Future Development of Suburbs Lecture Series: International Approaches, Ideas and Experiences combined with National Knowledge

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Professor Panu Lehtovuori will deliver Lecture 6 in the Future Development of Suburbs series. It will take place on 16.02.2012, University Main Building, 33 Fabianinkatu – SALI 13 from 13:00-15:00. Panu is the Professor of Urban Studies at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn. He is nominated as the Professor of Planning Theory in Tampere University of Technology. He is also a partner in Livady Architects, a Helsinki-based practice of architecture and urbanism.

"Suburban Scenarios: Between new cultural sensibilities and the demand for 'urban' density."

The lecture explores Helsinkis current planning ideals and paradigms that focus on the perceived need to densify the old suburban estates, using both ecological, economic and aesthetic rationales, as well as difficulties and pit-falls of this generic vision of top-down re-urbanisation. For example, the conflict between new construction and heritage preservation of the modernistic, architecturally valuable areas may slow the process down.

The lecture also discusses a set of grass-roots phenomena and socio-cultural processes that seem to lead towards new cultural appreciation of the suburban milieus and social settings, visible for example in Siltamäki and Roihuvuori at the moment.

All welcome!

Timetable for the lecture series

Listen to lectures in mp3

Overall aim

This lecture series has been arranged as part of the Helsinki 2012 World Design Capital and is part of the Social Responsibility & Design project. The lectures will explore the future development of suburbs through combining the knowledge of local experts from different fields and draw out the key local challenges, and reflect upon their successes and failures. In doing so the lectures will stimulate fruitful discussion that will be of benefit to urban planners, designers or constructors of the suburban built environment and those interested in the issue of social and ecological sustainability. It is hoped that the sharing of experiences from the case studies will reveal clearer pathways as to how the challenges that face the future development of suburbs might be better addressed in Finland and beyond. 

The series will bring to Finland distinguished speakers from around Europe, each approaching the development and design of suburbs from a different angle. These events bring together local universities, cultural institutions and experts as well experts from other European countries.

Context

Much of the debate and discussion about urban development has focused on the role of city centers and their connections with urban futures. This ranges from Ruth Glass’s seminal work on the gentrification of London in the 1960s to Richard Florida’s creative class thesis. In the 1960s and 1970s urbanization in Finland had just begun, though the Helsinki has since become one of Europe’s fastest urbanizing metropolitan areas. This was made possible by changing modes of economic production and transportation that allowed for the siting of residences away from the city center.

Suburbs play such a central role in the Finnish built environment that they have become one of the country’s biggest concerns: they have been swept under the veneer of the new innovative Nokia era. The well recognisable housing stock is a crucial structural dimension for any kind of change or development of any Finnish city-region and especially the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. One third of all the apartment buildings in Finland are located in suburbs. In addition one fifth of the total population lives in high-rise suburbs. However, many of these suburbs are very ordinary, without any specific drive or shine and in need of new design principles to reflect contemporary societal changes and future developments. This has also been compounded by wider societal changes, such as rapid urbanization, global economic restructuring, increases in wealth combined with income differentiation, which together with changes in the local housing market (both in terms of affordability and supply), have kept older suburbs in a disadvantageous position in relation to newer ones.