Knut Hidle as supervisor

Academic field of interest

I work with place development and community planning in a broad sense, both in research and teaching. I have several fields of study that I both teach, supervise and research in. Key words are place development, community planning, local and regional development, regionalisation, mobility and migration. In both teaching and research, I am interested in how places change and develop, and in particular the role social planning has and can have in creating even better places to both live and work in for us and for future generations. I think planning theory is exciting and like to convey how society can be seen as complex and how we can then relate to it in places and regions. I am also interested in mobility in the sense of how mobility connects and leads to changes and new questions we have to deal with, whether we are talking about regional, national or international mobility. Commuting, leisure mobility, labour migration, international migration, relocation, etc. fall under this. Geographically, my fields of interest cover both urban and rural contexts.

Some suggestions for a master's project:

1. The transformative power of cabin development in small places. The focus can be on local communities as well as on cabin owners, or on the relationship between the urban and the rural.

2. Places under pressure – how places relate to different forms of pressure, expectations, dilemmas and conflicts. For example, it may be related to population decline (often rural contexts), large migration (often large cities or municipalities close to towns), establishment of new renewable energy production (energy transition), establishment of data centres, dismantling of nature, nature conservation and urban development.

3. To regulate national space. On how global flow is handled politically with a focus on migration-regulating policies and business policy. Proposal: Norway and Canada.

4. Coworking as a strategy for place development.

5. Place sensitivity and the importance of the relational in the green shift – about experimental planning and conditions for alternative futures through engagement.

6. Planning for growth - Strategic planning for the future in areas with presumed rapid population growth. How do local and regional authorities plan for the future when rapid population growth is presumed? How do they approach the future?