Browsing by Subject "yleiskaavoitus"

Today, issues related to nature and the environment are increasingly topical and therefore also play a greater role in land use planning and urban planning. In this thesis, I study the different concepts of nature behind urban planning, i.e., the ways in which nature and its relationship to humans are defined. These many different conceptions of nature, such as dualism, materialism, idealistic conception of nature, external and frightening nature, economic and resource -focused thinking, ecomodernism, biodiversity perspective, posthumanism, continuum thinking or ecosystem service thinking, also have a direct and indirect impact on urban planning and what kind of nature and green areas are planned. In this thesis, I examine four partial general plans (in Finnish, osayleiskaava) for the city centre areas of Southeast Finland: the partial general plans for the centre of Kotka, the centre of Karhula, the city centre of Kouvola and the centre of Lappeenranta, which are all fairly recent plans. The main objective of my thesis is to find different conceptions of nature in the materials of these general plans, such as plan descriptions and various impact assessments. The method used in this analysis is qualitative content analysis. With the help of theory-based qualitative content analysis, I identify various conceptions of nature related to previous theory and research from the above-mentioned planning documents. In the analysis and results -section of my thesis, I attach the results of the content analysis to the theoretical framework concerning conceptions of nature. In the results of different conceptions of nature, especially the perspective of cultural ecosystem services, technology-oriented ecomodernism and biodiversity perspectives emerged from many text documents. The economic view of nature as a resource was also emphasised in many texts. In addition, dualistic conceptions that emphasize the dichotomy of man and nature and materialistic conceptions focusing on material reality were reflected as a broader way of thinking. On the other hand, posthumanist concepts related to equality between humans and nature are not as strongly visible in the results.