the last decade: What kind of population distribution pattern can we detect – and thus, can a new housing policy have any influence on the population distribution pattern?