Is There Room for Families in the Inner City? Life-Stage Blenders
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Housing Studies ISSN: 0267-3037 (Print) 1466-1810 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/chos20 Is There Room for Families in the Inner City? Life- Stage Blenders Challenging Planning Johanna Lilius To cite this article: Johanna Lilius (2014) Is There Room for Families in the Inner City? Life-Stage Blenders Challenging Planning, Housing Studies, 29:6, 843-861, DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2014.905673 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2014.905673 Published online: 14 Apr 2014. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 850 View Crossmark data Citing articles: 16 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=chos20 Housing Studies, 2014 Vol. 29, No. 6, 843–861, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2014.905673 Is There Room for Families in the Inner City? Life-Stage Blenders Challenging Planning JOHANNA LILIUS YTK Land Use Planning and Urban Studies Group, Department of Real Estate, Planning and Geoinformatics, Aalto University, Finland (Received January 2013; accepted March 2014) ABSTRACT This paper addresses the phenomenon of families returning to inner cities. With evidence from the first qualitative study done on families residing in inner-city Helsinki, it demonstrates that urban living reduces the sharp divide between life before having children and family life. Urban parents stay in the city much for the same reasons they first moved there: because they are attracted to population density, good amenities and good public transport. Living in the city enables a lifestyle where different life stages blend into each other. The paper, however, reveals that there is a lack of understanding among city planners and politicians about family needs in the inner city. By adopting a framework of the reviewed literature, the paper draws on the argument that modernist ideals on proper family living still prevail. The paper suggests that planning must acknowledge that exclusionary life stages are eroding and creating a need to facilitate multiple forms of lifestyles. KEY WORDS: Housing, housing policy, family, liveability, urban planning, inner cities Introduction Inner cities have today reclaimed their position as residential environment after being dismissed by a movement towards suburbs for nearly a century. This return to the city has been linked with a growing ‘post-industrial society’, dominated by the service sector (Jarvis et al., 2009). The concept of gentrification, the upgrading of working-class neighbourhoods and the displacement of working-class residents by the middle classes has explained the transformation of inner cities mainly through two assertions: one that focuses on economical issues and the other that focuses on class, consumption and lifestyle choices (e.g. Lees et al., 2008; Smith, 1996). According to Beauregard (1986), the need to live in the city was motivated by the growing number of employment opportunities for Correspondence Address: Johanna Lilius, YTK Land Use Planning and Urban Studies Group, Department of Real Estate, Planning and Geoinformatics, Aalto University, PO Box 12200, FI-00076, Finland. Tel.: þ 358 80 361 0694; Email: Johanna.lilius@aalto.fi q 2014 Taylor & Francis 844 J. Lilius both male and female professionals and managers within central cities. This gave rise to new needs, such as the need to consume outside the home and to meet new people. These were different from the needs of those who lived in suburban areas. Smith (1996) interprets this with a new generation having aspirations suitable for an urban rather than a suburban setting. At the turn of the twenty-first century, high incomes and individualism have resulted in a multitude of lifestyles in wealthy cities (Hall & Pfeiffer, 2000, p. 97). Consumption in coffee shops, wine bars, museums, restaurants and independent boutiques has become a trademark for an urban lifestyle (Jayne, 2005; Pacione, 2001, pp. 7–8). Providing attractive urban environments has moreover been seen as a means to revitalise cities (Heath, 2001). Along with interpretations of changing lifestyles and economic restructuring, wider population changes have also been used to explain the reurbanisation of inner cities. Buzar et al. (2005, 2007) observed the changing nature of household relations and families during the last 50 years in European cities, suggesting that the number of households has grown in inner cities, even while the overall population numbers have been declining. This development springs from the second demographic transition, i.e. new family relations, fewer marriages and later marriages, declining fertility rates, having children later in life and smaller households (Buzar et al., 2007; see also Hall & Pfeiffer, 2000; van Criekingen, 2010). The renaissance of urban living has commonly been understood as a phenomenon including, above all, single persons and childless couple households (Boterman et al., 2010; Hall & Pfeiffer, 2000; Karsten, 2003, 2007). In fact, the family life cycle and life stage have been seen as crucial when it comes to the choice of housing (Varady, 1990). The inner city is still seen as a location not appropriate for raising a family (Heath, 2001). The research addressing families in the inner city have often concluded that living in the inner city makes it easier to find a work–life balance (Berlin, 2005; Boterman et al., 2010; Butler & Robson, 2003; Karsten, 2003, 2007; Saracco & Strandlund, 2007). Still, not enough is known about the lifestyle of city-dwelling families. The first aim of this paper is to bridge this gap in knowledge from a Nordic perspective by presenting the first study done on families residing in inner-city Helsinki, Finland. Finland is one of the European countries that urbanised late, in the 1960s, and along with an anti-urban bias, suburban and peri-urban areas as well as the countryside have been seen as appropriate environments for family life (Juntto, 1990; Lapintie, 1995; Saarikangas, 1997, 2002). According to the Residents’ Barometer 2010 study carried out by the Finnish environmental administration, tranquillity and closeness to nature are valued highly when it comes to the quality of Finnish residential environments (Strandell, 2011). Thus, the first aim of the paper is to answer why families choose to live in inner-city Helsinki and how they conceive their living environment for family life. How are their urban day-to-day lives realised? As Finland is part of the Nordic welfare system, the reconciliation of work and family has a strong emphasis at the national level (Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, 2010). Thus, the paper also asks what impact a good work–life balance has on the housing choice of urban families. To gain a deep insight and to understand everyday life experiences in the social context of inner-city families (Valentine, 2005), an in-depth interview study (n ¼ 14) was conducted in Helsinki. The paper will argue that although work–life balance is important to city families, the reason to stay in the city has more to do with the services and goods of the city that the parents already became familiar with before becoming parents: above all, population density, good amenities and good public transport. The paper will argue that for city families, Is There Room for Families in the Inner City? 845 different life stages blend into each other more than they would if the families lived elsewhere. The other aim of the paper is inspired by the findings of Karsten (2003), showing that both the discourse and practices of urban planning in Amsterdam emphasise that suburbs offer the proper environment for families with children. Therefore, the paper addresses the question of how urban families have been taken into account in planning for the inner city in two Nordic cities, Stockholm and Helsinki. The study focuses on Stockholm both as an object of study and as a point of comparison. This stems from the fact that the incapacity of planners to meet the needs of urban families became a topic of debate in the Swedish media in the late 2000s (e.g. Berglund, 2008a, 2008b; Uusija¨rvi, 2007) when the phenomenon of more families settling down in the inner parts of Stockholm had already become a fact. The increase of families in inner-city Stockholm was evident from the beginning of the 2000s (Statistik om Stockholm, 2012), while Helsinki suffered from net emigration of families from the inner city until the mid-2000s. Helsinki has, however, lately also seen an increase in the number of children in the inner city, especially children under six years of age (Aluesarjat, 2012). The growth in the number of children under six years of age started in 2007, and one reason for this, according to the City of Helsinki Urban facts (Helsingin ja Helsingin seudun va¨esto¨ennuste, 2011), is that instead of moving out of the city, families lately have opted to stay in Helsinki. One of the objectives of the study was thus to get an overall picture of the situation in Stockholm in order to interpret the situation in Helsinki in a more versatile way. Therefore, structured interviews with key planners, researchers and politicians (n ¼ 9) in Stockholm were conducted before residents and key planners (n ¼ 5) in Helsinki had been interviewed. Finland was a part of Sweden until 1806, and therefore many of the administrative concerns remain the same providing good grounds for comparison. According to Hall & Pfeiffer (2000), urban development policy in Scandinavia has succeeded in providing supportive cities for families. However, the results of this paper imply that planners in Stockholm and Helsinki have failed to recognise the needs of urban family life in inner cities. This follows more the argument of Warner & Ruckus (2013, p. 640), which stresses that municipalities nurture the creative class in inner-city areas but forget to provide the amenities that are needed for family life.