Drs. Ivan Svare and Olof Stjernstrom spoke on sustainable citing planning and zoning in the European countries, Norway and Sweden. Dr. Svare spoke to Norway’s heavily dependant economy on fish and oil exports. Fish farms are located all along the west coast. Their location is very important to the success of the farm. The farms must be sheltered, have a strong current to take away the waste, have a good depth, and be within proximity to infrastructure. The southern tip of Norway does not have many farms due to the very narrow fjords and islands. As fish farms require exclusive marine access, planning becomes important.

Zoning in Norway heavily depends on map data. The Norwegians use the scientific scale (speculative to fact) when determining what is in the zoning plan. Features considered to be “fact” (e.g. topography and current infrastructure) will be included in the plan. Undocumented statements (e.g. some outdoor activities and recreational areas) are “speculative” and are therefore not considered in the planning process. If there is no data, or not enough, to back up the importance of a feature, it will not be included in the zoning. For example, if there is biodiversity data in point data format, this is not considered to be a biodiversity area, to be eligible for zoning the data must in polygon format. Polygons that have legal basis are will be considered. When carrying out research it is important that data be packaged in easily accessible and relevant formats for the end user.

As a social scientist, Dr. Stjernstrom shared some of his reflections on planning a city as a social scientist. Social scientists love to problematize, they are always trying to find a problem within a society. They also love to categorize, categorizing is a way of simplifying and making things more understandable. Once you categorize you risk stigmatizing. How can we plan a city for everyone? It is important to include everyone; a city involves different professions and groups. Including everyone involves including all groups. By including all groups of people, you are categorising people, and therefore stigmatizing different groups of people.

Neither presenters’ topics were directly relatable to my project, but I did take away how important spatial data in the correct format can be, and the implications that characterising and grouping can pose. Given the time, I would have asked “is there any cases of a threatened species or ecosystem that were negatively affected by zoning due to lack of data?”