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A project for the suburbs' housing estates in a country of new construction

The Finnish urban structure is constanly changing because of migration. During the last 50 years the urban development has been one of the most speedy in Europe and it is still continuing strongly. In practice this means, that many Finns change their home district and the constructors build more and more new homes in the more and more few growth poles. So the gravity center of building has always been in new construction. The year 1995 was probably the only one when after the recession the investments volume in rehabilitation passed the one of new construction, counted in Finnmarks. It was the year when the State launched the Suburbs' Project, organised in order to improve the housing estates in the suburbs.

The Suburbs' Project is going on in 50 areas all around Finland. It is a common project of the state, the municipalities and the citizens. They look for new forms of co-operation as well inside the very strongly sectorized administration as on the various fields getting more and more polarized.

Being the Architect with the inhabitants

As far as I know, I am the first one to be an architect of the suburbian housing estates. The name is coming out from the work that I did in a small suburbian housing area in Helsinki, called Pihlajisto. It was before the official Suburbs' Project started. I have chosen to present you the case Pihlajisto development as an example for this meeting, too.

Soon it will be 15 years since I got my architect's diploma. My function is at the Helsinki University of Technology, at the Department of Architecture, partly in teaching work, but mainly working on different kinds of development projects. The red line of all these projects seems to be to improving the housing areas' attractiveness, evaluating their quality together with the inhabitants, and applying various methods of participatory planning in practice. In addition to my function at the School of Architecture, I have a small architecture office of two women, mainly working on housing projects.

The Planning Station of Pihlajisto

Pihlajisto is district of 3000 inhabitants in Helsinki. Its urban plan and construction were carried out in only 5 years in 1970-75. It is a very compact area, being confined on a hill in a clear way. The inhabitants of Pihlajisto have been exceptionally active. In the beginning of the 90's they obtained money from the City of Helsinki and from the Ministry of Environment in order to employ themselves an architect to develop their district. The interview they made for the selection of their architect was the hardest I ever had. Never before anybody asked me as insistantly the legitimity of my ideas as an architect. With my experience on the Pihlajisto residential area I have been obliged to profoundly reflect the role of architect and also how there so many

different links and dependencies inside of the work of architect, towards politics and economical life.

The work of Pihlajisto was based on the work at the Planning station on the site and gathering a pluridisciplinary team. At that time my office expanded by two new women: in addition to us two female architects our team got one sociologist and one environment psychologist. This enthousiastic team started in autumn 1993 a very intensive working period for six following months.

For myself Pihlajisto offered a very interesting experimental area in order to see how various methods work on practice. How to raise the interest of people? Which are the media that function and which of them are not valid? By which means can the discussions be supported?

In the first phase we didn't have much confidence on the complicated and sophisticated tools, but we relied on meeting people directly around a big work table with a map, sketchpaper and a lead-pencil.

The Planning station period at Pihlajisto ended up by an exhibition in which we presented the discussions and the ideas they had given to improve the physical environment. The exhibition tried to be very illustrative with the models, the photos and the drawings. The traditional way of presenting projections and plans was presented in a minimalist degree.

The Planning station of Pihlajisto was just a prelude for the development of the area. It is easy to present different ideas, but how to find financial resources to develop a district who has hardly any resources itself? Pihlajisto had indeed very good luck in timing, because its just then when the national Suburbs project started. In Pihlajisto the basic discussions about the problematic had already been passed, and so it was evident that Pihlajisto became selected between the pilot areas. As it is so small in size, it would hardly otherwise have been taken, so the premature start of the inhabitants' preparation was very useful.

Now there are already 5 years passed since the planning station. One can go to see in Pihlajisto what has happened. Pihlajisto started by the initiative of the inhabitants and it continued as a "Great Project of the State". Maybe one of the most interesting points of view is emerging out of this tension: the meeting , sometimes a collision, of two working practices, from the grassroots to the top level and vice-versa. I am not going to describe you more in detail these collisions, it might be the subject of another presentation.

Pihlajisto left in life at least two concret methods of work. The first is to have a planning station, that's to say your office, on the site. Bringing the planning work on the area demands certain efforts, but it also gives a living contact with the area and its inhabitants. The second way of working is to organise a defined walk through together with the inhabitants, the planners, designers and the city servants. This method, called Gàtur, has been developed in Denmark, especially to be used when evaluating housing areas. We tested it in Pihlajisto for the first time in Finland, and in various situations it has proved to be a very valid tool.

Digitalized Pihlajisto

At the planning station we used very traditional tools. Afterwards I have been involved to develop ideas for a completely different method to be used in the city districts. We developed a Digital Neighbourhood Forum whose petname is Home Street.

Home Street started by researching how Internet might be adapted to develop residential environment and its planning. The idea was to create a meeting place where the city servants, the inhabitants and the local enterprises could get in contact with each other.

Home Street is very clearly a project for the Information Society. As we are aware of many problems caused by the Information Society we have wanted to make it clear how the technics could serve the communicative planning and empowerment in the urban planning.

The Home Street sommary is in the annexe. This work is continuing at the Department of Architecture of the Helsinki University of Technology. This project has evoked much public interest very widely and it gives several new opportunities for the future. Home Street also

inspired me to start my Doctoral Thesis about the subject "Internet supported collaborative learning in communicative urban planning".

Reflexions

An eternal but always interesting question is, how much does the built environment really raise the interest of the inhabitants and how much do they want to influence on it? I may be idealist, but I try by all means to promote the interaction between the professionels and the citizens. I believe, however, that it is the only sustainable path towards the increasing of appreciation of the environment and to improving the living conditions.

The citizens' point of view collapses with the professional prejudices as well as the "wall" created by the representative democracy. The Urban Politics are carried out like the cities were the absolute value. Too often the citizens and their evryday living environment has been forgotten.

Is it crucial that I happen to be a woman? I don't know. In practice I have very often got feedback and support from active, unprejudiced and dynamic women. They have been mainly among the inhabitants and city servants I met, more rarely among the political decision-makers. The system of political parties with their mandates is maybe most part of the old corporative world. Is that what we call "the men's world" ? Sometimes I feel, that it is.

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The initial idea of the Home Street -project arose in HELKA, The Federation of the Associations of Helsinki City Quarters. The financing of the project comes from several sources which the City of Helsinki, Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of the Environment are the most important ones. The Home Street is one of the Culture Capital of Europe 2000 projects.

The City of Helsinki has a centralized organisation with strong sectorized offices. In the last years, the necessity of wider collaboration between citizens and the municipality has been noticed on several podia. At the same time, the use of the Internet has explosively increased. Each school and library in Helsinki is in the net and an increasing number of households is connected to www. The development of a digital neighbourhood forum, called for Home Street, offers new opportunities to the management of the cities in the information era.

The main goals of the Home Street -project are:

- to strengthen the identity of a neighbourhood

- to underpin the existing social and economical capacity in the communities

- to increase inhabitant participation in urban planning and design and

- to innovate new managerial instruments in communities and municipalities

The city is seen as a network of different neighbourhoods in the Home Street -project. Interaction between the neighbourhoods and the municipality is constructed from the everyday life perspective of the citizens, not from that of the sectors and the organisations as usually.

The Internet as a participatory channel in urban process, especially in the context of everyday life of the built environment, has been developed in the Home Street -project. The pilot stage comprises the home pages of three different urban areas in Helsinki: Pihlajisto (3000 inhabitants), Maunula (9000 inhabitants) and Lauttasaari (25 000 inhabitants). See: www.suomenkotiseutuliitto.fi/pihlajisto

In addition to the general informative pages, the Home Street includes interactive fora through which the inhabitants can make their comments, ask questions and offer suggestions for improving their housing environbment directly to the municipality. The pages include different innovative tools for urban planning like a www-workshop for general planning, a www-walkthrough for the planning of urban green areas, a digital neighbourhood photo album, etc.

The Home Street project will be a case study in postgraduate studies concerning inhabitants and urban planning in the information society. The main research question is, whether the inhabitants' everyday experience is possible to be integrated in the knowledge construction of future urban planning or does the use of information technology even strengthen the role of the professionals?

ILLUSTRATIONS:

The first women in the class and on the site.

Project of Wivi Lönn, from 1903. The School of Alexandre in Tampere.