Thanks to the concrete steps described below, we have seen progress in the understanding of social sustainability and the importance of specific activities that can help residents and local politicians pay more attention to social sustainability in the local community.

SOSlokal is a Norwegian project whose main goal is to develop social sustainability as a core value and reference point for the development of local communities. With regard to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, Norway is trying to focus more on sustainable development as a comprehensive community goal in municipalities. At the same time, municipalities have so far placed too little emphasis on the dimension of social sustainability in community and territorial planning. In the field of research, social sustainability is still a new field.

SOSlokal responds to this need by exploring what social sustainability means in the local, Norwegian context and mapping tools that help support socially sustainable community development

The basic questions the project tries to answer are: 
-    What is social sustainability?
-    Leaving no one behind - how to mobilize local resources?
-    Long-term sustainable changes - how to ensure that social sustainability is relevant to the political level and decision-making bodies in urban planning?

To answer these questions, the following was gradually implemented:
-    A thorough analysis and systematic review of the existing literature on the topic of social sustainability was carried out, so that the results could be integrated into the further work of this project, which aims to increase knowledge about what social sustainability means in a local context. The result serves as a common platform within the project and will be disseminated to other municipalities.
-    Meetings were organized with hard-to-reach population groups (immigrants, young people, families with children...), where the participatory Place Standard tool was used. We used this tool in a combined method: 
▪ as a research tool
▪ as a tool for dialogue and co-creation
For details about the tool, see the good practice example: Participative tool Place Standard - practice from Norway
-    Furthermore, a round table "Urban laboratory - co-creation workshop" was organized, where, in addition to local residents, local entrepreneurs, officials, local construction companies, volunteers and local politicians were invited to discuss topics related to the local community - meeting places, etc.
-    Finally, a policy workshop was organized where local politicians and local government officials came together to mobilize the necessary decision-making forces and agree on the way forward in line with the findings so far. The method was presentation (results of surveys, etc.) and discussion - proposals for solutions from the politicians and proposals for procedures from the officials.