tigure 1. One amateur opinion of infill development in Länsibulevardi, Helsinki. Länsiväylä free way is one of the free ways Helsinki has told in it's new master plan to be transformed into boulevard with plenty of infill development, thus better public transport, and better services altogether in public and private sector. For example, Pasi Mäenpää has some thoughts of new kind of service nodes, which would mix different elements, worth reading to all city planners. Again, while I would have to concentrate on research, I have planned more Länsibulevardi in Helsinki.
Sorry about the harsh shapes of the areas of proposed development. I made just a quick Power Point exercice :) I guess in City Planning Department there are already more detailed plans of the area. My intention is not to try to position above anyone with more knowledge of the research area and the preconditions the actual new zones would have to take into consideration. I just like to spend my free time doing something that in the most successful case could inspirate into actions of officials related. This could be just plus, cause this blog is more like a hobby. But wouldn't be great if the theme I have messed around this night could affect on some actor :) About the working hours, I am flexible. I can work any time in day or night. Maybe this post can be read to free time while I made it late night after Atletico Madrid - Real Madrid derby in Uefa Champions League (Hala Madrid!). My working hours are flexible, but mainly at the day time I work still with my research where I get paid off. No worries about that. Of course there are some activities shortening the time to research. These are for example different conferences, teaching (OMG how much it takes time to prepare the teaching at least after my first 3 course experience (Maybe in the future I can utilize some staff from the earlier lecturers so I guess it gets a bit easier after some experience of lecturing???)). Any opinions does teaching change easier through experience??? I am also going to write two book reviews during the summer. This is a nice way to get familiaraized on the newest books and most important classics on one's research area. What is good, is that the books must be read exceptionally careful, because you know you have to say something about them eventually. I hope my first book reviews go well!! The best result would be if my review would inspirate someone to read the book reviewed. Do you have some recommendations I should keep in mind while reading the book and writing a review of it??? What I am especially glad of, is that we have decided to update the housing indexes in Espoo with Teuvo Savikko. After all, latest information is as far as from 2012. Indexes are a huge dataset of indexes of socioeconomics, urbanization and accessibility. There have been used multiple indicators forming the indexes. They are scaled from 0 to 100, 100 being the best area and other areas are scaled in respect to the best one of the year the data is from. So, for example, areas with good sosioeconomics, are hard to raise their position in the comparison to forthcoming years. Intention is to compare how the three phenomena have developed during 2008, 2012 and 2014. In addition, it would be exciting to research themes across. For example, we could identify not so well to do areas with poor accessibility. For example this kind of finding could suggest that improving the public transportation of the deprived area, could raise the status of the area. It would also be interesting to know where there are well to do high rise areas and on the other hand well to do residential areas. These could be areas where we could learn for example with observing the public space of areas. This kind of qualitative research has been doing for example by Heli Ponto. With sophisticated methods, we could learn something from the observed areas why they have succeeded so well. First, it is useful to measure which areas are the best and the worst. These areas could be case areas to time consuming observation and query to people who use area. It would also be nice to conclude somehow are the mixed and dense areas rank the best like in my first article of the thesis. In the near future I am also going to write a short overview about my first article of my thesis in Finnish. This is something that have been asked for: writing short summary of the article in Finnish. It will be published in quarterly published research overview journal of the city of Espoo. In Finland, it is often the habit of larger cities like Espoo (Espoo is the second largest city of Finland with slightly less than 300,000 inhabitants. Espoo is the neighboring city of the capital of Finland, Helsinki. Together, the Helsinki Metropolitan Area inhabits about 1,5 million people. There will be plenty of results and consequences in the paper, which could interest visionaires in Espoo, but also all over the Helsinki metropolitan Area. The name of the journal is Eetvartti. I will inform you right away when it is published. It should be ready soon. Eetvartti is open access journal in the web. Saying something about redevelopment of Northern Lauttasaari: There are plenty of potential new building lots for example in free way shelter "recreational" areas next to free ways and in multiple free way ramp areas, which would come unnecessary in boulevardisation. There could also be careful infill to some recreational areas and fillings in the sea. This should have to do in the way that the tides of the almost closed bay north of Lauttasaari wouldn't disrupt. Anyways, that shouldn't be a problem to inform you who worried about the streams in the bay in Facebook. Usually, the discussion takes part in FB group Lisää kaupunkia Helsinkiin. So you could want to take a glance to those discussions if you only understand Finnish. I would be terrified if someone commented also in this site in the comments part of the posts. The apartments in the Northern Lauttasaari would sell most probably well with sea views and good services, good public transportation and more comfortable public space, which all would be possible through boulevardisation and large scale infill and public space developments coming hand in hand with the boulevardisation. Even if old infrastructure has to be replaced with new one and there would be massive investments in the redevelopment, there would probably be more benefits in redeveloping existing infrastructure (free way) into new one (boulevard). Project could even exceed investments to new infrastructure with the profits of selling land It would further be exiting to know after what time period projects usually turn into profitable investment. This could well be a topic in further research. Niko-Matti Ronikonmäki from Aalto University could know some interesting figures of the balance of the losses in investments and profits in residential and commercial redevelopment. In addition, Paula Riipi is making her master thesis where she investigates whether the largest cities in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area have deployed the advantages of such economic calculations. Different econometrics could tell us for instance which cities have utilized these kind of results proving new massive inventions being profitable in the long run. This kind of research could also tell us which areas with which new amount of residents and establishments could manage the best. There could be also the method of public-private partnerships used succesfully in Tampere, for instance. In these partnerships, investments and new urban areas are more likely to start and end more rapid than in old kind of types of investment projects. Hoping good morning to you if you read this post in Europe. Now you are probably sleeping as should I, too. Hope this catches your social media feeds and you manage the text with a cup of coffee for example. As I said earlier, it would be super to have a comment into comments of the posts. You, who have day time now, could inform if this post reached you and should I post around day and night in the future, cause always there is a day time somewhere :) You can also comment the most important statement in the discussion in Facebook "Lisää kaupunkia Helsinkiin" group. You can also comment whether the previous tiny plan of Salmisaari was useless, because some in Facebook assumed there would be environmental values that could prevent the suggested proposition. If I was asked, the new plan would only increase the environmental values of the recreational areas near the proposed infill development. After all, research is my passion, but so is planning, If you are interested in collaboration, you can suggest some kind of assignment. Depending of the length of the report the praise variate. For example some 6 pages report could finish in overall in the working hours of one month. So it could be something like 3000 euros. I can make assignments part time so mentioned 6 pages report could be ready for example in three months depending on the amount of other projects. Be in touch! Even if you couldn't give an assignment and if you feel like nothing to say, say Hi at least ;D
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I have to admit it: I miss urban planning. Maybe in spring 2017 I come back to urban planning department of the city of Espoo. In June, there are some decisions of the funding I have applied or where I would be employed if I continued my student leave with another 1,5 years.
Anyway, Helsinki has its brand new master plan. It is innovative and up to date and even pioneering. The most important extensions of inner city are bulevardisations of the free ways. I Google Mapped the nearest Free way of my neighborhood. It is also the one that extends deepest into CBD of all the free ways. Now is the time to debate in which areas there should be master or detailed plans started. Länsiväylä would be ideal to start with. Drivers of the Länsiväylä suffers the least from the change because they have already drove the longest via the free way and accessed CBD much faster than from the other directions. In the surroundings of Länsiväylä there is plenty of potential for innovative growth and demand for professionals according to earlier studies (Inkinen & Kaakinen 2016, Kiuru & Inkinen 2017) In the blue area in the satellite picture could be mixed for example high rises of offices and apartments with sea views. Area would need just a little filling into sea. Some small islands and the banks of the free way are already existing potential construction areas. One of the advantages of the infill is, that the buildings would block the noise from the free way to important recreation areas like parks, jogging paths and sand beaches across the bay. It is also wise to develop areas that have been concluded as one of the most potential clusters to grow. Picture 2 shows the innovation potential of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. Visualisation is poor just in case of southern Helsinki where symbols of potential should be more northern than in the picture. These areas include the bulevardisation of Länsiväylä. There is especially a huge potential of innovative growth and knowledge intensive establishments along the today free way. There is also demand of more apartments for professionals. All in all Länsiväylä would be great as one of the first inner city extensions of the new master plan. |
Photo by Rob Hurson
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July 2018
AuthorJuho Kiuru, geographer living in Helsinki, Finland. |