1.Introduction

Acknowledgments

This report would not have been written without those who volunteered to be part of our fieldwork. They provided us with tremendous knowledge and made us aware of many socioeconomic issues in Trondheim. Among the organizations that helped us, we would like to thank: Innovation Norway, NTNU Business School, Work Work, and the Adult Education Center in Trondheim. We would also like to thank all the citizens we interviewed: Marianne Ingeborg Karlsen, Kristin Susanne Karlsen, Karl Elmer Sagmo, Tyler Stewart, Espen Meisfjord, Sondre Yggeseth, Jostein Storøy and Sigrund Stendal. Finally, we would like to thank those who supervised and helped us improve our work: David Smith (the class’s instructor), Marcin Sliwa (the class’s research assistant), and Sabrine Scherzer (Phd candidate at NTNU).

1. Introduction

1.2. What is our report about?

The aim of this report is to assess the diversity of livelihood and employment and evaluate economic sustainability as part of the resilience framework of the city of Trondheim, Norway. After assessment and analysis, we suggest project ideas for each of the areas of study with possible implementations. The report is the result of a three weeks fieldwork conducted in Trondheim during February 2018. We interviewed different stakeholders, experts and citizens to investigate the abovementioned areas of study. This was an academic exercise for our Urban Resilience course where we had to assess urban resilience in Trondheim based on the City Resilience Index (CRI), provided by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Figure 11: City Resilience Index (Rockefeller Foundation)

The City Resilience Index aims at assessing the resilience of a city in a holistic approach. Between twelve multidisciplinary goals that cover topics ranging from infrastructure and economy to society and decision making, we were was assigned to assess the two above mentioned goals: diversity of livelihoods and employment and sustainable economy. While doing our fieldwork, other students at the Urban Ecological Planning master’s program at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) were also doing their fieldwork and assessing other aspects of urban resilience in Trondheim. We were six groups and we investigated two goals each. Therefore, joining our reports together would form a holistic and multidisciplinary assessment of urban resilience in Trondheim.

1.2. What are the two goals we studied and how are they related to urban resilience?

1.2.1. Diversity of Livelihoods and Employment

The idea that people should have diverse resources to establish their livelihood started to become an integral part in development studies since Amartya Sen wrote his famous essay on entitlement. Sen explained that every individual in society is entitled to different assets and their ability to sustain a living is dependent on how these assets may be affected during economic shocks and stresses (Sen, 1982). The City Resilience Index which we follow to do our assessment considers having “diverse livelihood opportunities and support mechanisms that allow citizens to proactively respond to changing conditions within their city without undermining their wellbeing” an essential goal to reach a desirable state of urban resilience (CRI, 2015, pg.3). People need to own different properties, have different income generating skills and activities. When they depend on one skill or one activity to produce income, they need to be provided with new opportunities and trainings in case economic conditions change. The better this is done; the more resilient people are to economic shocks and stresses. That is what we want to assess in the context of Trondheim by using indicators that are also provided by the City Resilience Index of the Rockefeller foundation.

1.2.2. Sustainable Economy

People in the city do not only need to diversify their economic skills and opportunities, but they also need a “robust economic system that is critical to sustain the investment that a city needs and able to maintain its infrastructure” (CRI, 2015, pg.5). A sustainable economy should maintain a certain level of production and stability that the inhabitants of the city need. People in the city need to be resilient to shortages in economic productions. Moreover, in a quickly changing world, a sustainable economy is an economy that can always adapt to new conditions and new methods of production through innovation and entrepreneurship. The more people can be creative in starting new businesses when they are in a position of weakness, the more resilient are they in the long run. We will also use indicators provided by the City Resilience Index of the Rockefeller foundation to assess this goal in the context of Trondheim.