Finnish Environment Institute has defined population density, which allows cost efficient public transport. It is 20 inhabitants per hectare. In the most populated parts of Finland (figure below), nearly half of The Helsinki Metropolitan Area is dense enough. However, there is still work to do. For example the corridor of future underground extension will need some infill development if wanted to pay off.
In some other parts of Finland, regions face different kind of challenges. Albeit city of Seinäjoki is growing fast, in an entire state of Southern Ostrobothnia (figure above), there are only four 250m x 250m squares that are dense enough for cost efficient public transport. By the way, the figure above is part of a first commision of my newly founded firm, Urban Analytics Helsinki. It was made with an open source software (QGis) as well as of open data (Statistics Finland, National Land Survey of Finland). The figure below is made just for the fun of it. :)
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What about the goold old east / west divide in metropolitan area what comes to welfare? Red neigbourhoods are well to do in education, income and employment combined. Blue areas not so. Mixed neighbourhoods (light red and light blue) are rare.
All kind of growth, like population growth, economic growth etc. take place in only metropolitan areas of the country: Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Tampere Metropolitan Area and Turku Metropolitan Area. Below is the screentshot of the groeth triangle in Finland. After that is another view with the same scale. This time the groeth triangle consists of Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Tallinn Metropolitan Area and St. Petersburg Metropolitan Area :)
Below is the permanent link to recently published article in Cities journal. It is also the first article of my PhD thesis. Three more to go, I guess. Well, it's a start :) The picture above is from the construction phase of 18 store twin towers in Jätkäsaari, Helsinki, opened now as Clarion Hotel. Every tenth of the new high rises in Finland is built in Jätkäsaari district, an inner city extension of Helsinki. It has an enormous innovative potential, according to our study below:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2017.01.005 Kiuru, Juho & Inkinen, Tommi (2017). Predicting innovative growth and demand with proximate human capital: A case study of the Helsinki metropolitan area. Cities. Volume 64, April 2017, Pages 9–17. Juho Kiuru a, , , Tommi Inkinen b, a University of Helsinki, Department of Geosciences and Geography, Division of Urban Geography and Regional Studies, P.O. Box 64, (Gustaf Hällströmin katu 2a), FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland b University of Turku, Centre for Maritime Studies, Brahea-Centre, FI-20014 University of Turku, Finland |
Photo by Rob Hurson
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AuthorJuho Kiuru, geographer living in Helsinki, Finland. |