Planning Strategically or by the Book?—Contentious Land Use Planning in South-eastern Finland

ABSTRACT

The debate on strategic spatial planning highlights the limitations of statutory land use planning in weighing up future options for spatial development, particularly in instances of rapid change. This paper draws on this debate in order to analyse planning institutions and practices in Finland. The case in point is the south-eastern border region where interdependencies with Russia, particularly shopping tourism, have created pressures on land use and led to contentious planning processes between regional and central levels of government. It is argued that, in the absence of cross-border spatial co-ordination, there is a need to establish links between regional land use planning and visions of spatial scenarios in the national context.

KEYWORDS:

• Land use planning
• strategic planning
• Finland
• Russia

Acknowledgement

The research for this paper has benefited from the EU Seventh Framework Programme through the ‘EUBORDERREGIONS—European Regions, EU External Borders and the Immediate Neighbours. Analysing Regional Development Options through Policies and Practices of Cross-Border Co-operation’—project (2011–2015).

Notes

1. http://www.euborderregions.eu/.

2. http://kanava.etela-karjala.fi/Tiedote.asp?TiedoteID=27692&NakymaID=510.

3. At the time, Russia was open to co-operation and interaction with its Western neighbours and Finland was, despite some fears of instability and threats brought about by the transition crisis in Russia, enthusiastic about the opportunities and potentials for re-connecting links between the two countries and beyond. After its accession in 1995, it was also in Finland’s interest to position collaboration with Russia high on the EU’s political agenda.

4. Cross-border co-operation as such between the two countries has continued via, for example, a number of EU-funded co-operation programmes, but land use planning issues have not been much present in this activity.

5. Parikkala is located in a geographically central point where the two main roads under construction, from St. Petersburg to Central and Northern Finland and from the Karelian Republic to Southern Finland, will cross each other. The relevant infrastructure links will be completed in the near future on the Russian side, enabling the opening of the current temporary crossing point for international traffic.

6. See, for example, the earlier mentioned document from 2006. The most recent version of this visioning process is the ‘A renewable and enabling Finland. Development overview of the regional structure and traffic system 2050’ (Aluerakenteen ja liikennejärjestelmän kehityskuva, ALLI) available thus far only in Finnish (Ympäristöministeriö, 2014).