Norway Proposes No New Suburban, Drive-To Shopping Malls
by April Streeter, Gothenburg, Sweden 
on 07. 3.08
Malls like this one in Oslo, accessible by tram and on foot, are still okay.
In Norway wages have kept pace with fuel and food price hikes, so car trips haven't yet dropped drastically. To discourage driving, Environment Minister Eric Solheim has now proposed a bill that would forbid shopping centers of 3,000 square meters or more from being built along highways in Norway's suburban centers. Norwegian research has shown that 95 percent of shoppers to suburban malls arrive by car. Shopping centers would still be allowed in areas where public transport is existing or possible. The regulation, if passed, would be retroactive to this July. That 3,000 meter size, according to newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv, is just 1/12th the square footage of the latest IKEA already approved to be built in a suburb of Bergen. The government has also considered forcing shopping centers to charge shoppers to park.
"We want to prevent cities and town centers from dying out because all shopping moves out of the downtown area," Solheim said to newspaper Dagens Nærinigsliv. "And we want to limit the use of cars. We need to change community structures."
Via ::Aftenposten.no (English)
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That's really cool.
The closest mall to me is accessible by public transit/ mass transit but I never see anyone really arrive at the mall by it.
In any case, I think that's a really good idea and I wish more communities were made to where you don't NEED a car to get to every place you need to go.
I would have preferred he take a positive approach and simply insist that "major shopping centers need to be built in locations accessible by public transit" ...
Many times it is just cheaper to acquire land outside a built up area, so there is a temptation to use it in a way to maximize profits rather than to maximize the benefits to the users, and to nature.
Absolutely brilliant! This has been the problem with building highways - you expand access, encourage more people to start taking this or that route, then businesses simply follow to where the people are. There definitely needs to be regulations against big-box developments within a certain proximity of a highway.
Such a regulation, coupled with greenbelts, agricultural land reserves, and incentives to build in town centres - this stuff could revolutionize our cities!
i live in oslo and the problem is there is very little support in public transport to those shopping malls.
nobody is going to shopping mall as the summer here is nice, however,shopping mall sadly seems like kind of the only place for norwegian to hang out in winter...
------author queries ------
Hi, Little Oslo:
Did you mean that the transport out to the malls is not enough - not frequent enough, not enough lines and connections?