Browsing by Author "Puttonen, Mia"

The Helsinki City Plan Vision 2050 perceives urban parks as its citizens’ living rooms that offer a setting for diverse urban life. The definition of a living room highlights the notion of “hanging out”, sharing space and possibilities for social encounters. In a densifying future urban environment, the significance of urban parks as multifunctional centres of urban life and high quality recreation areas continue to grow. The aim of this thesis was to discover what characterizes Helsinki’s urban parks as public spaces, and to investigate the role they can have in enhancing the lively city. Based on human geography, this thesis hoped to examine the place meanings that urban dwellers attach to urban parks. This research emphasizes the importance of residents’ experiences in knowledge production and is especially interested in the world of experiences that evolve from urban parks as social environments. The thesis was written as part of a European Union funded project GREEN SURGE which in Finland is coordinated by the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Helsinki. As a research group, we collected interview and observation field data based on the project guidelines in 12 urban parks in Helsinki in summer 2015. In total, we received 596 interviews. The most popular motivations to use urban parks included relaxing, hanging out, recreation and enjoying the sunny weather, whereas the significance of nature in user motivations was lower. Activities mentioned as social (being together, having a picnic etc.) covered about one fourth of all motivations to use the parks. Park users who arrived for social reasons tended to stay in parks longer and enjoyed the human environment - company and atmosphere - more often. Otto-Iivari Meurman Park in Käpylä turned out to be superior from the point of view of community spirit and lively social atmosphere, which was mainly due to the little café inside the park. In total, 65 % of park users stated the park as very important. The sources of importance were versatile, but close location and physical green environment were highlighted. On the parks’ level, results showed that a park can be a social public space stimulating the lively city without a deep sense of place from park users. It seems that a park can be important to its user only because the space offers the right opportunities of use and pleasant human environment or atmosphere. The result in part challenges the traditional visions of human geographers over the differences in the meaning of space and place. This research concluded that the urban parks of Helsinki cannot be defined as one type that fulfills same functions in urban space. As social public spaces, other parks are successful and “work” - others unsuccessful and do not work. The parks that were defined as quality social spaces were successful e.g. due to their location, design, multifunctionality, services and identity formation, and they attracted users to stay in the park. In the light of this research, successful urban parks have the potential to enhance the lively city and support the Helsinki City Plan Vision to create a good living environment for all.