Browsing by department "Geotieteiden ja maantieteen osasto"

Urban population is growing and cities must enable its dwellers to travel across the city and guarantee the capacity of transportation network. Simultaneously they must ensure that they promote sustainable development and achieve various environmental goals. To manage these conflicting pressures cities must invest in public transport and other sustainable transport modes, as the volume of car traffic should not increase at the same rate as the amount of urban population. The urban structure and the travel demand of the actors of a region affect the structure of the public transport system. In polycentric urban regions a hub and spoke –based public transport network enables a cost-effective public transport service that connects the centers of the region, covers the area and serves the diversifying travel demand. The aim of this thesis was to study what are the arguments Helsinki Regional Transport Authority (HRT) uses for planning and developing a hub and spoke –based public transport system in the region. This was done by studying various HRT’s documents with qualitative content analysis. The arguments used by HRT were reflected with the background and benefits of a hub and spoke –based public transport system presented in scientific literature. In addition, it was analyzed whether the public transport system chosen appears to be suitable and relevant for the Helsinki region acknowledging the scientific background of the system and the urban structure of the region. The urban structure of Helsinki region has been developing towards polycentricity especially within the boundaries of the three major municipalities of the Capital Region, and from its establishment HRT has aimed at developing a hub and spoke –based public transport system in which the trunk network has a significant role. In the system the public transport’s trunk network connects the sub-centers to each other and to the urban core of the region on routes where the travel demand is highest, and feeder lines and local service lines supplement the service of the trunk network. In 2017 an effective trunk route network was highlighted as one of HRT’s strategic goals. However, various public transport network plans aiming at developing the trunk network have recently been criticized both by the inhabitants and the regional policy-makers, because amongst other things, the development of the trunk network often means that formerly straight lines to Helsinki city center will include a transfer. According to the results, HRT argues for the planning and implementation of a hub and spoke –based public transport system by stating, that developing the system enables the development and improvements of the connections between the centers of the region and the densification of urban structure and land use. Also, it improves the accessibility of the region and the fluency of travelling with public transport and makes the public transport system more cost-effective and environmentally friendly. Taken into account the polycentric development of the urban structure of the Helsinki region, the hub and spoke –based system appears to be a suitable and a cost-effective public transport solution that increases the fluency of travelling with public transport. However, the connections between the sub-centers are not yet very important for the daily travel demand of the actors of the region, as a significant proportion of the travel is still headed towards the to the Helsinki city center, i.e. the urban core of the region. This accounts at least for some of the critique and opposition to the development of the trunk network and hub and spoke –based system. Based on the results, it can be confirmed, that the development of the hub and spoke –based public transport system and the trunk network in the Helsinki region must be well integrated with urban development and changes in land use and in the travel demand of the actors of the region. However, a hub and spoke –based network that connects transportation hubs makes it possible to meet the increasingly versatile and individualized travel demand and to offer connections between countless destinations across the region. No single public transport network structure is self-explanatorily superior to others when it comes to the attractiveness, cost-effectiveness or the environmental benefits of the system. It is most essential to plan the network and the whole public transport system so, that the urban structure of the region and the travel demand of the actors of the region are carefully taken into account.

Climate change is increasingly bringing new environmental and climate-related challenges, which all will notably affect the agriculture sector. Geographers have addressed the topic traditionally from the environmental perspective, but more recently, the focus has also been on the social outcomes of climate change. One of the central topics in the climate change research continues to be the analysis of the level of vulnerability to climate change. Despite its central position, the concept of vulnerability has remained vague and undefined. Most often it includes the elements of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity, and they form the core of the vulnerability analysis both for Geography and for other fields of research. Common outcome of the vulnerability analysis is an index, which can be used for measuring vulnerability level in a certain context, e.g. in the agriculture sector, as in this research context. The main focus is often on two former elements, exposure and sensitivity, which means that the socio-economic context is left for a lesser examination, even though it holds aspects that can determine individual’s possibility to cope and adapt with the changing environmental condition and therefore form the base for their level of vulnerability. Rather than examining the elements of exposure and sensitivity, this research focuses on adaptive capacity through the concept of contextual vulnerability. The analysis concentrates mainly on the elements of social and human capital arguing that these elements should have a stronger position when performing the vulnerability analysis that aims to strengthen adaptation. This research examines the concept of vulnerability to climate change on two different levels: first on the concrete level, which builds on the experiences of smallholder farmers’ perceived vulnerability, and secondly, on the discursive level, which focuses on the gendered narratives and power structures within the concept. Despite the distinction, these levels are highly linked through climate change and agriculture policies and decision-making. This research criticises the prevailing ‘vulnerable women’ narrative of the vulnerability discourse by examining smallholder farmers’ adaptation strategies in order to see whether there are in fact some gendered differences, as it is often underlined in the global discourses. This research builds on the post-structural methodology and examines the topic through a case-study in Taita Hills, Kenya. The key methods of the research are a semi-structured interview and a critical discourse analysis. The collected data consists of the two-headed household interviews with both female and male farmers, the single-headed household interviews with female farmers, and the key informant interviews with different stakeholders from the agriculture sector. The inclusion of both female and male farmers’ perspectives from each household was noted central for performing the gender analysis of the results. The empirical part of this research forms the base for understanding what adaptation and coping strategies farmers are applying, whether the reason for applying these strategies can be explained with the contextual vulnerability concept and how well the results reflect the wider vulnerability discourse. According to this study it is possible to argue that the elements of contextual vulnerability combined with the information regarding individuals’ access to resources can form the baseline for understanding individuals’ possibilities to adapt to changing environmental and climatic conditions. Outcome vulnerability analysis offers highly relevant information, but it is not alone enough for understanding the challenges and possibilities of climate change adaptation. Female and male farmers’ coping and adaptation response strategies did not differ notable, which supports the criticism of the gendered nature of vulnerability discourse. The vulnerable women narrative does not reflect female farmers’ agency and centrality in the agriculture sector. The discourse should be corrected towards addressing structural challenges that can place people to vulnerable position rather than enforcing the gendered narrative of the vulnerable women, whose adaptation and coping strategies are left for lesser attention.

The liberal peace paradigm focusing on a top-down approach and implementing Western values in a one-fits-all model dominated the field of peacekeeping and crisis management missions especially from the 1980s onwards. Later, local ownership became a “buzzword” in international interventions after some major failures of peacekeeping missions in the 1990s and early 2000s. Since then highlighting the relevance of the inclusion of local actors and of utilizing local knowledge have become inseparable parts of the major international organizations’ policy documents and strategies dealing with crisis management and peacebuilding. However, the definition of who or where is local has not been adequately addressed. This has led to using the local as a concept referring to almost anything and everything within the borders of a state. The vague conceptualization has been criticized by scholars, as it leaves unanswered many questions about who can represent local interests or which actors should be included in a crisis management process to increase the sustainability of the intervention. This Master’s thesis seeks research on who, what or where the local level is seen to be in the context of the EU’s civilian crisis management. It does it by uncovering and discussing discourses of the local level from a set of the EU’s documents dealing with civilian crisis management or external action more generally. In this thesis the local level is framed as a social construction through the notion of scale and level from human geographical literature. The human geographical literature also highlights the importance of not only looking at the discourses of the local level but also how it relates to other levels to gain a fuller understanding. The thesis also discusses the potential political opportunity structures that follow from these discourses. There are three main discourses found in the documents focusing on who the local level comprises of: authorities and government, civil society and a variety of different actors on different levels within the nation. None of these discourses raises above the others. Instead, they co-exist, leaving the local level vaguely defined. It is argued that this gives the EU an opportunity to pick the local actors to cooperate with case-by-case. This choice can reflect the needs and will of the EU, the host country or both. In addition, two discourses relating to what the local level represents more generally were discovered. These form a dichotomy: the local is seen both as a threat to the security of the EU citizens but simultaneously as a necessity to include in missions to increase the effectiveness of CSDP missions. Overall, the importance of local ownership is highlighted throughout the documents. Considering this, the low level of mentions of local actors is somewhat surprising as well as the vague definition of who or where is local.