Notodden
With approximately 12 300 inhabitants Notodden is the smallest city in the partner consortium. Notodden is the cradle of industrialization in Norway, as the company Norsk Hydro was established here in 1905. Thus this is in no way an historic city. We are celebrating our 100 years as city in 2013. We are situated in the middle of the southern part of Norway in Telemark County, and have easy access to beautiful land- and water resources.In the midst of 1980 all our industry was closed down and we had to figure out what we might be as a post industrial city. Our industrial heritage is proposed for the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Even if it is more than 20 year since we started our journey towards being a post industrial city, we are still struggling with aftermath of industrialization. These are our hard facts:
- Unemployment rate: 2.2%
- Labour force: 67% of total
- Incapacitated rate in population: 16,4%
- Non-western immigrants: 3.3%
More than 70% of the labour force is engaged in service industries of some kind. The biggest sectors are health care and education. These hard facts represent part of our challenge, and are the basis for a cultural change. We have no population growth and this affect our economy as for national funding. In many areas we also are also in need of structural changes as we continue having too expensive solutions. We need to be more attractive both for people and businesses.
Related Good Practices
SOME RELATED NETWORKS
OP-ACT
OP-ACT
Options of actions - strategic positioning of small and medium sized cities Demographic change, advanced de-industrialization and the current...