New Approaches to Urban Planning Insights from Participatory Communities Edited by Liisa Horelli Aalto University Publication series Aalto-ST 10/2013 New Approaches to Urban Planning Insights from Participatory Communities Edited by Liisa Horelli Aalto University School of Engineering Department of Real Estate, Planning and Geoinformatics YTK – Land Use Planning and Urban Studies Group Aalto-ST 10/2013 Aalto-ST 10/2013 Aalto University publication series Aalto-ST 10/2013 © Authors Kannen kuvat Iso kuva Vesa Kanninen, 2 012 Pieni kuva Heikki Kukkonen, 2013 Takakansi Heikki Kukkonen, Vanha oliivipuu, 2012 Taitto Marina Johansson 9HSTFMG*afbjab+ 9HSTFMG*afbjab+ ISBN 978-952-60-5190-1 BUSINESS + ISBN 978-952-60-5191-8 (pdf) ECONOMY ISSN-L 1799-4896 ISSN 1799-4896 ART + ISSN 1799-490X (pdf) DESIGN + ARCHITECTURE Aalto University School of Engineering SCIENCE + DepartmentUnigrafia Oy of Real Estate, Planning and Geoinformatics TECHNOLOGY YTKHelsinki – Land 2013 Use Planning and Urban Studies Group www.aalto.fi CROSSOVER Finland DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS Acknowledgements This book could not have been written without the generous support of the Finnish Academy and its grant (127978) for which I am grateful. It made it possible to set up the research group, Palco (Participatory Local Community, http://wiki.aalto.fi/display/Palco), for conducting studies on urban issues over four years. I would also like to acknowledge YTK, the former Centre for Urban and Regional Studies at Aalto University, Helsinki, and its director professor Raine Mäntysalo, information specialist Maria Söderholm and office secretary Eija Saari for providing a most stimulating and resilient working environment. In addition, I would like to thank Marina Johansson for the layout of the book, Heikki Kukkonen for designing the cover and Eeva Berglund for checking the English language. Last but not least, I would like to laud the members of the Palco-group – Sirkku Wallin, Joanna Saad- Sulonen, Jenni Kuoppa and Karoliina Jarenko – for their thought- provoking ideas and enthusiasm. Helsinki 31.5.2013 Liisa Horelli 3 CONTENTS FOREWORD 7 Carlos Nunes Silva PART I INTRODUCTION 1 Starting Points 11 Liisa Horelli and Sirkku Wallin PART II SETTING THE SCENE 2 Urban Complexity Challenging Urban Planning 23 Sirkku Wallin PART III LOCAL SOLUTIONS AND PRACTICES 3 Local Co-Governance in Herttoniemi: A Deliberative System 45 Karoliina Jarenko 4 The Contributions of Time Planning in the Finnish Context 65 Liisa Horelli 5 Sensing, Learning and Transforming a Neighbourhood by Walking 89 Jenni Kuoppa PART IV MEETING THE DIGITAL AGE 6 Multiple Participations 111 Joanna Saad-Sulonen 7 Participatory E-Planning Meets the Glocal 131 Liisa Horelli PART V CONCLUSIONS 8 Towards an Architecture of Opportunities 153 Liisa Horelli and Sirkku Wallin GLOSSARY 161 CONTRIBUTORS 164 6 New Approaches to Urban Planning: Insights from Participatory Communities FOREWORD Citizen participation in urban planning is frequently described in the literature as an activity with limited impact in the outcomes of the planning process. In this context it is particularly noteworthy that this gap between what normative planning theory advocates and the planning practice is often rooted in circumstances that can be changed, if the right concept of participatory urban planning is applied. In ‘New Approaches to Urban Planning’, Liisa Horelli, Sirkku Wallin, Karoliina Jarenko, Jenni Kuoppa, and Joanna Saad-Sulonen address this gap and offer an innovative perspective of citizen participation (participation as self-organization different from the traditional staged participation). In particular, the authors examine two planning approaches that have not been extensively used in Finland, namely Participatory e-Planning (the use of ICTs in urban planning to foster citizen participation, including also participation in the design and use of digital tools and media content) and Time Planning (planning focused on the time schedules and spatio-temporal organization of people’s actions). They do this based on several experiences of innovative citizen participation at the neighborhood level in Finland, some of which have been studied for more than a decade in the context of an action- research program in one neighborhood of Helsinki. The authors rightly claim that, due to its extreme complexity, the transformation of urban space is the result of planning decisions and of other processes including the self-organization of different social groups and networks. Since urban problems are so complex, they cannot be solved by urban planning alone, requiring instead an active citizen engagement in the planning process. For that reason, the challenge is to find the 7 appropriate ways of engaging citizens, policy makers, planners and other stakeholders in the co-production of solutions for the everyday life of the local community including the use of community informatics. In a way, this book highlights the complex nature of the challenges confronting citizen participation in urban planning and offers insights on how citizen participation can produce more relevant impacts in the city and in the welfare of local communities. As a book, it is distinctive in its core focus: the local co-governance approach applied to urban planning. This alone would provide a justification to recommend this scholarly contribution. But I can see at least two other reasons to acclaim this book. First, the authors make us understand the importance of multiple participation and co-creation in urban planning as well as in the design of the technology that supports it. Second the book offers descriptions of what works in the field of participatory e-planning and in time planning, based on real cases, even though they are taken from the Finnish cultural and social contexts. Last but not least, the book offers details of these participatory experiences that will certainly be of interest to the reader. By recognizing this crucial link between the nature and roles assigned to citizen participation and the outcomes of the planning process, the book ‘New Approaches to Urban Planning’ is an important addition to the ongoing debate in the field of citizen participation in urban planning and in the field of planning theory. Although written from a Finish standpoint it is not intended and is not only relevant for a Finnish readership, but will certainly prove helpful to other European and non-European researchers, students, planners and to networks of self-organized citizens. Carlos Nunes Silva Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning University of Lisbon PART I INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTIOIN I PART 1 Starting points Liisa Horelli and Sirkku Wallin The rapidly changing urban environment bewilders citizens and challenges political decision-makers as well as administrators. The transformation of urban functions and infrastructure is taking place at different levels and varying time-scales. For example, the growing population of the Helsinki Metropolitan Region means that authorities are compelled to produce public services in large centralised units which, in turn, make the everyday life of citizens living in their neighbourhoods less resilient. The planning of public services and urban space ignores the local level where they will actually be used. This means that functional networks begin to differ from territorial ones, leading to deplorable consequences for the local infrastructure of everyday life. This is not the case only in Finland, but in many European cities as well (Majoor & Salet, 2008). However, the city still has a variety of territorial layers. The materiality of urban functions and the everyday life of a city’s inhabitants are highly intertwined with and even dependent on their neighbourhood. Thus, citizens often have the motivation and the potential to participate in shaping their environment as part of territorial behaviour.1 Such environmental transactions need not necessarily be conspicuous measures: they can 1 Human territorial behaviour refers to the tendency by a person or a group to control or own an object or a place for social (identity, status, stability, family, community) or physical (caring for children, security, cultivation) reasons. It can be seen as building fences, personalizing one´s own or the communal house, and by participation in neighbourhood improvement and community development (Altman & Chemers, 1984, 121; Horelli, 1981). 1 Liisa Horelli and Sirkku Wallin – Starting Points 11 take place, for instance, in the practice of walking (see Kuoppa, Chapter 5). Nevertheless, the supportive infrastructure of everyday life is of utmost importance for ensuring the involvement of local citizens in community development. Infrastructure refers here to the physical, functional and participatory structures that local citizens can appropriate and transform into a supportive culture to provide a place-based identity and sense of community (see Chapter 4 by Horelli). Such structural props encourage citizens’ self-organisation and creativity in a variety of forms, such as pop-up restaurants, new public spaces and dwelling types, as well as through on-line digital settings developed by local inhabitants. In Helsinki an ever growing enthusiasm for this has been witnessed recently (Kopomaa, 2011; Mäenpää, 2011; Botero et al., 2012). The problem is that the traditional, centralised and top-down urban planning which is still current in many European countries, including Finland, does not yet recognise the significance of genuine citizen participation, nor the