Browsing by Author "Saastamoinen, Uula"

This thesis examines cross-sectoral interaction, the role of large actors and its implications to citizens as well as the institutional factors shaping the functioning of the planning sector in Helsinki. The aim is to understand the local planning climate and how it has been shaped by global ideas. Helsinki was chosen because the combination of municipal planning monopoly and vast land ownership makes it a unique case study. Research on large actors (referred to as planning machines and global intelligence corps) has illustrated that large actors and the traveling planning ideas introduced by them affect local planning climates. The resources of planning machines can exclude smaller actors from the field, and complicate the efforts of citizens to resist projects executed by them. International planning ideas on the other hand are adopted by planning officials and local politicians, resulting in a more managerial and entrepreneurial role of planning departments and city councils. Ecological planning is an example of a traveling planning idea discussed in the thesis. Both planning machines and traveling planning ideas have been associated with a post-political climate in which alternatives to current development are marginalised, having direct consequences for democracy. A total of nine professionals from public and private sectors were interviewed, and the semi-structured interviews were coded and analysed using computer assisted qualitative data analysis software. Figures and tables of the 20 most frequent codes and three codes with a highest co-occurrence with each of these codes were chosen for the analysis, as well as other codes with relevance to the research questions. The analysis shows that institutional factors place Helsinki in a strong position to negotiate with the private sector. In cross-sectoral cooperation the role of the public sector has become more managerial and the city has advanced its strategic goals concerning the attractiveness and competitiveness of the city region. However, the city has protected its interests in themes such as social mixing, slowing down negative development witnessed elsewhere. New forms of partnerships such as Allianssi model are examples of successful cross-sectoral cooperation where the power relations between sectors are more equal, but seem to favour large actors due to their resource-heavy nature. Procurement legislation also favours large actors for the same reason. Recommendations for further spatial, temporal and scalar research are proposed.