Browsing by Author "Vitikka, Henrik"

The Helsinki region is growing, with processes of both centralisation and decentralisation characterising its development. Population growth, its distribution and ageing, the amount of jobs and their distribution on the regional level as well as climate change and developments in the economy on the global level induce challenges for urban planning. Planning should simultaneously be ecologically, socially and economically sustainable and promote regional competitiveness. Due to the complexity of this planning task and the recognition that the measures taken by different planning sectors affect each other and that their solutions are frequently common, it has been noted that the traditional sector-planning does not meet the requirements of achieving planning objectives effectively. Thus, new modes of planning, such as strategic planning and inter-administrative cooperation have been emphasised in literature. This view is central to the MAL cooperation as well. MAL cooperation consists of planning of land use (M), housing (A) and transport (L), which are integrated under one umbrella. This comprehensive approach to planning is thought to give the regions the most effective tools in improving prerequisites to the curbing of climate change, to securing of the functionality of people's everyday life and for development of the regions' competitiveness. The MAL cooperation in the Helsinki region has produced two letters of intent between the state and the municipalities (2008-2012 and 2012-2015). This study concerns itself with the current one (2012-2015), in which I focus on the intended development of the regional transport system. For the analysis, I also study three planning documents on transport and land use that form the background to the objectives and measures presented in the agreement. The documents are: National land use guidelines (2008), Transport policy report (2012) and Helsinki region transport system plan - HLJ 2011 (2011). At the heart of this study lies the assumption that, in the foresterian way, planning involves both technical uncertainty over knowledge and political ambiguity over means and ends. Together these two dimensions lead to the wicked problems of planning. In this research, I have approached the uncertainty/ambiguity dimensions from the perspectives of ecological, social and economical sustainable development and regional competitiveness. The assumption is that as these views are placed to overlap each other, differing ways of knowing and distinct interests promote contradictions and ambiguity and, thus, wicked problems. The study has been divided into four research questions: 1. How do the wicked problems take shape in developing of the regional transport system? 2. How are the wicked problems of the planning goals tried to be solved and what kind of challenges do these solutions include? 3. How are the solutions to the wicked problems legitimised in the planning documents? 4. What would be the answer of the agonistic planning to the question of managing the wicked problems? Based on the analysis, I propose that the wicked problems concentrate on the following themes: 1. Land use, especially commitment to the strategy of making the urban structure compact. 2. Financial challenges of the public sector, that is, who pays the bill of the targeted developments? 3. Improvement of the functionality of the transport system, especially what mode of transport (sustainable and equal transport or logistics and private cars) will be given the primary status. 4. Financial steering instruments (allocation, levels and means of taxes and subsidies). 5. The promotion of the new cooperative planning culture and how different ways of knowing, interests (ecological, social and economical) and working cultures could be reconciled in it? Finally, in order to manage the wicked problems, I suggest the agonistic planning as a possible method. The idea is, that within planning practices, conflict should be legitimised. But at the same time, it should be tried to be solved with other means than creating 'authoritative' consensus defined by the most powerful actors. I also suggest that with the agonistic pluralism, it would be possible to move from traditional 'either-or' planning solutions toward more democratic 'both-and' solutions.