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 2between the system of outdoor spaces in the inner parts of thecity and the outskirts of the city. This particularly affects thechildren’s range of activities. It takes more planning andorganization to get the children out to play in the cold and darkseason in this kind of area. As they both work full-time andoften lack the extra energy it takes to go elsewhere, he regretsto admit that their children in the dark seasons spend far toomuch time indoors. “We have friends all over the city: Furtherout kids go out and play on their own all year around, whilekids in this area sit indoors entertaining themselves in front ofdiverse screens while drug addicts and people with fightingdogs have the parks for themselves in the wintertime”. On theother hand, “children in the outskirts seems to have a muchmore organized leisure time, and hopefully we compensate bybeing able to take the children on everyday family outings bybike to museums, cafés, the beach at Bygdøy, parks and alongAkerselva in the summer, while our friends in the outskirts arestuck with their children’s soccer games etc.” For weekendsthey almost always drive out of town, to their cabin or to seefriends or family (#403).As illustrated by some of the previously mentioned interviews fromGrünerløkka, the appreciation of Grünerløkka’s ‘centrality’ is related toproximity to the city and activities downtown, though without living “in themiddle of it” but in what is described as a “village” or “town within the city”.In contrast to informants from the other two study areas, which in generaldescribe centrality as easy access to a wide range of activities all over theurban landscape, a number of informants from Grünerløkka touch uponissues of neighbourhood development in relation to a conception ofGrünerløkka either as a more delimited unit or a dream of the area developinginto a more fully equipped “town in the city”:A designer in his 50s explains his domestic choice byemphasizing the ambition and the ‘drive’ of this particulararea: He wanted to live in Oslo, and he wanted to stay in anarea with a challenge and “buoyancy force” (“oppdrift”). Thisarea and the apartment had enough bohemian feel to it(“bohemfaktor”) to appeal to him. It was spicy enough (“krydranok”), the neighbourhood had density, and it gives him thesense of living in a city. He studied in a European city when hewas young and it was then he got the taste for this kind ofenvironment. He considers himself an urban individual, and he286