Browsing by Author "Rantakari, Joni"

Sustainable development is mentioned in the Finnish land use legislation so, it has to be noticed in planning. However, the concept hasn't been determined specifically, which enables a possibility for different views to its fulfillment in practice. Evaluation of its realization has also been inadequate. The purpose of this research is to conceive what sustainable development means within the field of land use planning, focusing on values, concrete actions and connections between these two. In other words, the aim is to get the picture the whole field of sustainable land use. The subject is also examined with a master planning-case of Östersundom which is located in Helsinki. Used methods were semi-structured interviews, discourse analysis and content analysis. Data for the last two were the planning documents from the case and interviews were held to four land use planners that had been working with the case. Sustainable development is seen as an extension to environmental politics that began in the 60s, and its roots are as far as in the beginning of conservation movement in the early 1900s. The core issue of sustainable development is the relationship between man and nature. Ecosocial symbiosis is a term that describes nature as a very solid part of humane life and holds an assumption that the relationship has to be mutualistic instead of parasitical to be sustainable. Idea of ecological modernization on the other hand proposes social and technical innovations to solve environmental problems. Most famous determinations of the concept are Brundtland's commission's ability for future generations to fill their needs and the three dimensions: ecological, economic and social sustainability, which were declared in UN environmental conference in Rio in 1992. Campbell has later added the idea of the three dimensions being in contradiction with each other's. The concept also withholds balancing between sustainability and development; 'weak' sustainable development is said to be focused on market economy and ecological modernization instead of conservation. In 'weak' sustainable development the perspective is human centered and in conservation ecosentric. Land use has most effect, within the three dimensions, to the ecological sustainability, whose right fulfillment on the other hand is seen controversially. Especially the need for ecological and green corridors within urban structure and the scale in conservation issues are disputed. Generally, within urban areas, the most sustainable solution is considered to be compact and harmonized structure which is interconnected to railways which has benefits from the perspective of all of the three dimensions. On the other hand more loose structure can also be seen as sustainable, but only from the social perspective. Eco-efficient solutions, which are based on reducing emissions and consumption with different technical ways, are also considered to be sustainable, their problems usually relating to economical reasons. Östersundom's master planning mainly followed the general principles mentioned in the theory chapter. The planners wanted a metro based, compact and urban structure, but Helsinki's political will gave the structure more looseness. Because of this and out of sheer building in the area, emphasis on the plans has been on economy and social reasons; in other words on the 'weak' sustainability. The biggest threads to the sustainable development were considered to be financial issues, which have mediation to the other two dimensions of sustainable development. In the process there has also been a lot of dispute over the green areas and in the plans the nature was valued from human perspective. In practice this meant reducing their area (also exclusion areas), redundancy of green corridors and highlighting green areas within the urban structure. Practical ways and principles of cultivation were developed in the process with which the desired nature could be created to the area. Legislation didn't warm up to these procedures near the Natura-areas and so, the planning process had to continue and plans to be changed. In the beginning of 2014 the process was still unfinished.