Reading Socio-Spatial Interplay - Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i ...

R E A D I N G S O C I O - S P A T I A L I N T E R P L A Y P A R T 2LAYER 3: IMPOSED PERMANENT RESIDENTS“SETTLED SITUATION”This layer of practices is comprised of residents who describe little freedomof action both in time and space. When one does not see alternatives otherthan to continue living where one lives, and by and large limits one’sactivities outside the home to what one finds in the immediate surroundings,one’s practice opportunities to a large extent are dependent upon the localoffers of physical and social arenas. This is not the case with the other twolayers where individual practices both challenge and exceed local offers andattractions. At the same time, the recognition of the neighborhood as arepertoire of limitations and possibilities that one must live with (in theforeseeable future), implies another view of limitations not only in alternativeactions but also for practice opportunities that save one from undesiredconfrontation. This involves other strategies than those used by residents who‘shop’ individual aspects of living in an area for a period.Some of the actors of this layer have moved to the part of town quiterecently, as a result of their life situation having changed: health-wise,economically or family-wise. Many are also remnants from other layers:They once made a choice to live exactly where they live, but time has passedand much has changed. Having lived in an area for a long time brings anotherperspective of change processes in the area than if one has only lived there ashort while: the before-situation for these residents is not the first impressionsand expectations of the newly-arrived, but of the life one had here before, asyoung and active, when one had a family and was professionally active. Inthat perspective it is seldom the case that things were worse before. Anotherdifference also makes itself felt: while the transit residents of Grønland andGrünerløkka also connect choice of residential area with descriptions ofexotic atmosphere, the presence of immigrants in the streets, access toimmigrant stores, etc., some of the older permanent residents have acompletely opposing view of this: it is particularly in the public space that theunfamiliar becomes a threat. Besides, it is not a matter of just any old noman’sland, but the neighborhood one has viewed as one’s own throughout along adult life, where all that one held near and dear gradually disappears andis replaced by something unfamiliar, new and different.A pensioner who has lived in Grünerløkka for 50 years, statesthat he never shops in immigrant stores, “at least not at thePakistani or Turkish because they are expensive and they cheatpeople”. He thinks in general that the stores in the area havebecome much worse. All the foreigners and all the bars and268