Bah, I'm not sure I'd even call Oslo the most walkable city in Norway. It's perfectly possible to live in smaller cities, or even outside cities, without a car.

Bah, I'm not sure I'd even call Oslo the most walkable city in Norway. It's perfectly possible to live in smaller cities, or even outside cities, without a car. I visited one of the supposedly ugliest cities in Norway this summer, Alta in Finnmark. It got its reputation because appatently during the reconstruction after the war, they couldn't decide which of the small population centres in the municipality they should locate public functions to, so they put them in the middle. So it was an unusually car-centric city. What I found was that this reputation is either grossly exaggerated, or is no longer true. The grid is maybe spacier than we're used to in Norway, but they have a huge pedestrian plaza in the middle and you can walk to anything you'd need in the city centre. They even seem to have great pedestrian/bike paths all the way out to Hjemmeluft, and there was nice public transport. I'd happily live there without a car. Looking at the real estate prices, though, it seems lots of other people are happy to live there too, harsh weather notwithstanding.