|
Working Group 1A - Comparison of Case Studies |
|||||||
|
Other papers relating to people/ ecology interface |
|||||||
|
Sheffield to do |
|||||||
Click
here to return to the Progress Report 2002
Case study Helsinki
-Inkeri Vähä-Piikkiö & Olli Maijala
14.01.2003 klo 10.00 The aim of the case
studies was to explore: "How should urban
ecology inform greenstructure planning and
decision-making?" and the detailed five
questions were as follows: 1. How have the natural
and cultural features influenced the development of
greenstructure in the urban environment? 2. What does this
greenstructure mean for biodiversity, environmental
services, and management of flows? 3. How are the character
and functions of greenstructure considered in land use /
landscape planning? How are the character and functions been
managed to meet ecological and environmental
goals? 4. What is presently
recorded about ecology in the case study area, by whom, and
how? 5. How have the
ecological goals been set out to influence the planning,
design and management processes? Is there any evidence that
these goals have effectively influenced the planning
processes within the study area? CASE STUDY
HELSINKI Introduction Helsinki is the capital
and largest city in Finland. The urbanised area of the city
covers not only the municipality of Helsinki (with about
550,000 inhabitants) but also two other large municipalities
(Espoo and Vantaa) with about 200,000 inhabitants each.
Measured by commuting distances and economical cluster
dependences, the regionalised metropolitan area of Helsinki
appears nowadays to a distance of 110 km. Helsinki is a northern
and maritime city located at the Gulf of Finland, northern
part of the Baltic Sea basin. Its municipal territory covers
185 km_ of land area and 500 km_ of sea area. Figure 1.
Due to strong internal
migration during the last decade, Helsinki and Helsinki
region are presently one of the fastest growing urban
regions in Europe (See Figure 2, The relation between the
growth rates of metropolises and countries in 1995-2000 by
Seppo Laakso 2001). The need for new housing and traffic
connections is a dominant issue and they are given top
priority in urban planning in the city of Helsinki, in the
whole metropolitan area and regionally. 1. How have natural and
cultural features influenced the development of greenstructure in the
urban environment? Short history of the
green structure in Helsinki During Swedish reign
(1550-1809) Helsinki was a small provincial coastal town
situated from 1640 onwards on a narrow peninsula jutting out
to the sea. The town had small wooden houses and half open
landscapes (rural pastures and fields, surrounded by the
Baltic Sea and rural landscapes). Helsinki became the
province capital of Finland in the Russian era (1812). A
clear grid square town structure was made: a stony inner
city for upper classes and monumental administration, wooden
outskirts behind bridges formed workers suburbs. First
public urban park (Kaisaniemi park) became in 1829. The
Esplanade park was realised in 1831/1881 and became the most
fashionable promenade of the ruling elite in the city
centre. The few privately started scenic suburban public
parks were socially distinctive in the 1870´s:
Kaivopuisto for the beau monde, Kaisaniemi for educated
Finnish speaking public and Töölö for the
masses (craftsmen and servants). Some private parks, gardens
and cemeteries acted as half public parks too. A discussion on
hygienic, health related general need of green spaces for
urban children starts, as social reform programmes appear in
the turn of the century. Public social movements and workers
movements raised new suburban recreation areas, public parks
according to the examples of Stockholm, and Volkspark-ideas.
Allotment &endash;movement and school-garden-movements had
their first communities in Tampere and Helsinki in
1920´s. Green area planning and management becomes
everyday planning standard as planning organisations and
committees are borne in 1920´s. For a long time
Helsinki had to expand along the two railway lines to the
north-west and to the north-east, leaving the in-between
areas in the middle, as well as the bays fairly unbuilt.
This situation created the basis of the finger-like urban
and green structure of Helsinki. Rapid urbanisation and
urban expansion including suburbanisation started after the
second world war. The first nature conservation area was
founded in 1948. Municipal land policy is active:
development and recreational areas are actively bought in
the fringe and nearby rural areas - to become the core
recreation areas in the future regional plans. The
modernistic forested suburb type, common in the
Fennoscandian countries, is established (Hankonen 1994,
Roivainen 1999). The bays on either side of the centre of
Helsinki were finally bridged, after which the construction
of suburbs to the west and to the east really began.
However, during the 1960´s and 1970´s and due to
the weak resources of the neighbouring, rapidly growing
rural municipalities , these suburbs were spread out loosely
on a very large area, depending much on the land-ownership
of the private construction companies. Regional planning took
the lead in recreational and nature conservation planning in
the 1970´s: regional green area structure and
nationally status-given conservation areas. Central park (
one of the main green areas, the so-called "green fingers"
of Helsinki) is the first to gain legal status in a local
general plan in Helsinki in 1978. The general plan of 1974
is the first one to cover the whole city area, except the
archipelago. The main green areas (4 wedges - "green
fingers" -, and archipelago) are left outside legally
binding local detailed plans (to save land for future
development), till the 2000´s. Since the 1980´s
the commuting area of Helsinki has extended gradually to a
distance of 100 km, in a star like shape along the main
traffic lines. It includes small towns and rural suburbs,
where competition on best enterprises and national subsidies
makes land use policies more difficult than ever before. As
planning legislation was renewed in 1990`s and gave more
power to local authorities, Helsinki started to implement a
densification-oriented urban planning policy. The ongoing
process of the General plan 2002 of Helsinki has restarted
discussion on urbanisation, densification goals and the fate
of green areas, unprotected and unplanned in the draft for
the regional plan (2002) as well. Green structure in
Helsinki at present The landscape of
Helsinki is dominated by glaciofluvial landscapes, exposed
bedrock and forested hills alternating with flat clay areas
which once constituted the seabed. The city centre is
situated on a rocky peninsula near the open sea. The
shoreline is long and there are hundreds of islands, most of
which are small rocky outcrops from the sea. Inland the
landscape scenery is dominated by granite hills (30-60 m
above the sea level), mixed with sites gneiss, amphibolite
and limestone, cliffs and tiny canyons. The geographical
location of Helsinki on a narrow peninsula has had a
significant influence on its urban and green structure.
Because of the topography of the region, and the historical
possibilities of the city to expand, there are long
stretches of green from the north that penetrate deep into
the centre of the city. Most of the these present main
continuous radial green areas, the so-called green fingers
of Helsinki, are a mixture of former agricultural river
valleys, rocky forested ridges with spruce swamps and other
wetlands, that had former geo-technical or economical
threshold for construction. The most well-known of the green
fingers, the so-called Central Park of Helsinki gained the
first (but less legally binding) land use plan (a Local
Master Plan) in 1978, as it was mainly publicly owned and
situated in the early urbanised west. The largest north-east
finger, from Viikki nature conservation area at the bottom
of eastern Vanhakaupunki bay to the forests of Kivikko, was
for decades the widest and for its nature and recreational
values most appreciated unofficial green finger, until
Viikki area was turned to housing, campus and office-suburb
in the 1990´s. As the City of Helsinki
owns 69%, and the state some 7% of the land inside the
municipal borders, the city is also the largest owner of the
green areas. About one third of the entire Helsinki city is
approximated to be "statused" green space in 1998, which
means about 100 m_ per inhabitant (Table 1). The (mainly
locally) planned public green areas compiled to about 4,2
hectares / 1000 inhabitants (42 m_ / inhabitant) in 2002,
altogether 5654 ha. Public urban forests cover 63% of this
green space . Otherwise it consists of built parks (17%),
manor estates (1%) and meadows and landscape fields (11%).
Partly accessible nature conservation areas cover 4,2 km_
(of which 2,8 km_ is land), altogether 0,6 % of the total
area of Helsinki. The sea, shoreline and archipelago are
also of great importance when discussing the green areas in
Helsinki. There are almost 100 kilometres of shoreline and
over 300 islands in the Helsinki archipelago. There does not exist
more precise complete data on the present land use or land
cover types (regardless of land use planning categories).
For habitat distribution in 2001, see Table 2. 2. What does this
greenstructure mean for biodiversity, environmental
services, and management of flows? Biodiversity For the whole Finland a
national Biodiversity web clearing house mechanism has been
founded in 2001, see
http://www.ymparisto.fi/eng/environ/bdclearh/. For Helsinki a mappable
Nature Database (called by acronym LTJ) was created in 2001
by the Helsinki City Environmental Centre, approachable for
civil servants in municipal environmental administration and
some other departments like Public Works Department and
Urban Planning Department, but not for local authorities or
the great public. The departments have argued that basic
atlas data does not serve their applied needs in the best
way, and some thematic maps and warning and guiding
environmental applications are needed. For the BD-needs of
the great public a web based application is planned in 2003.
The LTJ includes at the
moment (January 2003) nature conservation area boundaries,
protection data on sites and species, valuations of observed
taxa, lists of springs, observations and sampled trail
tracks and line transects, GIS- or grid-based squarewise
presence/absence information of species observations from
atlases on breeding birds and vascular plants. In the next some basic
BD-datasets from Helsinki are described: Measured by several taxa
(vascular plants, breeding birds, polyporus fungi,
butterflies and bumblebees), their species number,
ecological and historical groups and threatened species:
There is an unusually high BD within hemiboreal Helsinki,
compared to rural hemiboreal neighbouring municipalities or
other European temperate cities and towns. The Helsinki
Atlas database on (wild) vascular plants (Kurtto and
Helynranta 1998) includes 1108 species altogether. E.g.
vascular plant species number by 1 km2 square area is on
average over 350 species (like in Berlin or Vienna), when
only 200 species per 1 km2 in hemiboreal rural surroundings
(Kurtto and Helynranta 1998). The vascular plant
species number in 514 1 km2 grids is varied from 427 to 1
species (on the smallest rocks) (Figure 3). General species
diversity is remarkably high, because of original mosaic
like biotope combinations: archipelago, range of hemiboreal
natural biotopes, and because of profitably slow
urbanisation: ramparts, harbours, land dumping, allotments,
manors and villas, railways, moderate trampling and
eutrophication. Thanks to (until now)
slow and relatively recent urbanisation of Helsinki, all
historical groups are still present in the vascular flora
(and on their distribution sites) in a mixture (Kurtto,
Helynranta and Hahkala 2002). This kind of deep floral
information exists only in few towns in Finland. About three
quarters were permanent members of the local flora, 40% of
them being natives (species of habitats like aquatic
habitats, shores, rocks, heath- and herb rich forests and
dry meadows), 11 % immemorial immigrants e.g. archaeophytes
(arrived prior to 18th century, e.g. meadow and field margin
species), 11% established aliens (like ballast plants or
with Russian military in 1809-1917 arrived species) and 11 %
established cultivation escapes (e.g. grain or fallow seed
weeds, ornamental seed escapes) or 16% casual immigrant
species (like the species which established to ramparts or
to manor- and villa-gardens and parks in 1840-1920). The
local historical values in the flora are largely unknown and
unprotected, and as such unnecessary prone to hazards and
extinction. Unlike elsewhere in Europe, even the nationally
most important cultural historical surroundings are now
repaired and remade omitting these elements in their goals.
Helsinki still misses a
vegetation based biotope map, like all Finnish towns and
cities miss urban biotope classifications. The problem
relates to the European need of typifying the biotopes in
boreal cities and towns for common environmental tools in
EU, and to forest research need in the coastal areas at the
Gulf of Finland in the hemiboreal biogeographical zone. A
common monitoring problem appears as vegetation based
biotopes, land cover and land use have all different scales.
Biotope indicators within the vascular plant flora (in
Kurtto, Helynranta and Hahkala 2002) reveal the present
sites in the scales of 0,25 km_ and 1 km_ , but the
possibility has not interested either the Environment
Centre, urban planners or green managers so far, though a
vegetation based biotope map for Helsinki is still missing
in 2003. Helsinki hosted in 2001
27 nationally and 13 regionally (within the hemiboreal zone)
threatened vascular plant species, 17 protected species by
nature protection act (see Table 3 for threatened and rare
species approach). Moreover, it hosted over 30 valuable
biotopes of 5 types (Finnish Nature Conservation Act and
Regulation), including species and habitat directive
classification sites, and 4 Natura2000 areas - 21 nature
conservation areas altogether (Finnish Nature Conservation
Act and Regulation) (Pietilä 2001). The geoinformatic floral
atlas database is as a part of Nature Database LTJ created
in 2001 by the Helsinki City Environmental Centre. The most
important MapInfo GIS data package for land use and BD
monitoring is SeutuCD01 by Helsinki Metropolitan Area
Council , including both statistics and mappable land use
data (YTV 2001). According to this source (SeutuCD01,
Seutumap01) the land use in Helsinki is as follows: green
areas are some 85 km_, built areas 98 km_, and protection
areas 2,8 km_ (Table 1). The following is from
Vähä-Piikkiö, Kurtto and Hahkala 2003 and
Vähä-Piikkiö and Hahkala 2003: The present
protection areas are not effective in protecting rare or
threatened vascular plants in Helsinki, as they host only
some 16% of the occurrences at maximum (Tables 1-3). The
green areas are in Helsinki the most important areas for the
present vascular plant biodiversity habitats (over 70% of
the seashore and swamp plants as well as all threatened
plants, over 60% of mire and heath forest plants, majority
of lush and herb forest and seminatural meadow plants as
well as manor and villa era plants). About 60 % of the
indigenous plants and the rarest natives in Helsinki grow in
green areas, mainly at the coast, and in the forests and
mires (Table 3). The threatened vascular species need
special care in (largely unknown) cultural habitats, where
most of them live, some of them in the tiny patches in built
environment (Table 3). An atlas of breeding
birds in Helsinki was studied with collaboration between
professional and amateur ornitologists in 1996-1997 and
completed in 1999 (Pakkala, Holopainen and Tiainen 2000).
Information of breeding evidence of species in a 1 km_ -
grid was gathered with an atlas technique. The study
included 346 1-km_ -grid squares in land areas, and 123
species were least very probable breeding, and 32 species
possibly breeding. A survey activity was also recorded, as
it effects on distributions and breeding evidences. A rough
habitat distribution data was formed from satellite images
and GIS-land use data. The database is included in the
LTJ-database mentioned above. A suburban Lauttasaari
breeding territory atlas by Juha Laaksonen and a local
detailed habitat map by ecology students of the Helsinki
University have been financed by Ministry of Environment to
create a green area index, to combine the overall greenery
qualities to breeding territories and the breeding
communities and land use patterns (Pakkala 2001). The
urbanisation has effected differently on different species
that have connections to the developments in local and
regional populations (Pitkänen and Tiainen 2001,
Laaksonen, Pakkala and Tiainen 2002). Polyporus wood rotting
fungal species were inventoried in 1986 and completed
1999-2001 by Reijo Erkkilä and Tuomo Niemelä
(1986) in Helsinki, and recorded to an atlas GIS database,
and included in LTJ-database, in a scale of 1-km_. The data
has not enhanced any new fungal (-BD-) politics in urban
forests or park trees, except intensified rot abatement by
felling infested trees. Bumblebees and
butterflies in their best habitats in Helsinki have been
censused in the summers 2001 and 2002 by the Helsinki
University researches, financed by national research
programme for Finnish Biodiversity FIBRE, recording by
repeated (seasonal variation) line transect surveys a
species presence/absence atlas with special notes on their
habitats. (Bäckman and others 2003). Pests Basic information on
casual immigrants and weeds is above: Slightly less in
hemiboreal Helsinki than in Central Europe, but almost _ of
the flora altogether already! Aggressive newcomers have
landed to Helsinki as well, but no abatement campaigns or
systematic abatement have been organised so far. During the
five last years only Artemisia campestris ssp campestris has
arisen local weeding campaigns around schools by
allergy-NGO´s. Those should perhaps be organised, not
to lose a local valuable native A.c.ssp coarctata on the
shores as well. Private garden waste and urban forestry
shingle dumping are main spread reasons for several
aggressive immigrants like Impatiens glandulifera or
Fallopia sp, outcompeting floristically valuable natives in
herb rich forests and swamps. Concerning aggressive
immigrant fauna, only national assessments have been made.
The wery only rabbits for Finland inhabit a small coastal
stripe in Helsinki, so far. A recent study on small
carnivores in urban green areas shows how unnative minks and
raccoondogs can be all too effective in their feeding on
breeding ducks, especially in the coastal swamp and reed
areas of Viikki nature conservation area. Environmental
services and material flows Climate Like commonly in Europe,
also in the hemiboreal (Köppenic intermediate climate
between maritime and continental) Helsinki most of the
climate policies have been concentrated to the polluter pays
-rule, that means local source solutions for global problems
(see
http://www.ytv.fi/english/air/impacts_of_climate_change.pdf).
Main sources being energy production, industry and traffic,
the policies are there, too. In a land use questions green
area planning is seldom seen to be the direct tool for other
than traditional latent local microclimatic factors: e.g.
wind barrier, and nowadays as environmental profits like
pollution emissions or noise barrier functions.
Bioindicators are used for assessing effects of the
emissions to nature, as well as health indicators for the
health risks. See http://ilma.ytv.kaapeli.fi/english/airquality/airwaredemo.php
for air quality information on emissions and sources.
The climatic services of
urban green space include e.g. ventilation and filtering of
the pollution emissions. In Helsinki the cooling effect of
vegetation on surface temperatures does not have a greater
significance in a cool climate. It is exceeded by the
effects of the Baltic sea: seasonal cooling in spring and
warming in autumn. The city centre acts as a heat island,
that is generally preferred the year round , except in the
dry summer 2002, when the press got outbursts on the case.
As the centre of
Helsinki is situated on a peninsula, the most important
("blue-green") space for ventilation effect is the
surrounding sea area that allows the prevailing
south-western winds to ventilate the street emissions. For
the central northern Helsinki area also important is the
north-eastern winter ventilation because of the open areas
at Vantaa river. More a key local emission control question
than marginal greenery emission benefit: In spring a
constant street management problem with small sand particles
polluting the street air as remnants of the wintertime
slipperiness control. The significance of the
forests as reducing traffic contaminants has been studied
long in Helsinki (e.g. Löfström 1987). Based on
these it was recommended how a well-functioning protective
belt of trees should be: the edge of the forest should be
sharp and "embayed" to allow the wind to get inside the
forest. Facing the road the trees should be deciduous, and
further away more coniferous trees. The existence of shrub
layer and trees of various ages is important in increasing
the vertical differentiation. The horizontal depth of an
effective protective forest belt was recommended to be 50 -
100 meters. However, this principle is nowadays not much
implemented in Helsinki, as it is often rebuilt for other
purposes, mostly offices, even housing (Ruoholahti!,
Viikki!) or light traffic or in the case of green barrier
areas considered to use too much space. Thus the decision
has often been to solve only the noise problem by building
noise barrier fences. In policies and planning
the significance of green space to emissions and air quality
is a contradictory issue. Despite its evident (but here
unmeasured) environmental services green space has many
times been seen as an obstacle to the (seen as) necessary
densification of the urban structure, and thus guilty of the
growing emissions (Helsinki Metropolitan Area Council). The
present CO2 -policies by Helsinki Metropolitan Area Council
are clearly controversial to urban biodiversity and green
area planning as a whole, based on wrong assumptions and
connections, mixing sinks and sources, primary and secondary
sources (compare to e.g.
http://www.ytv.fi/english/air/impacts_of_climate_change.pdf),
probably aimed rather to campaign densification in Helsinki
than to find a regional land use solution. Though
re-urbanisative densification always carries a threshold of
environmental risk, that is not discussed. Emissions are
solely borne by rising traffic, need for more energy plants
and densified mixed structure building sites themselves,
like offices, shops and housing more car-owners, worsening
the air quality with rising densities. Water The main river valley in
Helsinki, Vantaa river valley, has been preserved as one of
the green fingers of Helsinki, as well as the main parts of
two brook valleys (Mätäjoki and Broända
brook). The quality of the water in Vantaa river and in the
bays surrounding the central parts of Helsinki has been
considerably improved during the recent decades. However,
otherwise the small watersheds like brooks and springs have
been neglected and undervalued - they have been treated as
parts of the technical drainage system
only. Typical for the coastal
area of the Bay of Finland is that it has a very low
infiltration rate: the soil is rocky with thin layers, or
alternatively consisting of thick clay beds. There are quite
few areas where ground water is created: permeable surface
with sand or moraine below. Because of intensive coating
,with asphalt mainly, regionally most of the existing
filtrating surfaces are in the natural green areas at
present: We know only how much flow there are in Vantaa
river watershed and in local ground water sources. There are
only moderate possibilities for surface water infiltration
outside green areas. Local problems appear in heavy
overflows during summer thunderstorms and rarely in mild
winters as ice cover blocks surface flow sinks. The fresh
water supply for Helsinki comes from Lake Päijänne
about 120 km to the north through a channel in a rock tunnel
(see http://www.hel.fi/vesi/english/index_en.htm).
Waste and organic
matter As part of the
greenspace in Helsinki, there is a small amount of fields
(appr. 2-5 % of the total land area, including meadows as
well as allotments and summer gardens). These could be used
for recycling the nutrients. However, as the sewage water
from different sources is mainly not separated but mixed
together, the sludge contains often too much detrimental
constituents, mostly heavy metals and organic components.
Thus sludge is not used for agriculture as such, but as
diluted and composted mulch only for landscaping etc. In
spite of estate level and local waste and sorting services,
there is an overproduction of private gardening organic
waste, which creates a threat towards biodiversity as
dumping is common in public green areas, destroying swamps
and lush and herb forests especially. In general half of all
the waste produced in Helsinki metropolitan area is
construction waste, telling about rapid urbanisation. Half
of the total waste mass collected is transferred to
neighbouring Espoo to the only landfill site in the area,
and the other half is recycled. See
http://www.ytv.fi/english/waste/basic.html. There are no
incinerators so far. Other environmental
services Other environmental
services of urban green space include e.g. carbon sink and
noise barrier effect. (Further investigations
are needed to find out if there are existing data or
calculations of the significance of green space in this
sense) 3. How are the
character and functions of greenstructure considered in land
use/ landscape planning? How are the character and functions
been managed to meet ecological and environmental
goals? Land use (but not
landscape) planning is carried out according to formal, and
legally binding instruments, and according to various
informal tools that have been elaborated in order to
complement the formal tools, as well as compensate their
shortcomings. Landscape planning does not appear in separate
formal plans but approaches are integrated to the land use
planning instruments. The main formal
legislative instrument to govern both the green structure
and urban growth in Helsinki - as well as in every
municipality in Finland - is the General Master Plan, that
is prepared and approved by the municipal council. The
structural, strategic green planning is tightly integrated
in the General Master Plan, also in the case of the ongoing
Helsinki General Master Plan 2002 work. In Helsinki,
landscape architects at the City Planning Department have
prepared the structural green and landscape guidelines as
part of the General Master Plan 2002 work (in 1970-1994
planning was completed by a wider group of professionals,
including sociologists, planning geographers, ecologists and
environmentalists, and in closer contact with implementing
departments). Integration with other issues in the General
Master Plan is made in an early professional planning stage:
no separate sectoral green plan is dealt with or approved in
any political decision-making organ (cf. e.g.
Landschaftsplanung in Germany, or Grönstrukturplanering
in Sweden). For regulating the more
detailed location of functions, size and type of buildings,
the Local Detailed Plan is used. These are drawn up by the
City Planning Department and approved by the City Planning
Committee and then by the City Council. According to the
specifications (which kind of green space is planned in each
case) given in these Local Detailed Plans, the actual plans
for parks etc. are planned, giving detailed instructions for
construction and other kind of actions. These plans are
mostly made at the Green Area Division at the Public Works
Department, guided by the Public Works Committee. The Regional Land Use
Plan, that is prepared and approved by the Regional Council
and ratified by the Ministry of Environment, used to have a
clear regional green goal in its focus (although it
otherwise followed humbly the General Master Plans prepared
by the municipalities) during the 1970´s - 1980´s.
However, the first Regional Land Use Plan for Helsinki
region during the new Land Use and Building Act of Finland
(since 1.1.2000) includes much less green areas than the
municipal General Master Plans - especially the structural
emphasis has been lost. National Land Use
Guidelines is a new governmental political tool. It is
prepared by the Ministry of Environment with relevant
parties, and approved by the Council of State (Government).
Green areas are one of the good living environment issues,
but not in the centre of the policies, concerning the
Helsinki Metropolitan area goals, sometimes contradictory,
in any case tool-less, see http://www.vyh.fi/eng/orginfo/publica/electro/eg93/eg93.htm.
A fairly new national
tool included in the new Land Use and Building Act of
Finland (1.1.2000) is the possibility to create large-scale
National Urban Parks (see
http://www.vyh.fi/eng/environ/legis/landuse.htm. Informal planning
tools Nationally, the
Environment Departments at the municipal and regional level
(state) are often in the limited position of giving
experts´ opinion or formal statement in the land use
planning processes, even though they are responsible of the
nature policy information for the whole of municipal
administration. Nature protection areas have in the
1990´s been mostly marketed as a part of the recreation
area network than vice versa. The environmental
administration has so far been mainly successful in taking
care of national programmes on nature protection (sometimes
not even that like in the case of Vuosaari harbour), less in
local biodiversity policies, or in enhancing green area
policies (see earlier LTJ, the nature data base of Helsinki
City Environment Centre). Green Fingers.
The "green fingers" is the basic concept used for defining
the main structure of green in Helsinki. It is a kind of
substantial tool, too, but it does not contain any specific
supporting instruments in itself to strengthen the status of
this basic structure. The support in practice is threefold:
firstly, the "green fingers" is a mental structure, it has
some established status as a long-lasting idea of the green
structure in Helsinki (but it has not been discovered how
strong the status is, neither at the level of discourses
(rhetoric) nor in practice); secondly, the "green fingers"
will receive a legal status when integrated in the General
Master Plan; thirdly, the status of individual fingers can
be strengthened by other specific policy tools, e.g. the
most well-known of the "green fingers", the Central Park of
Helsinki was protected from development by a Local Master
Plan drawn specifically for this sub-area in 1977. This
policy has, however, not been continued in other "green
fingers". Another kind of new tool, included in the new
legislation, is a possibility to create a National Urban
Park. Helsinki has used its own version of this concept in
one of the "green fingers", the Vantaa River Valley, and
named it "Helsinki Park". This is, however, so far only a
kind of "status tool" that increases the ethical commitment
to the area nominated as "National Urban Park". District Park. In
the new Helsinki General Master Plan 2002 presently under
preparation, the landscape architects responsible of the
green area planning sector in the plan (Environment Office)
have promoted a policy concept of "district parks". These
are larger park areas situated inside or between districts,
which include, in various combinations, natural, cultural
and activity-related environments especially serving the
inhabitants living close to it in the neighbouring areas.
The idea is to strengthen the local identity, to offer more
options for activities and to bring a high quality park
within reach of every citizen. These would also be focal
points for resource allocation. Green Area
Programme. To systematically maintain and develop green
areas in the city, a green area programme for the period
1999-2008 has been prepared. This covers the green areas
inside the municipality borders that are owned by the city.
The green areas here include the actual park and forest
areas according to Master and Local Plans, nature
conservation areas, including sheltered areas along traffic
lines, green on the streets, and the archipelago. The
initiative came from the Green Area Division / Public Works
Department. The actual work was done by a working group of
16 members, coming from different sector departments of the
city and from two civic organisations. The contribution of
other organisations and associations was got by organising
two "green forums", at the beginning and at the end of the
work. The final programme was approved by the City Board.
One part of the Green Area Programme was to define the focal
and important green areas in Helsinki, the so-called "Pearls
of Helsinki", and to define aims and measures for them.
These "pearls" include the following: the Central Park, the
Töölönlahti bay area, the Viikki-Kivikko
green finger, nature conservation areas, rivers and brooks,
and the archipelago. Based on the Green Area Programme, the
Green Area Division has for a couple of years now made Green
Area Plans for one (established) city district at a time
covering all the green areas in that district. These plans
have been made using a participatory-oriented procedure
created at the Green Area Division during the
1990´s. It seems that the
programme has not been very effective tool in collaboration
with the General Master Plan 2002. Local Agenda 21
-work resulted in a programme approved by the City Council
and in a list of unofficial proposals including green area
structural visions and arguments by NGO´s. How these
have effected the Helsinki General Master Plan 2002 will be
seen. See http://www.hel.fi/ymk/agenda/eng/index.html.
4. What is presently
recorded about ecology in the case study area, by whom, and
how? Written
document GIS Whole city City region Greenspace:
inventory, typology, assessment PWD on Green Area Programme
PWD on management, UPD on planned Total missing Missing,
only municipal land use plans Monitoring
of greenspace condition PWD PWD occasionally - - Assessment
of greenspace functions: Unsystematic, occasional and rare
-
ecology HU, FIBRE HU, HUT HU HU -
climate HU (in 1988) - - - - air
quality HMC, EC HU HMC HMC -
hydrology Projects - - - - soils
RED on construction needs GSF, commercial products - GSF,
commercial products - energy
conservation / CO_ HELEN, EC, - EC programmed HMC Cross-sectional
issues Land use plans Land use plans Land use plans
Regionally in land use plans Note: 1 Acronymes: PWD Helsinki City,
Public Works Department / Green Area Division UPD Helsinki City, City
Planning Department HU Helsinki
University HUT Helsinki University
of Technology FIBRE Academy of
Finland, FIBRE research programme on Finnish biodiversity on
1997-2002 HMC Helsinki
Metropolitan Area Council RED Helsinki City, Real
Estate Department GSF Geological Survey
Finland EC City of Helsinki,
Environment Centre HELEN Helsinki Energy
Ltd 2 Helsinki City Nature
Data Base has been ejected on 2002. See earlier the data in
general. 5. How have ecological
goals been set out to influence the planning, design and
management processes? Is there any evidence that these goals
have effectively influenced the planning processes within
the study area? Concerning biodiversity
there is no policy goals with the exception of what is
compulsory according to the legislation (species and nature
types to be protected nationally). However, last year the
City Council of Helsinki approved a very general statement
that the biodiversity in Helsinki shall not be reduced
(whatever it then may mean in practise...). This lacking of
overall biodiversity goals and principles has lead many
times to hard and frustrating conflicts in urban planning
processes. For a good policy formulation also a good urban
biodiversity database (for species, biotopes and ecosystems)
is needed. A first rough version of this is now in use in
Helsinki. Yet it is too early to draw any conclusions about
its reception among various official actors and branches of
administration in the city: how it has been made use of on
one hand, and what kind of status does it have as a
regulative, protective instrument on the other. According to an ongoing
interview study, it seems that biodiversity, especially the
so-called ordinary urban nature (with no clear, detailed
explicit protection according to the legislation), is a weak
interest in land use planning in municipalities (Maijala
2003). This is also reflected in the ongoing planning work
of the Helsinki General Master Plan 2002 and Regional Land
Use Plan. These plans do not have any green area statements
or explicit biodiversity goals at present (Figure 4, Table
2, Vähä-Piikkiö and Hahkala 2003). FIGURES AND
TABLES Figure 1. Land use in
Helsinki in 2001 (Source: Seutumap 01 by Helsinki
Metropolitan Area Council) green: green areas
brown: city center
and housing areas violet: industrial
and office areas black line: city
border Source: Helsinki
Metropolitan Area Council product SeutuCD01,
seutukartta01. Figure 2. The relation
between the growth rates of metropolises and countries in
1995-2000. Source: Seppo Laakso
2001: Metropolises in Europe, based on The European Economic
Research Consortium (ERECO) and co-ordinated by Cambridge
Econometrics (UK), see internet
www.hel.fi/tietokeskus/en/Trends202) Figure 3. Number of
vascular plant species in 1-km_ -squares in Helsinki in
2000. (Source: Vähä-Piikkiö, I., Kurtto A.,
and Hahkala, V. 2003: Species number, historical elements
and protection of threatened species in the flora of
Helsinki, Finland. Accepted in the journal Landscape and
Urban Planning) Figure 4: Green areas in
Land use plans and their effect on biodiversity in Helsinki
in 2002 Click
map for more detailed view
Below - Uusimaa Regional
land use plan 2002 by Uusimaa Regional Council Table 1. Land use in
Helsinki in 2001 and in land use plans 2002. (Sources: Basic
database of Helsinki Metropolitan Area Council,
www.hel.fi/ksv/english/index, and
www.uudenmaanliitto.fi/mkaava/map) Table 2. Habitat
distribution on present land use and loss on planned land
use in Helsinki. (Source: Vähä-Piikkiö, I.
& Hahkala, V. 2003: Vascular plant biodiversity and land
use in Helsinki. The City of Helsinki, Urban Facts, Research
Series. Table 3. Prioritised
habitats of threatened vascular plant species in Finland and
Helsinki in 2001. (Source: Vähä-Piikkiö, I.,
Kurtto A., and Hahkala, V. 2003: Species number, historical
elements and protection of threatened species in the flora
of Helsinki, Finland. Accepted in the journal Landscape and
Urban Planning) Sources: Häyrynen, M., 1994.
Maisemapuistosta reformipuistoon. (In Finnish, summary in
English: From scenic park to a reform park). Suomalaisen
kirjalllisuudenseura ry Laakkonen, S., Laurila,
S., Kansanen, P: and Schulman H., 2001. Näkökulmia
Helsingin ympäristöhistoriaan. Kaupungin ja
ympäristön muutos 1800- ja 1900-luvuilla. (In
Finnish: Viewpoints to the environmental history of
Helsinki). 274 pp. Helsingin kaupungin tietokeskus, Edita,
Helsinki Hankonen, J., 1994.
Lähiöt ja tehokkuuden yhteiskunta (In Finnish:
Blocks of flats suburbs and the society of effectiveness).
Gaudeamus, Helsinki. Roivainen, I., 1999.
Sokeripala metsän keskellä: lähiö
sanomalehden konstruktiona (In Finnish, summary in English:
A sugar cube out in the forest - the suburb as a
journalistic construct). Helsingin kaupungin tietokeskus,
Helsinki. Väliverronen, E.,
1996. Ympäristöuhkan anatomia : tiede, mediat ja
metsän sairaskertomus. Vastapaino, Tampere. Helsinki region
statistical comparisons 2002. Urban facts. City of Helsinki.
83 pp. Biodiversity:
Bäckman, J-P. 2003:
Kurtto, A. and
Helynranta, L., 1998. Helsingin kasvit &endash; Kukkivilta
kiviltä metsän syliin. (In Finnish, Summary in
English: Flora of Helsinki, From flowering stones to the
forest floor.) City of Helsinki Environment Centre and
Helsinki University Press, Helsinki. Kurtto, A. and
Helynranta, L., 1999. Helsingin kasvistoa William Nylanderin
ajoista nykypäivään. (In Finnish, Abstract in
English: Changes in the flora of Helsinki since the days of
William Nylander). Luonnontieteellinen keskusmuseo,
Vuosikirja 1999: 37-58. Kurtto, A. and Lampinen,
R., 1999. Atlas of the distribution of vascular plants in
Finland &endash; digital view of the national floristic
database. Acta Bot. Fennica 162: 67-74. Kurtto, A. and Uotila,
P., 1999. Kaupunkien kasvisto muutosten kourissa. (In
Finnish: Changing flora of Finnish cities). Luonnon Tutkija
103:173-182. Kurtto, A., Hahkala, V.
and Helynranta, L., 2002. Helsingin kasviston historialliset
ainekset, uhanalaisuus ja elinympäristöt &endash;
teemakartasto. (In Finnish: Atlas database "Historical
elements, threatenness and habitats of vascular plant
species in Helsinki in 1990-2001"). 246 maps, explanations,
37 tables. City of Helsinki Environment Center,
Helsinki. Laaksonen, J., Pakkala,
T., Tiainen, J. 2002: Lauttasaaren pesimälinnusto (In
Finnish: Breeding birds of Lauttasaari). In
Vähä-Piikkiö, I. Ed. Lauttasaaren
luontoatlas. Pp 94-103.City of Helsinki, Urban Facts.
Pakkala, T., Holopainen,
J. and Tiainen, J. 2000: Atlas maps of breeding birds in
Helsinki. Tringa 27(2): 81-128. Pitkänen, M and
Tiainen, J. 2001: Agricultural biodiversity in Finland.
BirdLife Suomi Finland Publications 2. Erkkilä, R. and
Niemelä, T. 1986: Polypores in the parks and forests of
the city of Helsinki. Karstenia 26: 1-40. Helsinki Metropolitan
Area Council (YTV) 2001: SeutuCD01 GIS data package, see
http://www.ytv.fi/english/data/projects.html
blue: the
Baltic sea
Above : Helsinki Master Plan 2002
Working
Group 1A -
Comparison of Case Studies Other papers
relating to people/ ecology interface Sheffield to
do
Click button to return to:
updated July 2003