Asker

The municipality of Asker, with its 95 000 citizens, is located about 20 km southwest of the capital Oslo, in the region of Viken county, Norway. Asker is the eighth largest municipality in Norway. The municipality consists of 376 square kilometers, and has 196 km of coastline. The administrative center is called Asker and 6500 people work for the municipality. We manage a budget of over 7 billions NOK on behalf of our citizens, more than 7 million Euros.

The municipality of Asker is merged from three former municipalities as of 1st of January 2020. In the merging process, politicians, the administration and citizens of all three municipalities worked closely together to build a larger, more sustainable community. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were launched in 2016 - at the same time we started planning our merger. It was natural for us to use the SDGs as a framework for building our new municipality. Working with the SDGs has been unifying, inspiring – and provided a common platform in so many ways. The SDGs provided a constructive framework and guidance for cross-sectoral planning and an ethical framework for the kind of society we want to build. The municipal masterplan now shows how the SDGs are localized in our community.

Using the global goals as an overall and integral framework, helps us expand our perspective. We remain aware of our global responsibility while working to achieve sustainable local communities. We have looked at both the long-term global challenges - and considered current and local challenges that must be managed and governed locally.

Our work are based on partnership, co-creation and collaboration in our community. Co-creation means that public, civil and private sectors work together for common interests.

The area of Asker has a long history and a diverse cultural sector. The municipality has a history of industry, farming, and coastal industry. The private sector is knowledge-intensive, with service- and trade industry and oil and gas as the main lines of todays industry. In the geographical area of the municipality, there are approximately 37 000 jobs, and that covers about 76% of our needs.