Just city planning competitions in Helsinki: between the power of image and many images of power

ABSTRACT

City growth in Helsinki is based on urban renewal steered by a policy preventing segregation. Meanwhile, chain stores dominate the Finnish retail market, and small mainstream retail is hardly seen in Helsinki. Although many old strip malls have been left vacant by the decline in small mainstream retail, ethnic retail has remarkably converted two strip malls into the most livable urban hubs in Helsinki. In 2019–2020, two planning competitions were held in response to the city objectives of forming urban centers through densification. This paper studies both competitions to examine their capacity to reflect urban diversity as a value in their results. The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, it demonstrates that competitions were not structured to respond to urban diversity. Second, both cases lacked effective consulting with ethnic retailers and the immigrant community affected by the urban renewal. Third, it argues that urban diversity is achievable if a genuine will exists to support competitions in freely inventing ideas empowering diversity. Furthermore, the results suggest that the alliance between the municipal monopoly of planning, the chain stores and the property shareholding companies created many images of power in the process.

KEYWORDS:

• Planning competitions
• ethnic retail
• just city
• urban diversity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research received funding through the Neighbourhood Renewal Programme 2020–2022 of the Ministry of the Environment of Finland.