Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2014 | Page 21

Photo: Helsinki City Planning Department / Helin & Co Architects

often dismissed as “satellites” of the big city,
now the value and potential of the surrounding communities is recognised better.
Ristimäki says that it is very important
to establish how land use and transport systems should be reconciled in urban areas,
peri-urban areas as well as in rural areas, in
order to render communities more sustainable. Sustainability means creating a smooth
environment for our daily life, which benefits residents, trade and industry – and nature.
In fact, according to Ristimäki, one
of the most significant planning challenges in recent years has been the integration
of land use and transport. The harmful and
beneficial effects of different planning solutions are not always sufficiently analysed,
he believes.

Feed the Growth
Mika Ristimäki notes that in Finland, the
problem very often involves the differing
interests of the municipalities – while the
local politicians keep arguing, the urban
region fails to live up to its full potential.
He is in favour of a concept which identifies “growth corridors” between communities and focuses development efforts there.
But isn’t that what everybody is after, anyway? - Ristimäki replies by saying that regrettably, there are many communities in the
works that are simply far too removed from
the city centre and the services.
“Existing assets should be utilised
much better than is the case presently.” The
research conducted by Ristimäki and his colleagues has revealed many projects which
rely heavily on private car use and only add
to urban congestion. “The city has the power to raise these communities in the wrong
places and then they expect the government
to come quickly and build new roads when
the old ones simply don’t do it anymore,”
Ristimäki says.

Motor City No More?

have the power to get the creative juices
flowing.
“But moving out to the suburbs, it’s all
about making the every-day life as smooth
as possible. And when there are no major
bumps in the road that is good for innovation, too.”

Striking Distance
The wild card in all of this may well be periurbanisation which is Ristimäki’s special area of expertise, having spent six years of
his career making the rounds in European
“fringe communities”. “It is a fact that the
most intense development at the moment is
coming from this area,” he believes. While

Is the “Age of the Automobile” slowly drawing to a close then? Ristimäki says that cars
still have their uses, but with regards to retail, for example, it’s not motorisation that is
calling the shots anymore. While previously huge shopping centres could be planted
on remote fields and the consumers would
soon drive over there – armed with plenty
of gas and purchasing power – the big retail
units are not in fashion anymore.
“We see the appeal of big retail units
located on the fringe decreasing, and the focus turns to the city’s internal service network,” Ristimäki says, adding that the new
optimal retail units are smaller, but still wellequipped for every-day needs – and they are
conveniently located as to welcome also pedestrian and cyclist patrons. Shopping, in
a sense, is going back to its roots: close to

where the consumers live their lives. “Stores
need to be just a small drive away and, more
and more, these stores are centres for on-line
shopping which keeps on getting stronger.”

Rise of the Senior City
SYKE’s research has exposed other areas
of no small significance as well. One global megatrend which is especially potent in
Finland is the ageing population. Results indicate that over 74-year-olds are looking to
live in city centres and subcentres – and in
some subcentres in the Tampere urban region, for instance, those aged over 74 already constitute up to one-quarter of the inhabitants.
“For the time being, this change in age
structure has not been sufficiently taken into
account in the planning of urban regions,”
Ristimäki