Utopia Dialogues for Development of Sustainable Local Societies
In this article, we study how dialogue based cooperation can stimulate active participation of the local population in developing sustainable local communities based on a high quality of life. The key concepts in this article are utopia and dialogue. Utopia research differs from forecasts and scenario research by asking questions about how we want the future to be, not how it will be. In other words, the precondition is that we ourselves are responsible for the development of our local community. This method is based on a dialogue-philosophical approach where relationships between people represent the glue in a living society. To stimulate active participation it is necessary to establishment dialogue-based networks.
We have developed utopia dialogue as a method for creating vibrant relationships between the people in local communities. Through practical implementation of utopia dialogues, we investigate the connection between participation and responsibility for the development of one's own local community. In utopia dialogues, values are synthesized based on the participants' experience based stories. The values are then converted into specific projects for which the participants themselves are responsible for carrying out. The theoretical discussion is exemplified through experiences from running 7 utopia dialogues in different municipalities in Norway. The project was carried out under the auspices of KS (The Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities) and Kommunal Landspensjonskasse (KLP) Norway's largest pension company, delivering financial and insurance services to the public sector, enterprises associated with the public sector and their employees.
The results from our research indicate that the values coincide across municipalities, despite large differences in the local findings; neighborhoods in cities, smaller villages, and small communities along the coast. We also find that the projects proposed have significant common features. It is interesting to note that the population emphasizes qualitative aspects of societal development more strongly than continued growth in production and consumption.
