Althought I truly support dense neighbourhoods, I have had some worries about Jätkäsaari in Helsinki, a new neighbourhood in the edge of the western side of the inner city. Former harbour area. A walk with a camera on a sunny day proved my worries mainly needless anyways. Here are two pictures of sunny facades in of one of the most densest parts of the residential area. But these are bit too dense alleys in my opinion :( Apartments in lower floors don't get light, one of the key doctrines of functionalism. Even I am not the greatest supporter of functionalism, I try to find some positive from every school. These are on the waterfront so they should get access to light when shining from the right direction. But what it is with the facade on the first building? Those are not windows, I guess. Where there would be sea views. Strange :o
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Innovation clusters or concentrations of creative class are something cities all over the world are trying to plan. There's an extensive amount of research of the good elements needed in urban places like those.
There is one from the Helsinki Metropolitan Area as well (Inkinen & Ponto 2017). They studied three largest innovation clusters in the HMA: Ruoholahti, Otaniemi and Pitäjänmäki (Inkinen & Kaakinen 2016). Later, it has been noticed that the same places which are the most innovative clusters inside metropolitan area, have also a highest number of professionals, creative class or human capital depending which features of the residents are emphasized (Kiuru & Inkinen 2017). Therefore, it could be fascinating to research which good elements from the earlier literature appears in the residential parts of the research areas of Inkinen & Ponto (2017). Also, finding some new lessons how to build city that interests creative class, would be awesome. Usually the doctrines have been adopted e.g. from the well-known architect Jan Gehl. However, I would like to bring some older classics under consideration as well. Kevin Lynch and Edmund N. Bacon have made quite an impression on me in their studies of what elements good urban design and urban planning should include. All in all, I have observed one of the case areas already with the lenses of Lynch and Bacon and found some fascinating similarities between real world and theories of good planning. I have thought I could take some pictures and draw some mental maps of the case areas showing what lessons from the case areas could be considered planning new (mixed) areas in the HMA (there are a lot of them, Helsinki is one of the fastest growing cities in Europe), but also planning new areas in cities all over the world. So, the fourth article of my thesis will most likely be qualitative against all the odds, considering the three first (only one published) rely mainly on introducing some advanced quantitative methods. This shift in research methods has attracted me to write already two pages of the fourth paper. The next thing, however, is to finish the answers to reviews of my second paper. I finally got them and they are such supportive and charming that I couldn't be happier to rewrite the paper with the crucial comments of the peer-reviews. I find this referee system such working. Papers get so much better when read not only by you and your supervisor, but two or three professionals more! It's not that that Lionel Messi went to see santa claus and some real winter with lots of snow and reindeers. Now Finnish Lapland is amongst the areas with the hottest temperatures in Europe! Source: http://ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/euroopan-saakartta
There are plenty of comparative studies of the innovativeness of metropolises. However, I made another one examining innovativeness in the sphere of social media. In Futura journal, I represented a comparison between the Nordic metropolises, which are usually performing well in different innovation rankings.
Examining where there is the most Twitter activity related to the exact term of innovation, Swedish cities are the top performers. When examining Twitter activity proportional to city size, Stockholm is the leading innovation hub in Northern Europe with Malmö following second. What comes to themes related to innovativeness, Helsinki is the most important concentration of startups and technology in the Nordic countries. Stockholm and Malmö are the second and the third largest concentrations of both, startups and technology. Related to innovativeness and economic growth, also the tolerance of the citizens was considered. Interestingly, perhaps the most famous city in the Nordics facing problems related to immigration, Malmö is welcoming refugees most generously. In fact, Malmö is the only metropolitan area, where there is significant movement related to hashtag #refugeeswelcome. Different themes related to innovativeness combined, the same cities appear high in ranking. Overall, Stockholm (in the picture below) is the most innovative metropolis in the Nordic countries. Helsinki has the second most Twitter activity related to innovativeness and Malmö the third most. From the results, it is obvious that metropolitan areas should be compared to metropolises approximately the same size - even if measured proportional to city size. The capitals and the largest metropolises of the Nordic countries are competing with each other, while the secondary cities of Nordics are competing in their own race (empirics of them later on). |
Photo by Rob Hurson
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July 2018
AuthorJuho Kiuru, geographer living in Helsinki, Finland. |