21st Century (2000–present)

Bergen Bybanen Corridor Urbanization

2010s– · Norway · Northern Europe · Transit-oriented urbanism and corridor planning · Planned by Bergen Kommune
Network map of Bergen's Bybanen light rail: the south-running spine from Byparken through Mindemyren, Nesttun and Lagunen to Flesland, the corridor along which Bergen has concentrated new urbanisation.
Network map of Bergen's Bybanen light rail: the south-running spine from Byparken through Mindemyren, Nesttun and Lagunen to Flesland, the corridor along which Bergen has concentrated new urbanisation. · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Aqwis and OpenStreetMap contributors, via Wikimedia Commons

Core idea

LRT spine growth

Why it matters

Norwegian TOD

Description

An urbanisation strategy pursued by Bergen Kommune from the 2010s along the Bybanen, the city's light rail line opened in 2010 and extended in stages towards Flesland airport and other districts. Municipal plans concentrate housing and services in dense nodes at the stops, using the LRT spine as the organising armature for the city's growth within its constrained fjord-and-mountain topography.

Significance

Bergen is Norway's clearest demonstration of transit-oriented development policy, in which national zero-growth goals for car traffic are translated into corridor-based densification. The Bybanen case is cited in Nordic planning literature for showing how a mid-sized city can couple a new tram investment to binding land-use strategy rather than leaving station areas to market chance.

What shaped it

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →
hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.