Green Urban Spaces – The Role of the Cemetery in Multicultural and Inter-Religious Urban Contexts, 2017

Cemeteries in cities are usually part of a larger urban greenbelt and represent an intersection between cultural heritage, outdoor recreation, religion and cult related to death and grief as part of everyday life. As new ideals for compact cities have gained ground, parks and greenbelts are being lost or reduced in size. Parallel with this, a more international, multicultural, interreligious and complex late-modern urban society has emerged. The shortage of urban space and new ways of using public space may have influenced how the urban cemeteries in Norway are used and esteemed as part of the urban structure. We ask what consequences such assumed extended use can have for cemeteries as cultural heritage. As public spaces and green areas they represent alternatives for outdoor recreation. It concerns possible use of closely situated local areas, their meaning for different user groups, as well as considering the options for alternative uses in view of different needs according to gender, ethnicity and socio-demographic variations. Protected graveyards are undisputable national heritage, but their values need to be discussed and mediated in view of the changing demographic nature of modern cities, where increasing multicultural and interreligious pluralism affects the formation of spatial surroundings and sociality. The project is a qualitative study based in the humanities with a distinct interdisciplinary character.