Sustainable neighbourhoods are residential areas where environmental responsibility, social justice and economic viability are realised. They have been designed to minimise the ecological footprint by saving energy and other resources. At the same time, however, they offer a high quality of life for their residents. The importance of sustainable neighbourhoods is emphasised in studies, the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations and nearly all planning and policy documents. However, the identification, monitoring and development of neighbourhood level sustainability elements is still in its infancy.
The majority of decisions that are relevant to residents and the environment are ultimately made at the local level. Municipalities can influence where and what is built, how movement is organised in the municipality, where schools are placed or what kinds of business activities are supported by special measures. In practice, questions related to urban growth, ecological and economic sustainability, social separation and segregation go back to individual neighbourhoods, construction methods and related steering of land use. Many decisions take shape on plots, blocks or residential areas.
For a long time, the objective of Finnish legislation guiding national land use and construction has also been “to ensure that the use of land and water areas and building activities on them create preconditions for a favourable living environment and promote ecologically, economically, socially and culturally sustainable development” (section 5 of the Land Use and Building Act 132/1999). However, it remains unclear what type of features should be nurtured in the local environment or what kinds of changes should occur there on the way towards a more sustainable future.
As a part of the statutory task of promoting the vitality of Finnish municipalities, sustainable development needs to be supported by clearer content that pays more attention to the special characteristics of neighbourhoods and the needs of their residents. In general, it should be possible to test and evaluate neighbourhood-specific characteristics and concepts aimed at sustainable development, preferably in a way that also allows setting values to the presented evaluations.
The Neighbourhood Sustainability Indicator Project was created as a result of a need to gather and identify the views of different researchers and disciplines to form an understanding of the contents and diversity of sustainable development specific to each neighbourhood as well as the required measures. We invited 52 top researchers representing over 20 different fields of science to participate in these “professors’ roundtable discussions” (see appendix).
Our project has three main objectives. The first is to identify and compile social, ecological and economic sustainability indicators, that could be monitored and applied at the level of city blocks and neighbourhoods. Unlike in most previous indicator projects, we strive to use the scale of the project to address the characteristics of sustainable neighbourhoods and particularly identify problems in the local environment and potential solutions for them.
Our second objective is to promote multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary academic research cooperation and dialogue. We wish to increase, diversify and advance the interdisciplinary debate on the dimensions and characteristics of sustainable development at the level of neighbourhoods. Our goal is to use a concrete research subject, the neighbourhood, to inspire researchers from different fields to discuss solutions across the boundaries of fields of science. To ensure a multidisciplinary approach, we also invited researchers who do not primarily perceive themselves as sustainability or urban researchers, but whose competence area is undoubtedly relevant to sustainable development.
Universities around the world have acknowledged the need for multidisciplinary research to solve global challenges and societal problems. The Strategic Plan of the University of Helsinki 2021–2030, With the Power of Knowledge – for the World, also identifies increasing multidisciplinary research cooperation as a key objective. We believe that we have succeeded in taking the first steps to open up interdisciplinary discussion to identify and support the sustainability of residential areas.
Our third objective is to increase interactions between those active in research and other societal actors and the impacts of scientific research. We hope that this book will promote the implementation of the principles of sustainable development in Finnish blocks and residential areas by making multidisciplinary scientific knowledge on sustainable neighbourhoods available in a concise and comprehensible format also applicable to practical contexts. Our book aims to open discussion on the characteristics, challenges and solutions of urban sustainability among decision-makers, urban planners as well as the residents of Finnish cities.
With regard to the concept of sustainability, we rely on the content published by the UN Brundtland Commission in 1987. Based on the definition of the Our Common Future report, “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” The report particularly emphasises meeting basic human needs, a global perspective on achieving long-term ecological sustainability and a requirement for fairness between generations. According to former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland (b. 1939), who led the Commission, the Commission made the concept of sustainable development an important part of subsequent political and scientific discussions on issues such as the planet’s carrying capacity and social justice.
The definition of the Brundtland Commission has been criticised for reasons such as its excessive non-specificity and inability to identify the planetary boundaries of sustainability. Despite this, the definition remains at the heart of the discussions on sustainable development. Sustainable development is generally perceived as a three-part entity divided into ecological, social and economic dimensions. This model, known as the three pillars of sustainability, has been the most popular way to structure the areas of sustainable development. This three-fold division began to emerge in various forms in literature from the 1980s onwards. The original way of defining economic sustainability through continuous economic growth started to become subject to criticism both from a social perspective that emphasises high quality of life as well as from an ecological perspective that emphasises environmental resilience. Depending on the source, economic sustainability can be defined either as an ever-increasing exchange of goods and services and an increase in income generated by such activities, or, by contrast, an attempt to disengage from continuous growth as an intrinsic value and to shape the economic system to better serve or at least not undermine social and ecological sustainability (Purvis, Mao & Robinson 2018). Meanwhile, putting the ecological dimension on the same line as the other dimensions of sustainability has been perceived as a problematic approach in the research literature, as the aspects that maintain biological life on our planet set the boundaries for any other developments (Kotzé et al. 2022).
The most well-known single framework for the efforts to identify sustainability indicators in Finland and globally is the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It includes 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets. To describe these targets, 248 indicators have been developed, some of which are repeated more than once in connection with various targets. The goals are also based on an understanding of sustainable development as a whole divided into ecological, social and economic dimensions. Indeed, the UN describes the Agenda as a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity.
Despite criticism, the Brundtland Commission’s definition of sustainable development and the three pillars of sustainable development also loosely served as the starting point for our work. At the beginning of the project, we aimed to identify representatives of different disciplines using this rough division.
The objective of our project is to promote the sustainability transition by compiling existing scientific knowledge and striving to increase its impact on urban planning and political decision-making. Our way of promoting multidisciplinary dialogue has been very concrete. Between the summer of 2023 and the spring of 2024, we organised ten roundtable discussions, which were participated by nearly fifty leading researchers from Finnish universities. In these discussions, researchers highlighted key indicators from the perspectives of their respective fields of research to measure the sustainability of neighbourhoods. We engaged in cross-disciplinary discussions on the best ways to promote the sustainability transition at the level of residential areas and neighbourhoods. The disciplines represented in the roundtable discussions we organised have included aerosol physics, educational sociology, urban ecology, urban history, urban planning, housing planning, urban geography, urban meteorology, urban sociology, urban economics, urban theology, real estate economy, consumer research, sustainability science, landscape architecture, criminal law, seismology, social work, futures research, demography, environmental health and environmental psychology. As each speaker is the sole representative of their specific discipline in the discussions, they began by explaining the basics of their research and the proposals for indicators based on it. It has been rewarding to see how enthusiastically the researchers who participated in the discussions have also commented on the perspectives of disciplines that they are less familiar with. The equal discussions stirred in the events have been inspiring and full of new, surprising perspectives.
Right from the start, our aim was to attract a strong representation of different disciplines to the project. Fifty researchers representing around twenty different fields of research as identified by the Academy of Finland have participated in the project. In total, these researchers proposed around 130 different sustainability indicators in the discussions, 29 of which are presented in more detail in the articles of this book. These 29 indicators were selected according to which topics the researchers personally considered particularly important based on their research backgrounds, which were best justified, and ignited the most discussion at our roundtable events. Adapting the definition of the Bruntdland Commission and the commonly used three-part division of sustainable development, we aim to divide the collected indicators, of which there are around 130, into the categories of ecological, social and economic sustainability. Over and over, we tried to group the indicators into the three baskets until we realised that this was an impossible task. An examination of concrete indicators showed that, in practice, the three theoretical pillars of sustainability are often overlapping rather than separate. Many of the indicators examined in more detail also in this book are inseparably linked to ecological, social and economic realities. We also noticed early in our project that it would be impossible to even try to present an all-encompassing set of neighbourhood-level sustainability indicators. Indeed, the indicators presented in this book do not aim to serve as the final word or even a comprehensive collection covering all neighbourhood sustainability. Instead, we rather hope that it will serve as a strong academic initiative for identifying, promoting and further developing sustainability at the level of neighbourhoods. We are convinced that the introduction and continuous monitoring of the indicators presented in this book would be apt to promote ecological values, social well-being and vitality in individual neighbourhoods.
Indicators are not entirely unproblematic by their nature. The data collected using indicators is often used as a basis for political decision-making and indicators can therefore be considered as tools used in the exercise of power. What is left unmeasured is often more important than what is measured.
The leading professional in urban planning interviewed for this project described how urban planning has become significantly unbalanced over the past 10 years. One of the examples they highlighted was how less attention is paid to the significance of light than previously: “For years by now, areas have been designed that are not even lit by the moon. There are thick, dark, tall, little apartments that are dark. There used to be certain light angles that you had to observe, and they were extremely meticulous about them, but no one cares about them these days.”
Indeed, we aim to use this science-based, versatile and extensive work to deliberately reduce the authority of indicators based exclusively on growth and population numbers, which have gained rather a lot of dominance in urban planning. At the same time, we acknowledge that many important subjects and even entire disciplines were excluded from this work – in this respect, our work and project will continue and, of course, will never be fully completed. Nevertheless, we believe that this book provides a good basis for examining the sustainability of residential areas.
It includes both already-established indicators as well as proposals for new ones that have not yet been used. However, what all these indicators have in common is that they represent the views of leading researchers on which observations at the neighbourhood level are particularly important based on their respective research knowledge.
Thank you
We would like to thank all the researchers and other collaborators who were involved in our neighbourhood sustainability indicator project. We would also like to give special thanks to Juulia Lehtinen, BNSc, who was of great help in the editorial process of this book.
Brundtland, G.H. and Khalid, M. (1987). Our common future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Strategic Plan of the University of Helsinki 2021–2030: With the Power of Knowledge – for the World. https://www.helsinki.fi/fi/tutustu-meihin/strategia-talous-ja-laatu/strategia-2021-2030/helsingin-yliopiston-strategia. Last accessed on 16 April 2024.
Kotzé, L.J. et al. (2022) “Planetary integrity”, The political impact of the sustainable development goals: Transforming governance through global goals?, pp. 140-171.
Land Use and Building Act (MRL 132/1999). https://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/alkup/1999/19990132.
Purvis, B., Mao, Y. and Robinson, D. (2019) “Three pillars of sustainability: in search of conceptual origins”. Sustainability science, 14, pp. 681-695.
Academy of Finland. Research field classification. https://www.aka.fi/tutkimusrahoitus/hae-rahoitusta/nain-haet-rahoitusta/ohjehakemisto/tutkimusalaluokitus/. Last accessed on 16 April 2024.
Ira Ahokas, Research Manager, Finland Futures Research Centre (FFRC), University of Turku
Indicator: Walkability
Sanna Ala-Mantila, Assistant Professor, Ecosystems and Environment Research, University of Helsinki
Indicator: Energy vulnerability
Pia Bäcklund, Professor, Inequality of Cities and Regions, University of Helsinki
Indicator: Vitality of neighbourhoods
Henrietta Grönlund, Professor, Urban Theology, University of Helsinki
Indicator: Voluntary assistance
Ranja Hautamäki, Professor, Landscape Architecture, Aalto University
Indicator: Tree canopy cover
Eva Heiskanen, Professor, Sustainable Consumption, University of Helsinki
Indicator: Socio-economic status of the members of energy communities
Anssi Joutsiniemi, Associate Professor, Urban Design and Planning, University of Oulu
Indicator: Junction frequency
Liina Junna, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki
Indicator: Substance-related hospitalisations and deaths
Laura Kolbe, Professor, European History, University of Helsinki
Indicator: Stratifications of the built cultural environment
Sonja Kosunen, Professor, Education, University of Eastern Finland
Indicator: Regional availability and equality of education
Marketta Kyttä, Professor, Land Use Planning, Aalto University
Indicator: Perceived quality of the living environment and accessibility of everyday services
Jukka Käyhkö, Professor, Geography, University of Turku
Indicator: Urban heat islands
Anne Laita, Doctor of Philosophy, Biologist, Land Use Planning, City of Jyväskylä
Indicator: Tree canopy cover
Tommy Lindgren, University Lecturer, Urban Planning, Aalto University
Indicator: Material and energy turnover
Pekka Martikainen, Professor, Demography, University of Helsinki
Indicator: Substance-related hospitalisations and deaths
Pasi Mäenpää, Docent, Urban Sociology, University of Helsinki
Indicator Spatial inclusion in residential areas
Kimmo Nuotio, Professor, Criminal Law, University of Helsinki
Indicator: Crime
Matti Näsi, University Lecturer, Criminology, University of Helsinki
Indicator: Crime
Jarkko Rasinkangas, University Lecturer, Social Work, University of Turku
Indicator: Child poverty
Laura Ruotsalainen, Professor, Computer Science, University of Helsinki
Indicator: Optimised implementation of mobility and traffic arrangements
Topi Rönkkö, Professor, Aerosol Physics, Tampere University
Indicator: Air quality index
Paula Saikkonen, Doctor of Social Sciences, Research Manager, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare
Indicator: Being encountered
Arto O. Salonen, Professor, Social Pedagogy, University of Eastern Finland
Indicator: Neighbourhood cohesion
Marjaana Seppänen, Professor, Social Work, University of Helsinki
Indicator: The share of older people experiencing loneliness
Lasse Tarkiainen, Docent, Demography, University of Helsinki
Indicator: Substance-related hospitalisations and deaths
Jyrki Tarpio, Postdoctoral Researcher, Tampere University
Indicator: Buildings’ adaptability levels and change scenarios
Anne Tervo, Senior Lecturer, Aalto University
Indicator: Versatile furnishability of dwellings
Saija Toivonen, Assistant Professor, Real Estate, Aalto University
Indicator: Futures resilience of properties
Tuuli Toivonen, Professor, Geography and Geoinformatics, University of Helsinki
Indicator: Accessibility
Laura Uimonen, University Teacher, Tampere University
Indicator: Dead wood in the urban environment
Mari Vaattovaara, Professor, Urban Geography, University of Helsinki
Indicator: Diversity of housing stock, diversity of residents and resident turnover
Hanna Vikberg, Architect Tengbom Oy, Doctoral Researcher, Tallinn University of Technology
Indicator: Availability of daylight in indoor spaces
Elias Willberg, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki
Indicator: Accessibility
Kim Yrjälä, Docent, Microbioecology, University of Helsinki
Indicator: Ratio between impermeable and permeable surfaces
In this book, 34 authors present 29 neighbourhood-level sustainability indicators.
In this book, 34 authors present 29 neighbourhood-level sustainability indicators.
1. Marketta Kyttä proposes the perceived quality of the living environment and the accessibility of everyday services as indicators for monitoring social sustainability. Through surveys related to specific places, the monitoring of these two indicators enables the gathering of extensive data on social sustainability in residential areas.
2. In her article, Pia Bäcklund highlights the multidimensional nature of the social sustainability of neighbourhoods and the challenges related to measuring it. Urban vitality is built on several parts, including the perceived spirit of the place, local events, opportunities for recreational activities and the condition of the physical elements in the area. Residents’ own interpretations of their environment play a key role in the examination. Although vitality can be measured with various indicators, their use is essentially associated with the idea of a desired state, whose examination is influenced by different value settings.
3. According to Paula Saikkonen, the usual indicators used to measure social sustainability, such as the unemployment rate and the share of poor people in the population, focus on describing the accumulation of disadvantages rather than real social sustainability. Different public services reach a large number of Finns every year. Saikkonen proposes that the experiences of the users of these services on being encountered be used to create a new social sustainability indicator.
4. In his article, Arto O. Salonen discusses the significance of the experience of neighbourhood cohesion, i.e. a sense of belonging, at the neighbourhood level. An experience of cohesion increases the willingness of individuals to cooperate, preventing feelings of loneliness and marginalisation. Neighbourhood cohesion in city blocks can be increased in many ways, such as the economy’s most inclusive and local forms. Despite the multidimensional nature of the phenomenon, it is relatively simple to measure using surveys.
5. In her article, Ira Ahokas discusses the walkability of cities. Everyday physical activity and particularly active travel can simultaneously promote the sustainability goals set in health, environmental and transport policy. Walkability typical of city centres that includes a dense urban structure and good availability of services could also promote public health in other urban areas. A composite indicator can be developed for monitoring walkability, taking into account the population density, land use and environmental characteristics in the area.
6. In her article, Marjaana Seppänen draws attention to the experience of loneliness among older people. As this group values social relationships as the most important factors supporting their well-being in addition to health, an experience of loneliness can serve as an indicator of a lack of well-being. Communality, which alleviates loneliness, can be achieved in an urban environment in the form of organised activities on the one hand, and spontaneous interactions in suitable public spaces on the other.
7. According to Pasi Mäenpää, an experience of inclusion in residential areas requires shared spaces and an opportunity to utilise such spaces for group or communal activities. The indicator of spatial inclusion could be based on an examination of the number and quality of such spaces. Mäenpää notes that, in Finnish urban policy, social mixing has been promoted a lot in relation to housing policy, but only little in the context of public spaces through urban planning. At the same time, interactions in public spaces, not dwellings, are what the European ideal of social mixing requires.
8. In her article, Henrietta Grönlund examines assistance that people give to each other without external obligations or rewards. Examining the amount of voluntary assistance occurring in a neighbourhood can help to understand the communality of the area and integration into it. At the same time, it is important to remember that a welfare model based strongly on voluntary assistance can also lead to a socially less sustainable society.
9. In her article, Mari Vaattovaara draws attention to increasingly unbalanced housing stocks and population structures and changes in residents in neighbourhoods. The permanence of residents in a residential area promotes comfort and social control in the areas while preventing crime. A diverse housing stock in residential areas enables residents to continue living in the areas across different life stages. Meanwhile, excessively monotonous housing stock may promote segregation, i.e. the separation of social groups from one another.
10. In her article, Sonja Kosunen describes the availability of education and how it can be measured. The examination of availability issues should be moved from the national level to the neighbourhood level, which would provide valuable information on the background factors affecting educational choices. An indicator consisting of multiple parts could be used to measure the regional distribution, regional diversity and the distribution of supply between public and private providers.
11. In their article, Matti Näsi and Kimmo Nuotio open up opportunities for measuring regional crime. Only a fraction of crime is brought to the attention of the authorities, and investigating so-called hidden crime is left to surveys conducted at the national level as well as in individual large cities. This makes measuring crime challenging at the level of neighbourhoods.
12. In their article, Lasse Tarkiainen, Liina Junna and Pekka Martikainen reflect on the possibilities of measuring differences in alcohol and substance abuse between neighbourhoods as an indicator of regional health differences. Indicators of neighbourhood substance-related health also enable the indirect monitoring of regional accumulation of social disadvantage, as a high substance use rate is significantly associated with poor well-being and various social problems.
13. In his article, Jarkko Rasinkangas describes the wide-ranging impacts of child poverty and perceived deprivation on a child’s life and later well-being. Child poverty refers to the share of children aged under 18 years living under the poverty line of all children. Polarisation between children from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds has increased, and segregation research shows that the risk factors for child poverty also accumulate unevenly within cities.
14. Sanna Ala-Mantila describes the indicator of energy vulnerability in her article. Ala-Mantila presents a formula for assessing energy and transport poverty in households by calculating the share of euros spent on energy and mobility of the total income of the household. The formula could be used to assess the energy vulnerability of residential areas in general or focus on the lowest income quartile, for instance.
15. In her article, Eva Heiskanen draws attention to energy communities and their accessibility. Most energy communities based on communal management are currently managed by highly educated, middle-class men. In the future, the energy transition will require more active participation by citizens and diversification of the social structure of energy communities. Measuring the socio-economic status of the members of energy communities locally would describe the realisation of the energy transition in this area.
16. Ranja Hautamäki and Anne Laita propose that tree canopy cover should be used as a sustainability indicator to guarantee the sufficiency of urban trees at the city and neighbourhood. This indicator could be used to steer urban planning and reconcile different climate, diversity and well-being objectives. Despite the unambiguous nature of the indicator and the benefits it provides, it has not been widely utilised in Finland so far. The efficient use of the indicator would require quantitative targets for tree canopy cover and the harmonisation of datasets to enable the comparison of the results.
17. In his article, Topi Rönkkö describes the air quality index, which allows summarising several different ways of measuring air pollution into a single indicator. The indicator provides a clear way of measuring the safety of breathing air and informing city residents about it.
18. In his article, Kim Yrjälä highlights the problems for urban nature and people caused by covering the urban ground surface. The ecosystem services that soil provides lay the foundation for life. Carbon sequestration, stormwater absorption and the maintenance of a diverse microbial population are valuable functions for city residents that are disturbed when the ratio of impermeable surfaces increases compared to permeable surfaces. The development of soil cover can be monitored using spatial data sets, which should be used as a tool for urban planning.
19. In his article, Jukka Käyhkö describes the urban heat island phenomenon, which is mainly caused by the thermal radiation emitted by the sun that is stored and released by buildings as well as the waste heat from buildings and traffic. Käyhkö demonstrates that increasing the density of the urban structure, which has been used as a climate change mitigation measure in cities, is in conflict with reducing the urban heat island phenomenon.
20. In his article, Tommy Lindgren proposes the regional turnover of materials and energy as a sustainability indicator. The indicator can be used in the monitoring of the regional metabolism and its development as well as in making comparisons between regions. An examination of the material and energy turnover could be used to assess whether an area will be able to maintain its operations in a sustainable manner without consuming an unreasonable amount of resources.
21. In her article, Laura Uimonen describes the importance of dead wood in the urban environment. The scarcity of dead wood in forests is a major problem from a biodiversity perspective, as many species use dead trees as their habitat. The amount of wood in different stages of decay could also be used as a biodiversity indicator for neighbourhoods and blocks, although urban planning that takes biodiversity into account would require more cooperation and adopting a new mindset regarding the processing of organic matter in an urban environment.
22. In their article, Elias Willberg and Tuuli Toivonen highlight alternative ways of measuring accessibility in urban environments, which include taking into account the differences between modes of transport, the mobility environment and population groups. In the pursuit of accessibility, it is key to also highlight the overall sustainability of various alternatives, which allows paying attention to planetary boundaries in addition to social sustainability.
23. In his article, Anssi Joutsiniemi discusses the use of street space and road maintenance as an indicator of the sustainability of urban areas. In Finland, the legal basis for streets and roads is strongly linked to public administration, and the planning criteria shaped by history have emphasised the importance of smooth traffic flow, which continues to guide the development of streets and roads. While this institutional approach challenges the development of non-traffic indicators, Joutsiniemi proposes introducing intersection density as one of the indicators, which would provide an overview of the distribution of different spaces and the diversity of routes in the area.
24. In her text, Laura Ruotsalainen describes the opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence in optimising the implementation of mobility and traffic arrangements. The sustainability challenges of transport are diverse – major greenhouse gas emissions, taking up space in the urban environment, unequal distribution and traffic-related injuries force us to find alternative solutions for implementing travel and mobility. According to Ruotsalainen, the role of artificial intelligence is emphasised in the processing of data, which makes it possible to gain a broader understanding of complex systems.
25. In her article, Laura Kolbe describes the significance of built cultural heritage in the urban environment. As cities are becoming increasingly dense, we are forced to consider the significance of cultural heritage under threat in both local and global contexts. According to Kolbe, the value of these prestigious sites for city residents could be examined from the traditional perspectives of sustainability, but also through aspects such as the added value the sites create for tourism.
26. In her article, Saija Toivonen draws attention to the futures resilience of properties, i.e. the ability of the property stock to respond to future changes and the challenges arising from these changes. According to Toivonen, those involved in constructing and repairing buildings should prepare for various alternative futures and analyse not only the current needs but also what kinds of uses and users the spaces might have in 30 years’ time.
27. In his article, Jyrki Tarpio proposes a model based on four levels of adaptability to support circular building design. The model could be used to measure and promote the circular economy as well as to extend the life cycle of buildings. It is important to identify the most important needs for adaptability based on the location and function of a building. A building can be adaptable based on full demountability, internal transformability, external transformability, and multifunctionality. The more a building possesses features of these different levels, the higher its adaptability classification.
28. In her article, Anne Tervo examines the spatial quality of new dwellings from the perspective of furnishability. In contemporary construction, efforts to increase the efficiency of space use have led to a reduction in room sizes and joining functions at the level of dwellings, and studies on housing preferences indicate that the wishes concerning housing are not aligned with actual housing planning. According to Tervo, flexibility in furnishings would enable several different ways of living.
29. In her chapter, Hanna Vikberg draws attention to the significant health benefits of daylight exposure that have been demonstrated by several studies. while previous research has focused on analysing the daylighting of individual indoor spaces, less attention has been paid to the scale of entire cities. According to Vikberg, it is difficult to demonstrate a single carefully defined indicator for measuring daylight.
Marketta Kyttä is a professor of land use planning at Aalto University. Her team examines human perspectives on urban planning, such as social sustainability, a child-friendly and age-friendly city, participatory planning, and urban planning that promotes health and well-being. The team’s innovation, a methodology known as softGIS, enables place-based research on the human environment and promotes digital participation. The method has been used in over 14,000 projects in 40 countries.
The social sustainability of an environment can be studied using two sets of indicators: the perceived quality of the living environment and the accessibility of everyday services. Connecting these indicators to places allows us to identify features in the physical environment that are linked to the perceived quality of the environment, accessibility of everyday services, sustainability of lifestyles and health impacts. This also enables producing data that can be easily utilised in urban planning, including both baseline data for planning and follow-up data on issues such as the development of the use of sustainable modes of transport. The utilisation of data is easier if the information is easy to find and combinable with other datasets used in planning, development and maintenance. The chapter concludes with the place-based prioritization model that helps cities choose the key areas for development in a world of limited resources.
Decades after the UN Brundtland Committee first defined social sustainability as one of the three key dimensions of sustainable development alongside ecological and economic sustainability, the Committee’s definitions have been considered chaotic (Vallance et al. 2021) and the least developed pillar of sustainable development (Shirazi & Keivani, 2019). The strong sustainability model (Neumayer, 1999) has not changed this despite putting emphasis on the role of social sustainability as it is considered a precondition for economic and cultural sustainability. At the same time, ecological sustainability emerges as the most important dimension in the hierarchy, which is considered the basis for all sustainability. According to Woodcraft (2015), the topic of social sustainability has not only been neglected in research but also in practical development efforts. The difficulty of defining the concept as well as the complexity of its operationalisation into clear indicators have been identified as the reasons for this (Shirazi & Keivani, 2019).
According to Chiu (2003), the diverse definitions of social sustainability can be roughly divided into three categories: (1) interpretations that emphasise sustainability, according to which social sustainability can only be achieved through ecologically sustainable solutions that maintain existing social structures and values; (2) interpretations that emphasise the environment, which are focused on social conditions that support ecological sustainability; (3) interpretations that emphasise humans, which highlight social cohesion, stability and integrity as well as the improvement of quality of life (Chiu, 2003). Vallance et al. (2011) also present a similar threefold premise in which the key questions are a) how different living environments meet people’s basic needs, b) what kinds of solutions can be used to support a more sustainable lifestyle and c) what motivates human behaviour. According to Vallance, the final question was introduced to the discussion later than the former two, putting the practices, customs and preferences underlying human behaviour at the focus.
A prime example of a human-focused definition of social sustainability is the model by Bramley et al. (2009a,b) which is used to structure social sustainability according to two main dimensions, the sustainability of a community and social justice (see Figure 1). The sustainability of a community comprises many factors at different levels, including the perceived quality of the living environment. Meanwhile, social equity manifests as equal access to services and local opportunities. The Bramley model treats residents’ health, well-being and happiness as an outcome of social sustainability rather than as one of its components.
Figure 1 Bramley’s (2009a, b) model of social sustainability
My research group studied social sustainability in the Urban Happiness project in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, applying the Bramley model and Vallance’s ideas (Kyttä et al. 2013, 2016). By slightly simplifying the Bramley model, we defined social sustainability with an emphasis on humans, focusing on the perceived quality of the environment and the accessibility of everyday services. However, we wished to simultaneously direct our attention to the characteristics of the physical environment. We were interested in determining which solutions in the physical environment can support a sustainable lifestyle and how different solutions meet people’s basic needs. For this reason, we supplemented our examination by exploring the perceived health, well-being and quality of life. At the same time, we integrated all the key issues of social sustainability identified by Vallance into our study.
Similarly as Bramley, we examined health and quality of life as an outcome of social sustainability. Research on the impacts of living environments on well-being has attracted enormous interest from researchers in recent years. Research has concerned both the health impacts of green environments and the capability of community structures to promote an active lifestyle that involves physical activity (Kyttä, 2021). While the impacts of green environments that promote well-being and stress recovery have also been studied quite a lot in Finland (e.g. Korpela et al. 2017), our understanding of the diverse health impacts of environments has only been enriched by research on active lifestyles in recent years. An extensive study by Sallis et al. (2016) conducted in 10 countries revealed that population density, public transport stop frequency, junction frequency and the number of parks predicted increased physical activity. The conclusions made by Tiina Laatikainen (currently known as Rinne) in her dissertation on the community structure that promotes the health and well-being of older residents were nearly identical. In fact, her study could also demonstrate that an increase in activity and its associated health impacts occurred regardless of whether the individual was particularly physically active or interested in taking care of their well-being (Laatikainen, 2019).
The research on the environmental characteristics that promote well-being is still marked by a major deficiency: research on social well-being has failed to achieve the same level of popularity as the other two main lines of well-being research mentioned above (Kyttä & Broberg, 2014). While social cohesion has also been studied to some extent in relation to the structural features of the environment, the obtained results have been inconsistent (Dempsey et al. 2009). There is a need for further research on topics such as what are those arenas of social encounters that support the emergence of so-called weak social bonds i.e. casual social encounters in day-to-day life that are not binding but nonetheless promote well-being.
We selected a place-based research approach as we were particularly interested in those features in the physical environment that are linked to the perceived quality of the environment, accessibility of everyday services, sustainability of lifestyles and health impacts. At the same time, we aimed to provide urban planning professionals with research data that can be easily utilised. The place-based methodology we have developed known as the softGIS approach (Kyttä & Kahila, 2006; Brown & Kyttä, 2014, 2018), which is referred to as the PPGIS (public participation GIS) methodology in international research is particularly well-suited for this purpose. The methodology enables the collection of “soft” spatial data using online surveys and the examination of people’s experiences and behavioural patterns in a locality. This allows for examining ‘soft’ spatial data in relation to the ‘hard’, i.e. traditional, spatial data on the structural features of the physical and social environment. Soft spatial data has also been successfully collected from children and young people (Broberg et al. 2023a, b) and older people (Gottwald et al. 2016; Laatikainen et al. 2019) as well as foreign-language speakers (Nummi & Harsia, 2022). Online surveys enable reaching fairly large groups of people: for example, a recent study conducted in Espoo collected data from approximately 6,600 city residents (Kyttä et al. 2023). There is a problem in reaching the least educated population segment as well as involving young children and the oldest age groups.
Global environmental problems make it impossible to solely develop the quality of the living environment based on people's wishes, the conditions for quality of life or even health impacts. On the other hand, ecological solutions cannot be achieved and will not work as desired unless the residents’ wishes and everyday realities are taken into account in their development. (Kyttä, 2021). This chapter presents two sets of indicators based on the social sustainability perspectives discussed above: the perceived quality of the living environment and the accessibility of everyday services. Utilising these indicators enables conducting place-based research on social sustainability and health-promoting features in the environment. In this case, attention is paid to both a human perspective as well as the structural characteristics of environment. Linking resident data to localities also attaches the information to certain planning solutions, which provides interesting feedback to planners and helps cities develop a socially sustainable living environment. The chapter concludes with the place-based prioritization model that helps cities choose the areas for development in a world of limited resources.
In the Urban Happiness study, we defined that the perceived quality of the living environment consists of individual, place-dependent factors (Kyttä et al. 2011). The residents’ perceived criteria for individual quality factors concerning the living environment were based on our previous studies in the so-called KUUMA municipalities (Kyttä & Kahila, 2006), but were supplemented. For each quality factor, an expression was formulated to describe both positive and negative experiences (e.g. the environment is clean/unclean). A total of 32 quality factors were grouped into larger entities according to the classification of quality factors created by Bonaiuto et al. (1999) (see Table 1) as the perceived quality of the physical appearance, functional quality, quality of social environment and atmosphere. Reducing the analysis of experiential quality factors in the environment to the four main categories above enables the processing of quality factors in groups and comparing the quality experiences of Finnish residents with international studies.
Table 1 The four main categories of the perceived quality of the living environment and more detailed quality factors.
The perceived quality of the living environment can be explored as a variable that applies to the living environment as a whole as well as one that concerns the individual, everyday places and routes. For example, residents may be asked to assess the social and functional quality of the environment as well as the atmosphere and appearance of the environment as an overall assessment related to their living environment as a whole or the assessment may be more closely attached to individual locations so that places related to each theme are marked on a map. In the Urban Happiness study, residents marked 32 different positive and negative quality factors on a map (Figure 2) and assessed the quality of the living environment as a whole from the perspectives of four main dimensions.
Figure 2 Example of the Urban Happiness study: examination of the perceived quality of the environment in specific places
The perceived quality of the living environment can be studied at an even more detailed level. Figure 3 illustrates residents’ comments related to the green areas in Helsinki city centre and Töölö and Kallio neighbourhoods. This highly concrete information also serves as feedback on the success of planning received from residents.
Figure 3 The positive and negative quality factors pinpointed in the green areas in Helsinki city centre, Töölö and Kallio and a few examples of residents’ comments on these locations.
Our key research task in the Urban Happiness study (Kyttä et al. 2013, 2016) was to investigate possible links between the structural characteristics of the environment and residents’ experiences of the quality of the living environment. Structural spatial data analyses were carried out by forming a zone with a radius of 500 metres around each respondent’s home, a buffer within which indicators describing the structure of the community were calculated. In other words, the structural characteristics of the community were measured by identifying objective characteristics in the surroundings of each respondent’s home. As a result, there may be significant differences between the structural descriptions of the home environments of city residents living on the edge or centre of even the same neighbourhood. The urban structure was studied on the basis of many different criteria, such as the housing density and the amount and quality of green structures. The density of the urban structure was assessed by calculating the number of dwellings, population and square metres of floors built within the buffer. The amount of green environments was estimated by adding up and differentiating between the shares of park, field, forest and water body areas in the total area of the buffer. When more closely examining the structural characteristics of places that are important for residents from an experiential point of view, we also buffered the places marked by residents in addition to their home environments. We have later developed an even better way to examine individual living environments dynamically alongside the buffer examination (see the next chapter).
The accessibility of everyday services can be investigated through means such as examining how far from home different everyday services and recreational opportunities are located, which mode of transport is used to reach these places for everyday life and recreation, how often people visit these places and how they perceive them. Such studies on the accessibility of everyday services differ from traditional accessibility studies, which are mainly based on mapping potentially available services. Here, the aim is to obtain information on what services residents actually use in their everyday lives and how central the role of certain services is in the lives of individuals.
Everyday places were studied in the NordGreen project (Kyttä et al. 2023) in Espoo, Hubmobile project in Turku and Transformative Cities projects in Espoo, Lahti and Oulu by locating places divided into six categories: (1) workplace or place of study, (2) place of shopping, (3) place for recreational activities, (4) place or service for managing personal issues, (5) child’s school, day-care centre, place of care or club activity and (6) second home. The participants could also put other everyday places on the map. (See Figure 4). When a resident put an everyday place that was important to them on the map, a so-called mini survey was also used to ask them for more details about the use of the place. These questions were: (a) How often do you visit this place, (b) Which mode of transport do you typically use to get there, and (c) What is your perception of this place (on a positive-negative axis)?
Figure 4 The My Espoo map survey webpage that was used to identify everyday places in the NordGreen project.
The network formed by the places where individuals spend their everyday lives can also be studied as an individual activity space. It is possible to examine both locationally and individually sensitively the everyday living environments of residents (Hasanzaded, et al. 2019, 2021), when paying attention to the fact that the size and orientation of individual activity space may vary greatly, for instance. This research approach enables studying issues such as how residents’ values and attitudes are associated with everyday service use (Kajosaari et al. 2021) or whether residents’ everyday lives change if they move to a new type of neighbourhood (Ramezani et al. 2021). From the point of view of environmental health research, it is decisive that individuals’ living environments provide information about the environment residents are exposed to in their everyday lives and to what extent this occurs (Laatikainen et al. 2018; Hasanzadeh et al. 2018). This allows for identifying those characteristics of the physical environment that are directly or indirectly connected to perceived health, happiness, and quality of life.
The two indicators presented above enable obtaining a huge amount of place-dependent experiential information from residents relatively quickly and effortlessly. For example, the data from the My Espoo survey was collected for around 2 months, and the resulting dataset consisted of nearly 70,000 markings made by residents. Faced with such a dataset, planners may wonder how they could identify from this vast data mass the places where limited development resources should be allocated first.
Figure 5 Place-based prioritization model (Kyttä et al. 2023).
This is why we developed the place-based prioritization model (Kyttä et al. 2023) whose main idea is that in the development efforts, we should prioritise the improvement of those places that we frequently use in our everyday lives but which we perceive negatively. However, each of the other categories of the four-component model (Figure 5) also includes a specific development or maintenance strategy. For example, in places that users perceive positively, which are often green spaces, there may be less of a need for development but rather a need to invest in maintenance.
When testing the prioritization model presented in Figure 4 to the My Espoo survey data, it became apparent that only around 5% of the places marked by residents belonged to the development priority category. In most cases, the places belonging to this category were located in traffic areas or key urban areas. From the perspective of residents’ quality of life, improving these places would make a difference: the more places residents marked as belonging to the development priority category, the worse their perceptions of their quality of life. However, the planners of the City of Espoo are fairly good at recognising these places, as the places in the development priority category were rather often already included in the development targets agreed for the city.
The two sets of indicators of social sustainability I have described here produce a lot of spatial data-based information that can be used both as baseline data in planning as well as follow-up data on issues such as the development of the use of sustainable mobility. The utilisation of data is easier if the information is easy to find and combinable with other datasets used in planning, development and maintenance. Some cities, such as Lahti and Espoo, are recording this soft spatial data as part of the city’s spatial data system. This allows comparing the data on social sustainability with the indicators measuring ecological and economic sustainability. The datasets make it easier to find solutions that promote sustainable development comprehensively, paying equal attention to all aspects of sustainable development.
Thank you
Writing this chapter was particularly supported by the NordGreen project funded by NordForsk (project number 95322) and the Transformative Cities project funded by the EU (NextGenerationEU) and the Academy of Finland (project number 352947).
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Pia Bäcklund is a professor of inequality of cities and regions working at the Department of Geosciences and Geography of the University of Helsinki. Her research has mainly focused on regional and urban planning from the perspectives of democratic theory and changes in public administration activities, civic participation as part of regional development, the opportunities and challenges of the utilisation of experiential knowledge, and the reconciliation of different forms of knowledge and ways of knowing in societal decision-making.
In line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), social sustainability as an indicator is linked to equality, reduced inequalities and justice, which aim at safeguarding an opportunity for a good life for all people. The targets include ending poverty and promoting opportunities for education as well as equality, both among different population groups as well as different genders. However, these global goals take on highly different meanings in different socio-cultural contexts, including within countries. At the neighbourhood level, the social sustainability and separation of regions in Finland have been examined based on factors such as the population’s educational structure and income level. These indicators have been used as the basis for drawing conclusions on the future of the regions. This article discusses which issues can be associated with the vitality and social sustainability of neighbourhoods and to what extent the challenges related to measurement and indicator work may end up limiting our understanding of the vitality of neighbourhoods without noticing. Why do we measure what we measure?
The use of different indicators characterises the current way in which society is governed. Making things visible in a systematic way provides an opportunity to monitor societal developments, but at the same time it also involves the governance and control of society through certain selected issues and related measurement approaches. In their classic work, Governing the Present: Administering Economic, Social and Personal Life, Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose (2010) describe how knowledge has become a tool of governance in all areas of society. Although social decision-making should be based on knowledge, the authors raise the question of knowledge as a tool of power. Why do we want to measure certain things? Indeed, Tomas Hanell (2019) has described the current situation with the concept of the 'quantification imperative'. This means that when measurement becomes an end in itself, those things that are not clearly measurable "do not exist" and are not included in the sphere of policy making.
Professor John Forester (1993) has spoken of informational uncertainty and informational ambiguity, particularly in the context of urban and regional planning. The former refers to whether we have enough reliable information about a particular phenomenon. The latter refers to our ability to know what kinds of social phenomena and issues are completely excluded from understanding by current methods of information gathering. The more we measure and monitor issues using different indicators, the more we need to discuss what kinds of phenomena should be included in social discussions in general, and how - and why - we can monitor their development at all. Both the global Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals have been criticised for their inability to identify socio-cultural differences, for example, and despite their good intentions, they are largely based on the ethos of economic growth in Western societies (Liverman 2018).
Although there are reasons to consider the precise statistical data on aspects such as the current situation of different neighbourhoods as relevant for societal development and decision-making (e.g. Saikkonen et al. 2018), it is also important to reflect on the cultural values and perceptions of regions that are already associated with these indicators as such. Each indicator always contains a broader value judgement of what is good and desirable, as well as an idea of what a 'region' means as a socio-functional environment for people's everyday lives (Kallio et al. 2015). Measuring and comparing the number of owner-occupied dwellings by neighbourhood is a good example of how an indicator will always contain a cultural element: home ownership is usually considered desirable. Similarly, we should consider how we interpret the number of people with a foreign background in different neighbourhoods and what we interpret this to mean. Is the 'problem' ultimately the fact that this segment of the population has a foreign background, or is there a risk that a subculture separate from the rest of society will develop in these residential areas due to inadequate integration mechanisms? Ultimately, it is about people's perceived quality of life and their sense of inclusion as part of society (Hanell et al. 2022).
As an expression, regional development is in itself highly normative, including perceptions of what is desirable, what issues should be measured and how. Therefore, maps and statistical graphics related to making comparisons between regions are inevitably always highly political, even if they contain precise, measurable information. In her doctoral thesis, Miliza Ryöti (2021) described how the authors of different municipalities involved in the cooperation at the city region level were cautious about publishing some data on specific neighbourhoods to political decision-makers in order to prevent the politicisation of the social phenomenon, which the authors found challenging. At the same time, this is an example of how information only becomes 'knowledge' when its value is recognised and acknowledged in social debate (Faehnle et al. 2014; also Rosengren et al. 2024). So why is the measurement of certain, specific issues considered meaningful in indicator work? This question is particularly relevant in the context of social sustainability, where it is impossible to avoid commenting on what constitutes a good life and how it should be manifested at the neighbourhood level.
The current status and development of neighbourhoods and regions can be assessed through the concepts of diversity, disparity and inequality. The diversity of neighbourhoods is not in itself a negative issue, for example, if it includes a strong local identity of residents and positive images for those who live elsewhere. From a positive perspective, we can point to neighbourhoods in large cities that have strong histories and identities and attract both residents and tourism (Chinatown, Little Italy). The key is that residents do not feel that there is a disparity between their neighbourhood and other regions. As a concept, disparity is related to issues such as how the public administration invests in the area in relation to other areas: do the residents themselves feel that investment is being made in their neighbourhood? Meanwhile, the concept of inequality is primarily related to the cultural ways in which we value the characteristics of neighbourhoods.
The social development of neighbourhoods has typically been measured on the basis of factors such as the income level of the population, the level of education and the proportion of the population with a foreign background. As noted above, these are highly cultural premises for making value judgements about neighbourhoods and include a normative dimension of what is desirable. Less emphasis has been placed on examining the development of neighbourhoods on the basis of physical, functional and symbolic differences. Urban areas may not be on an equal footing when it comes to maintaining the physical environment, as classifications for maintaining green spaces, for example, also determine the allocation of investments. For its part, the functional perspective highlights the range of services offered in the neighbourhood and its links with the rest of the city. Meanwhile, the symbolic dimension refers to the impressions that people living elsewhere have of the neighbourhood. The symbolic 'reality' is largely constructed in the media, where comparisons of various indicators related to the social environment also play a key role and at the same time contribute to building strong impressions in relation to our cultural values. The "visual imagery" of a city depends on what we want to communicate with maps (Ryöti 2021).
The vitality of neighbourhoods could also be assessed in terms of perceived community spirit and tolerant atmosphere, peer support, hobbies, awareness of local events, active residential activities and a sense of inclusion. These can be seen as essential factors in terms of social sustainability and neighbourhood vitality. But how can we measure their manifestation? What kind of visual, comparative landscape of the city would we convey if we described such things on maps of neighbourhoods?
Local activism can be mapped on the basis of factors such as the number of associations active in the neighbourhood and the events they organise. Different neighbourhood events and attendance at them are also potential indicators. Social media accounts and local newspapers - and their existence in general - and the discussions that take place in them help to reflect the spirit and level of tolerance in the place. Peer support also reflects the quality of the social environment (Varjakoski et al. 2022). Many neighbourhoods have various websites and platforms for activities from a sharing economy perspective, such as borrowing goods. Another key indicator from a social sustainability perspective is residents' sense of inclusion. This can be explored by collecting residents' experiences of whether they have been able to influence the development and future of their own neighbourhood if they so wish (see, for example, Wallin 2015).
From the perspective of functional differentiation, the range of services available in a neighbourhood, including both commercial services and leisure activities, is an important part of the vitality of neighbourhoods. A more detailed analysis of this could help to illustrate how different population groups perceive their opportunities to use these services and how they assess their quality. Critical reflection on administrative boundaries becomes particularly relevant when comparing indicators between neighbourhoods and in relation to the functional environment of neighbourhoods. While some statistical-administrative areas may have very limited commercial services, the accessibility of services may be excellent from the perspective of residents if services located in another statistical area can be reached by simply crossing a road. The geographer's toolkit has long included approaches not based on administrative or statistical boundaries and categories for regional development (Vaattovaara 1998) and indicators based on, for example, proximity or accessibility (Järv et al. 2018).
Physical vitality is reflected in the condition of the buildings, streets and green spaces in the neighbourhood, and the value that residents place on these aspects of their neighbourhood. At the same time, the experience that the neighbourhood is also cared for at a social level is a sign that the area is valued. Indicators in this respect could include budget allocations to different neighbourhoods, as well as maintenance and development plans and their implementation.
The symbolic dimension of vitality is visible in the valuation of the neighbourhood from the perspective of residents living elsewhere. The construction of attractiveness is significantly influenced by what is said about different neighbourhoods in the media. Migration (outward and inward) and long-term residence can also be seen as reflecting the vitality of a neighbourhood from the perspective of its perceived attractiveness (e.g. Vilkama et al. 2013). The price development of owner-occupied dwellings, in turn, reflects the symbolic vitality of the neighbourhood among people living elsewhere, but it may not be indicative of how residents perceive their neighbourhood and whether they enjoy it. The pricing of housing is also always based on stereotypical, shared impressions of a good life and a good neighbourhood. As a result, media analysis could also provide important information about the symbolic vitality of neighbourhoods: how the current situation and future of neighbourhoods are discussed (see Buchanan 2009).
Although the above perspectives cannot be easily translated into an indicator form and require not only statistical data but also information produced in other ways, they do reflect the situation of neighbourhoods from the perspective of vitality and social sustainability. In assessing the social sustainability of neighbourhoods, it is important to be sensitive to what elements are considered part of a good life and living environment. Demographic characteristics reflect a neighbourhood in one way and provide socially important information about differences between regions, but it would also be necessary to think critically about what other factors of vitality should be examined at the neighbourhood level - regardless of how difficult or easy it is to translate these issues into a measurable form. Above all, which factors are seen as causes and which as effects of social policy values and decisions? Every social policy decision always has a regional dimension.
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Paula Saikkonen, D.Soc.Sc.,works as Research Manager in the Social Sustainability Team at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL). She investigates welfare as part of social sustainability in the SustAgeable project. More generally, her research topics include ecosocial policy and the preconditions for the sustainability transition in a welfare state.
Many of the indicators used to measure social sustainability at the national and international level describe social problems (e.g. poverty rate, unemployment rate, young people not in education, employment or training (NEETs)). These indicators based on the measurement of problems fail to provide information about well-being but rather describe its absence. Popularity of these problem-based indicators is partly explained by available national data which enables international comparisons too. The development of neighbourhood-level indicators is a welcome opportunity to consider which information sustainability indicators provide, what their aim is and how they are used.
As its name suggests, an indicator indicates some characteristic of the object. In the best-case scenario, this is an essential characteristic. A good indicator is also one that responds sufficiently sensitively to any changes occurring in the object it describes. (Spangenberg 2002.) The purpose of the indicator is to summarise information, which inevitably formulate understanding. This, in turn, can influence perceptions of the relationships between the different objects.
In Finland, as in the other Nordic countries, the compilation of statistics and, consequently, indicators, were based on the survey on living conditions for a long time. Their focus was on well-being and quality of life, whereas the statistics compiled in the European Union and in other international contexts put more emphasis on exclusion and poverty. In the Nordic countries, the aim of welfare statistics has been to obtain a comprehensive view of well-being, rather than merely point out where resources are lacking (Simpura & Uusitalo 2011). The history of social indicators highlights the fact that administrative choices determine which indicators are available (see Simpura & Uusitalo). These choices steer which data is collected and stored, how easily available statistics are and how they are processed into indicators. The indicators are only the tip of the iceberg of statistics.
Social sustainability cannot be described only by a single indicator. Therefore, the value of an individual indicator is also affected by other indicators used. In an ideal situation, the selected indicators would describe social sustainability as precise as possible, but in a versatile manner. For example, if conventional indicators are used, such as the poverty rate, suicide mortality, unemployment rate or the number of NEETs, the focus will be on describing social disadvantage and its accumulation rather than social sustainability. Alternatively, social sustainability can be described as an opportunity to participate in society (decision-making, civic movements) (e.g. Boström 2012), as a collective characteristic (e.g. trust, belonging to a group) (Murphy 2012) or at the individual level (e.g. access to education, healthcare, adequate housing) (Boström 2012; Murphy 2012).
An inherently good indicator can be misused. Misuse may realise if the indicator’s relationship with policy measures is not understood, the policy measure is assessed based on just one indicator, or misleading interpretations are made of the indicator. For example, the Gini coefficient that measures income inequality often obtains higher scores in large cities than in rural municipalities. The more substantial income inequality in cities is due to the fact city inhabitants range from low-income students to, for example, business executives and public officials, whereas rural municipalities may not have any high-income households which mean a more even distribution of income. In other words, the Gini coefficient measures the equal distribution of income: if everyone has a very low or high income, the Gini coefficient gives a value closer to zero. Furthermore, while the Gini coefficient correctly measures income inequalities, it does not describe factors such as the quality of living environments. It would be misleading to draw conclusions on inequalities based on the Gini coefficient alone, as it ignores wealth.
While national and international indicators describing inclusion and participation are available, lack of high-quality data makes them far-removed from the city block or neighbourhood level. Political participation is often defined based on the voter turnout and social inclusion can be described by employment rate, education level and poverty rate (e.g. Eurostat). To some extent, these can be described at the neighbourhood level. Socio-economic status plays an important role in the voter turnout in Finland (Lahtinen 2021). The Finnish Broadcasting Company’s (YLE) results service enables users to view the voter turnout per voting district already during the election night. The voter turnout is prone to be significantly above the national average in areas with a lot of wealth, whereas the opposite is true for areas with a lot of low-income residents.
Similar results are found when assessing citizens’ trust in institutions. Although Finland has high trust in institutions and the functioning of democracy based on international comparisons, Finns nevertheless feel that their opportunities to exert influence are limited. This is particularly emphasised when comparing the attitudes of Finns with other countries where trust in institutions is strong. (OECD 2021.) Studies systematically indicate that Finns’ political trust is among the highest in Europe, but at the same time, they rate their ability to influence politics, or so-called internal civic competence, among the poorest in Europe. In the adult population, civic competence is strongly differentiated based on the level of education. (Kestilä-Kekkonen & Tiihonen 2022.)
The OECD (2021) has recommended that Finland strengthen the responsiveness of public services. In practice, this means issues such as a more human-centred approach (cf. system-based approach), i.e. that the services meet the needs of city residents in a transparent system. Transparency increases understanding about the public sector and its systems. In democratic societies, political actions to achieve sustainability goals require the approval of a majority of citizens, especially in the longer term. For this reason, this article proposes the indicator of being encountered or heard in public services.
An indicator providing information about interactions in public services would be useful in multiple ways. At least for now, none have yet been widely adopted, why it should be developed. Such an indicator would draw attention to how public services can be utilised to strengthen participation where people are encountered (see also Alhanen & Henttonen 2023). Social sustainability is strengthened if the residents’ understanding about their rights and their opportunities to influence the public services increase. In the long term, influencing one’s living environment and positive experiences on that may increase the interest in representative democracy.
Currently, the impacts of services are discussed widely while less attention is paid to the significance of how city residents are encountered or being heard in services. Especially good and bad experiences affect how public authorities are perceived. Public services, such as healthcare and social services, cultural services, youth services, education and training reach a lot of people. This interaction could be utilised much better when assessing social sustainability.
In recent years, various democratic innovations and experiments have been developed to increase voting in Finland (see e.g. Ministry of Justice 2023). In addition, wellbeing services counties and municipalities have different formal and established means of participation (e.g. a municipal resident’s initiative, various councils, such as disability councils, elderly citizens’ councils and youth councils). However, these means may have obscured the fact that city residents are encountered in public services on a daily basis. These encounters could be utilised more extensively to strengthen citizens’ participation. Public services also reach such individuals who may not have an interest in trying innovative forms of civic engagement or who are not activated to vote in elections despite encouragement. Public services also reach people between elections.
Too often, people are left with the experience that they must know their rights and verbalise their needs precisely to receive the services they need (Kallio 2022). Meanwhile, employees report that they are prone to refer clients forward in the service process or are unable to focus sufficiently on individual clients’ affairs (Hästbacka et al. 2023). We made similar observations on the experimentation of the social security reform, in which the young clients of the One-Stop Guidance Centers that help under-30-year-olds with employment, education and everyday issues were asked about their experiences of social security. Young people wished for more information about their rights to services and benefits, that workers would be less busy and would have more time to focus on them (Kuorikoski et al. 2024).
Different regions have a different supply of public services. There might be neighbourhoods without any services that actually reach people. Encounters in public services can only occur in places where there are services. This is one constraint for collecting indicator data. On the other hand, perceiving how and where public services are concentrated can be interesting in itself.
Another question to take into consideration is that the people using the services are of different ages. It should be possible to ask people of different ages about their experiences of being encountered in different services. Initially, questions could be tailored to the following age groups: 7–18-year-olds (children and young people of compulsory education age), working-age people (18–65-year-olds) and pensioners (over 63-year-olds). The idea is that the question could be formulated slightly differently for these age groups; for example, the oldest age group could include addressing the respondent formally. Of course, the exact wording used in the questions should be tested in the target groups.
Possible questions could include: On a scale of 1 to 5, assess the following statements (fully disagree – fully agree): (1) I (or my case) was taken seriously, (2) I felt I was listened to. An additional option is also needed: I cannot say or I did not meet anyone. At least in the first two age groups, responses can be collected by means of an electronic survey accessed with a QR code. It enables responses by smartphones. In the oldest age group, the responses to the survey can be collected by a text message alongside the QR code, at least in those services where client visits are registered (e.g. healthcare and social welfare services). Various technical alternatives can be utilised in different services, and these are constantly evolving.
The data collected using these methods is self-selected. Self-selection may not be a problem when it concerns experience-based information and this is taken into account when interpreting the data (see Asikainen 2022). The recommended duration of data collection depends on the service and the target group. For example, educational institutions can reach a lot of clients reasonably easily in one day, while one day may not suffice in libraries or in youth facilities.
A totally new indicator and data collection would require some work and resources, especially during the development phase. Time and effort are essential to ensure that the formulation and timing of the questions are good for data collection and support the systematic accumulation of data. As with any other indicators, here too, value is created if the indicator captures changes in a period, rather than an individual measurement point. Of course, the main weakness of the indicator is that it has not yet been tested and no study has been conducted on its validity or responsiveness to policy changes.
Survey data which is not linked to individual data is easier to process and store. The described data collection method is only slightly more complex than customer satisfaction ratings based on a scale of smiley faces in different colours. In this case,the individual level data is not necessary because the interest lies in people's experiences of encounters in public services. Of course, from a research perspective, this would be a shortcoming. However, research and monitoring data on how income levels affect the experiences of fairness in society or trust in institutions can be obtained from elsewhere (see e.g. Citizens’ Pulse 2024; OECD 2024).
Paying attention to interactions and communication in public services should not be an additional task in itself. Responding to the questions in the indicator could show city residents that someone is interested in their thoughts. For the employees, the new indicator would tell that their job is not just about the number of performances in customer service production. This, in turn, could increase experiences of the relevance of the work. In the longer term, such an indicator could help improve interactions in services if the results were discussed in work communities.
The experiment carried out in connection with the social security reform at the One-Stop Guidance Centers showed that a combination of the QR code and Webropol survey could be used to obtain rather versatile responses from different parts of Finland. The survey included a couple of open-ended questions about what upsets young people. Fairly ordinary technology and programmes could be used to produce interesting data when the One-Stop Guidance Center employees were engaged in the experiment and the QR code was highly visible in different places. The responses were received from a so called hard to reach group (Kuorikoski et al. 2024). The indicator discussed here would require presenting the questions in a structured form, as it enables different language versions and smooth processing of the data.
Public services are discussed in a system-based manner. Too little attention is paid to how public services can also produce negative impacts on urban residents. For this reason, the test phase could also serve as an interesting intervention that would provide information on the obstacles to effective interactions in services. (See Fabian et al. 2023.)
I have chosen the concept of “being encountered” as the term of the indicator, which could also be “being heard”, as it refers to interaction wherein the parties can express themselves and feel understood. However, as “being heard” could also be interpreted as a formal hearing in which people are heard without listening to them, being encountered is perhaps a better term in this context.
A rather large range of tools for client inclusion are already available, and there are also many trained experts by experience. Client inclusion often aims to improve the service and service experience. However, the underlying idea of the indicator presented here differs from these tools. The aim is not to develop the service system or to strengthen client inclusion, but rather to make full use of existing public services in strengthening the well-being of the city residents. Well-being improves when people think that they are able to affect the course of their own lives and participate in society. On its own, the indicator will not lead to stronger participation. However, at its best, it could help us pay more attention to human interactions and be utilised to increase social inclusion.
Alhanen, Kai & Henttonen, Elina (2023) Demokraattisten kohtaamisten käsikirja. Osallisuudesta vaikuttavuutta julkisiin palveluihin. Helsinki: Sitra reports 223.
Asikainen, Marjo, Kainulainen, Sakari & Rytkönen, Säde (2022). Sosiaalisen hyvinvoinnin mittaaminen Pohjois-Savossa. Yhteiskuntapolitiikka 87 (5–6), 573–578. https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2022112366602.
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Arto O. Salonen is a professor of social pedagogy, whose expertise is related to sustainable well-being. He works at the Department of Social Sciences of the University of Eastern Finland and is a member of the Finnish Expert Panel for Sustainable Development.
The neighbourhood cohesion refers to the sense of belonging experienced by the residents of a city block. Cohesion emerges when residents find it natural to bring up everyday matters with other members of the community. When the neighbourhood cohesion is good, the residents feel safe in the community and are committed to promoting the shared goals of the city block residents. The residents of the city block are close to one another in a way that allows each of them to retain their uniqueness.
Cohesion refers to the sense of belonging in a human community. Neighbourhood cohesion is a concept in which the community is defined to include the people who reside in the block, use the services located there or are otherwise within the immediate sphere of influence of the block. The concepts close to neighbourhood cohesion include trust between the people in the block and their ability to empathise with each other, i.e. compassion. In this article, cohesion is perceived as synonymous with a sense of belonging.
Strong cohesion in the community is manifested as a solidity in which people’s diversity and special features do not threaten the unity of the community. The members of the community feel a sense of cohesion in a way that allows each of them to retain their uniqueness. When cohesion is achieved in this way, people are capable of and willing to cooperate. A community of people with strong cohesion is characterised by solidity and integrity, which allows variation between the members of the community instead of homogeneity.
A shared understanding of reality strengthens the sense of cohesion among the residents of the city block. On the other hand, highly different interpretations of the nature of reality may be based on such different premises that they make it difficult to reach a shared experience of life. Such variation can concern issues such as the differences between worldviews. Worldviews consist of fundamental beliefs through which people interpret reality and justify their behaviour. If there is a major difference in these fundamental beliefs, it may be difficult to find sufficient points of contact between people to strengthen cohesion.
Cohesion between people is accessible as, deep down, humanity is about sharing. Friction often arises between people due to relatively small things, whereas people tend to agree on major questions. One representation of the similar attitudes towards the great scheme of things is how people everywhere in the world perceive lending a helping hand as something more desirable than violence. And we regard peace as something worth protecting, despite the fact that it is unclear whether it will ever be possible to bring wars to an end among humankind. Health is also generally considered to be of more value than illness. Identifying our shared core values helps us strengthen cohesion.
Differences between people emerge by lowering the level of abstraction – by moving towards more concrete issues. Perhaps this makes it easier for the residents of city blocks to make decisions on the renovations of building façades than on the locations of bicycle racks. A façade renovation is perceived as such a large entity that it begins to appear abstract. If there are only credible, rational grounds for a renovation, people may quickly end up concluding in unison that the façade must be set in order, even though its costs are high and the resulting harm to the block residents during the renovation is obvious. On the other hand, bicycle racks and their locations are a very concrete matter, which makes it very easy for anyone to have an emotional or rational opinion on the topic. In practice, it may therefore be more difficult to find common ground on the placement of bicycle racks than on a façade renovation.
One of the key factors for increasing neighbourhood cohesion is the purposeful improvement of the residents’ opportunities for influence. This helps to combat increasingly extreme attitudes, which is one of the most negative phenomena of our time. People are drifting further from one another partly due to feelings of frustration caused by an experience of inability to affect matters related to people’s lives. This makes it important to hear people’s voices “with new ears”.
An increasingly digitalised society offers opportunities for such hearing. The cohesion of community members is strengthened by means such as the peer-to-peer economy, which makes it possible to cross the boundary between the producer and the consumer. The peer-to-peer economy may emerge as a way for city block residents to solve problems related to their daily lives together by utilising digital solutions.
The people living on a city block may share their formal clothing with other residents, or they may create a system where the food produced by local farmers is brought directly from the farms to serve the needs of the community. Problems are solved by transforming into a problem-solving community through the electronic interaction platforms brought about by the digital age. Such an approach is similar in nature to grass-roots democracy. Its effects may also extend more widely to society.
In its various forms, neighbourhood activism can be a key driver of this positive development. Pop-up activities that are based on short-term commitment are flexible. They avoid rigid structures. They can interweave the principle of profitability related to entrepreneurial activities, the relatively loose organisational culture that the third sector is known for and the aspect of doing things for the public good from the public sector.
The forms of the economy that involve more sharing, and are more inclusive and local foster a sense of cohesion among people. They enable mainstreaming the organisation of the economy that is based on access rights and availability. This reduces the role that ownership plays in securing material well-being and emphasises the importance of sharing. It also makes development more ecological sustainable.
Strong neighbourhood cohesion serves as a growth platform for strengthening people’s subjectivity and increasing their hope for the future. As neighbourhood cohesion expands, it can turn into a phenomenon that challenges representative democracy to renew itself to resemble a more direct democracy in which citizens feel that they can influence their living conditions better than before. Such a development could have positive effects at the level of society as a whole, as the rigidity of representative democracy is already starting to become an obstacle to democratic development.
Everyone benefits from building a more inclusive society. It is worth noting that an attitude that involves more sharing is also the principle for the organisation of an economy that generates hope for the future. After all, we are living in a world where the privatisation of profits and socialisation of losses is widening the gap between the rich and the poor. This is prone to erode the sense of cohesion between people.
When people drift mentally far from one another, distrust increases. Strong cohesion removes the sense of loneliness and deprivation of community members that results from a life that revolves around individuals and makes people retreat into their own bubbles. When people’s lives become separated from those of others, they may end up mistakenly believing that everyone else is doing great while they are struggling.
All people have their weaknesses and strengths. A well-functioning society is based on different people with complementary roles. When there is strong cohesion between people, they feel that their task is to maintain each other’s vitality. Bringing forward the best in human beings can create unprecedented cohesion in the community.
Nowadays it is more and more important to ask who and what belongs to us. Our circle of life has stealthily become global. As a result of the globalisation of the economy, the benefits and disadvantages of consumption have shifted further away from the consumer. Just one trip to the grocery store has impacts that extend to the lives of thousands of people and their living environments around the world. Chocolate lovers could also perceive cocoa farmers as their neighbours.
A strong neighbourhood cohesion creates a counterbalance to the global reality that is currently surrounding the lives we live. My actions and inactions are connected to other people, nature and the economy near and far. The collaborative activities of the residents of a city block may help us understand how little drops of water make a mighty ocean. And even more: the ocean cannot exist without those little droplets.
Each one of use makes hundreds of small and large choices every day. These choices link us into complex chains of impacts. Although the impacts are usually small, they are nonetheless real. Therefore, every act or omission is a statement for some kind of future: “A little more of this, please!” or “No more of that, please!” Each small act is important because of the direction it is heading towards. Even a tiny movement in the right direction involves positioning as a solution.
Measuring neighbourhood cohesion is not difficult despite the complicated nature of the phenomenon. The residents of a city block may be asked to assess statements related to their own block on a scale of 1–10, for instance.
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Ira Ahokas is a research manager at the Finland Futures Research Centre of the University of Turku. She is a futures researcher whose research focuses on the development of regions and strengthening their sustainability and particularly promoting physical activity in urban areas.
Insufficient physical activity among Finns is a cause of considerable costs to our society. Sedentary lifestyles have negative impacts on issues such as people’s careers and morbidity. Everyday physical activity and particularly active travel can simultaneously promote the sustainability goals set in health, environmental and transport policy. The urban structure plays an important role in increasing people’s physical activity in their everyday lives. Walkability is promoted in cities through very similar measures that are essential for promoting everyday physical activity and active travel. Indeed, walkability has emerged as a key objective of a sustainable and health-promoting urban structure. The promotion of walkable cities in Finnish cities creates a need to develop indicators for measuring walkability based on open data, which measure the different dimensions of walkability in different neighbourhoods using a compatible approach.
Data on physical fitness and activity indicates that Finnish adults spend most of their day sedentarily (Husu et al. 2018). According to a baseline projection, the decline of Finns’ physical fitness means that in 2040 only very few 50-year-olds will be in good physical condition (Vasankari et al. 2023a). This downturn trend in physical fitness will result in greater labour shortages and higher morbidity, which will challenge Finland as a welfare state and also cause significant costs to municipalities (Vasankari et al. 2023b). The annual costs of inadequate physical activity for the Finnish society are estimated to amount to EUR 3.2 billion (Vasankari & Kolu 2018), while the costs of sedentariness are estimated to be EUR 1.5 billion (Kolu et al. 2022).
Promoting everyday physical activity has many positive impacts on sustainability. The transition to walking, cycling and other forms of active travel increases physical activity, promoting public health. As a result of a reduction in driving, active travel reduces greenhouse gas emissions and also produces a number of other benefits related to welfare, the economy, efficiency and competitiveness (Silonsaari et al. 2021). An increase in active travel reduces congestion caused by driving in cities and allows more efficient use of the urban space that is currently reserved for cars. The increase in everyday physical activity allows for making better use of the time spent on commuting as well as improving the comfort and value of living. Increasing active travel simultaneously contributes to the sustainability goals related to health, the environment and transport policy.
In its programme for the promotion of walking and cycling, the Ministry of Transport and Communications introduced the target of a 30-per-cent increase in the number of walking and cycling trips by 2030, which would mean an increase in the modal share of these transport modes from 30 per cent to approximately 35 to 38 per cent (Jääskeläinen 2018). A few urban regions are already close to meeting this objective, but it cannot be achieved nationally through current measures. To achieve a change similar to the target of the Ministry of Transport and Communications, there is a need to promote a sufficiently dense urban structure with short distances, which lays the foundation for the more widespread use of active travel and car-free lifestyles (Paloniemi et al. 2023).
A key to increasing active travel is the smoothness of everyday life. When services that are essential from the perspective of everyday life are close enough, active travel becomes a viable alternative in urban areas. For example, the urban structure and the density of the school network determine the accessibility of schools and also whether children get to their school by walking or by car. (Paloniemi et al. 2023). Sustainable everyday life is also supported by the accessibility of local sports facilities, such as schools and multi-purpose buildings (Kokko et al. 2023).
The preservation of green spaces between dense urban structures should be considered a basic starting point for planning, as greenness increases the positive emotions associated with physical activity, encouraging people to engage in everyday physical activity (Silonsaari et al. 2021). In addition, green environments not only promote an increase in physical activity but also health by reducing the health hazards caused by heat waves in cities that are becoming more common as a result of climate change (Kivimäki et al. 2023).
In promoting active modes of transport, it is essential that physical activity promotes positive emotions in people. It has been observed that positive emotions stem from different factors in different people (Harikkala-Laiinen 2022). For those who are physically active, the activity itself inherently induces positive emotions. However, many of us get positive feelings about other things that are linked to active travel. For example, an aesthetically beautiful walkway or the company of other people can motivate people to travel by muscle power. In fact, more attention should be drawn to these elements that evoke positive emotions related to physical activity in the measures to promote active travel.
Increasing physical activity and sustainable travel in Finnish society cannot be achieved through individual measures; instead, it requires a multidisciplinary approach in cooperation between different sectors and administrative branches. Focusing on one or a handful of factors alone produces incomplete and, at worst, uneconomic solutions that will not solve this multidimensional problem. Indeed, there is a need for several structural solutions implemented in cooperation between different sectors as well as effective measures guiding the choices individuals make in their everyday lives to increase their everyday physical activity, such as walking and cycling and at the same time reduce driving (Kiviluoto et al. 2022a; Kiviluoto et al. 2022b; Paloniemi et al. 2023; Vasankari et al. 2023b).
The urban structure plays a key role in enabling sustainable everyday physical activity. The urban structure consists of the locations of the population and housing, workplaces, services and green spaces, as well as transport routes and other infrastructure. Active travel is supported by a dense urban structure, in which workplaces, schools, shops and other services as well as green spaces and recreational areas are accessible in close proximity to homes (Ewing & Cervero 2010; Helminen et al. 2020; Karjalainen et al. 2023). This urban structure that resembles city centres could also be extended to suburban areas, enabling an active and sustainable lifestyle for an increasing number of people in different neighbourhoods. The development of the urban structure towards functional density and accessibility is largely guided by land use planning.
Indeed, walkability has emerged as a key objective of a sustainable and health-promoting urban structure (Boeing et al. 2022; Cerin et al. 2022; Giles-Corti et al. 2016). Studies have shown that the density of urban structures and an mixed land use and other functions are associated with walking, whereas a sparse urban structure and a fragmented road network reduce walking in our everyday lives (Giles-Corti et al. 2016). Perceived factors such as the safety, aesthetics and comfort of the environment also affect the walkability of the urban environment (Kärmeniemi et al. 2018). Similarly, everyday physical activity is supported by a sufficiently dense urban structure in which everyday services, public transport and local recreational areas are easily accessible, the network of walking routes is dense and the physical and perceived safety of the environment is good (Cerin et al. 2022; Ewing & Cervero 2010; Frank et al. 2005; Shields et al. 2021). Walkability is therefore promoted through measures highly similar to those essential for promoting everyday physical activity and active travel. Walkability can thus be utilised as one of the guiding indicators that are suitable for steering the measures to promote everyday physical activity and active travel, and related monitoring. Walkability also creates a clear mutual goal for different administrative branches of the city, committing everyone to implementing the measures that affect cooperation. Sharing a joint vision and increasing cooperation is important in the efforts to promote walkability, as one of the stumbling blocks identified for the measures promoting health and sustainability in Finnish cities is a lack of a comprehensive and long-term approach as well as coordination of the promotion measures (Kiviluoto et al. 2022a; Kiviluoto et al. 2022b; Parkkinen et al. 2019; Sundqvist & Tuominen 2023).
Various indicators have been developed for assessing the sustainability of cities. When examining the characterisation and assessment of a walkable urban environment, the elements of walkability include factors such as: 1. the diversity of land use, 2. high population density, 3. street connectivity and 4. planning that increases the safety and attractiveness of the area (Giles-Corti et al. 2014; Grasser et al. 2016; Dovey & Pafka 2020; EPA 2021 Mehta 2008; Southworth 2005; Speck 2012). The diversity of land use refers to the placement of various functions, such as housing, workplaces, services, green spaces and recreational areas in a certain area such as a neighbourhood. High population density indicates a dense urban structure. A dense and mixed community structure supports the perspective of the benefits of walking. A densely built environment and mixed land use result in an improvement of the accessibility of different services and functions by walking as distances become shorter (Giles-Corti et al. 2016). In this context, the accessibility indicators include the proximity of grocery shops, public transport stops, schools, health stations, green spaces and urban parks and recreational sports facilities (Helminen et al. 2020; Cerin et al. 2022). Street connectivity includes many route alternatives illustrates the connectivity of the street network. This is measured as the number of crossings of walkways per square kilometre. The street connectivity enables, for example, using alternative routes that provide protection from the varying climate. According to Giles-Corti et al. (2014), the diversity of land use increases the reasons for walking and sufficient population density ensures dense housing, which creates a sufficient number of residents as service users in the neighbourhood, enabling the existence of services. An interconnected street network provides a smooth infrastructure for these services.
Pedestrian-friendly planning is also often highlighted as a principle for promoting walkability, contributing to creating a safe and interesting urban space. The environment must provide walkers with inspiration and variability to encourage them to stay physically active. At the same time, the environment must be as safe as possible for walkers from both traffic and social perspectives. Safety is promoted by measures such as improving lighting and reducing slipperiness and noise. Experiential aspects can be augmented with beautiful views and spending time with other people. Similarly, lighting, cleanliness, green elements, the quality of walking routes and the local architecture may affect the perceived walkability. (Arellana et al. 2010; Gehl 2010; Giles-Corti et al. 2016; Shields et al. 2021; Speck 2012)
While walkability enables increasing the sustainable and health-promoting urban structure, how can the walkability of different neighbourhoods be measured so that the indicators guide the development measures into an environment that supports a sustainable lifestyle? Table 1 summarises the objectives presented in the first section of this article, which must be promoted to ensure a community structure that increases health and sustainability. In addition, the table presents the dimensions of walkability highlighted in the previous section, as well as indicators that have been either used or could be used in the measurement of the promotional measures taken by a health- and sustainability-promoting neighbourhood.
A dense population structure is an important premise for promoting active travel and other forms of everyday physical activity, and population density can be considered as its walkability indicator. A high population density enables short distances, which promotes a car-free lifestyle and encourages people to travel using muscle power. Another important objective for promoting active travel is the smooth running of everyday life. This smoothness is promoted with means such as a good service network, which enables the accessibility of everyday services. The accessibility of services can be measured, for example, by mixed land use and the location of various everyday services, public transport stops and parks and playgrounds within a walking distance of 500 metres. The smooth running of everyday life is also enhanced by an environment designed to enable people to reach all places inclusively with the forms of active travel. Potential walkability indicators for promoting this goal include a dense network of walking routes, interconnections between the routes and a well-functioning public transport that supports walking.
Increasing physical and perceived safety and utilising emotional experiences in the promotion of physical activity also encourage people to travel using their muscles. Physical and perceived safety can be promoted through means such as traffic solutions, including lowering speed limits, increasing traffic safety, especially at intersections, and restricting car traffic. Safety and the availability of routes at all times of the day and year can be improved, for example, by good lighting, maintenance of routes and, in particular, winter maintenance. The neatness and cleanliness of the environment, as well as its noiselessness, can particularly affect perceived safety and comfort.
As people’s physical activity is guided by emotions, the emotional experiences that motivate people to be active should be utilised more in the measures to promote active travel. Many people are motivated to travel using their muscles in an aesthetically appealing environment or in a natural environment. Experiential factors and the company of other people also create positive emotional experiences. Indeed, the environment should include such elements that promote physical activity to particularly encourage physical activity among those who do not get motivating emotional experiences from physical activity alone. As a result, the indicators used to measure walkability should also include dimensions measuring the appeal of urban spaces. Attractive urban spaces can be increased, for example, by planning environmental elements that increase variability, interest and comfort, such as art, light art, water elements and beautiful views in general. Different natural elements, such as street trees and parks, also increase the comfort of the environment. There is also a need for walkability indicators related to communality and liveliness of an area, as having social contacts and experiences within walking distance encourages walking and car-free lifestyles.
Table 1. Objectives for a neighbourhood that promotes health and sustainability and examples of walkability indicators that support them.
Compiling a set of walkability indicators that are comparable and at the same time relevant at the local level is affected by specific challenges related to issues such as the different characteristics of cities, the availability of data and the interpretation of indicators (Lyytimäki et al. 2022). This makes it necessary to develop different comparable methods for measuring the health impacts of urban structures (Giles-Corti et al. 2016). As a result, we set out to develop a set of indicators based on open data and tools for the purpose of assessing the sustainability goals of urban regions, which is a spatial data-based method developed for city-level analyses and global comparisons (Boeing et al. 2022; Giles-Corti et al. 2022). Based on this method, an open-source tool was developed in Finland to calculate several indicators describing the urban structure by utilising open spatial data sets. The key result of this tool is a walkability index that consists of population density, the street connectivity and indices measuring the accessibility of services, public transport and public open spaces (Heikinheimo et al. 2023). According to Heikinheimo et al. (2023), the openness and international applicability of these data sets allows for transparent and reproducible examination.
The number of compatible walking indicators measuring a dense urban structure and the smooth everyday lives is relatively high and they are available as open data from Finnish cities. However, there are still a few development areas. With regard to accessible services, it would be a good idea for Finland to develop more neighbourhood-specific indicators for the accessibility of everyday services and activities and related open data sources. For example, research has shown that the proximity of recreational services, schools and workplaces influences walkability (Giles-Corti et al. 2022). Currently, the availability of neighbourhood-specific open data on everyday activities and services is the best for public sector services. However, we must acknowledge that the private sector also offers many of these everyday services and functions. For example, in the context of recreational services, there is a good open data set known as the LIPAS database[1] on public sports facilities in Finland, but information on the recreational services provided by the private sector is fragmented.
A particular challenge for the measurement of walkability is considered to be caused by the fact that the currently used indicators hardly measure the quality of the walking environment, but rather indicate the potential that the urban structure of areas creates for walking. It is challenging to find compatible walkability indicators based on open data that produce qualitative information on the environments perceived as safe and the walking routes that involve experiential elements. This should be developed, as research has demonstrated that perceived safety and other emotional factors related to the perceived environment can prevent or encourage physical activity in everyday life (Harikkala-Laiinen et al. 2022; Lyytimäki et al. 2019). Neighbourhood residents must find the environment of their residential area pleasant and safe so that the walkability potential can manifest as better health and a higher prevalence of a sustainable lifestyle.
Endnotes:
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Marjaana Seppänen is a professor of social work and dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki. Her research interests are related to ageing and social work for older people. In recent years, her research has particularly focused on social relationships, well-being and social exclusion as well as the importance of services in the lives of older people, including at the end of life.
The share of older people who are experiencing loneliness can serve as an indicator of the social sustainability of a neighbourhood. Information about the share of older people experiencing loneliness enables targeting measures correctly to reduce loneliness and, through them, allows increasing welfare in the age group. The loneliness of older people has been studied mainly quantitatively in Finland and around the world. Research has shown factors that explain loneliness statistically, such as high age, female gender and low functional capacity. It is difficult to alleviate emotional loneliness, i.e. an experience of a lack of meaningful relationships, through external measures. Meanwhile, social loneliness, i.e. an experience of not belonging to networks or communities, can be reduced through activities organised at the neighbourhood level. Communality, which alleviates loneliness, can be achieved in an urban environment in the form of organised activities on the one hand, and spontaneous interactions in suitable public spaces on the other.
In addition to their health, older people perceive social relationships as the factors most relevant to their welfare. Therefore, experiences of loneliness indicate a fundamental deficit in welfare, and an experience of loneliness may also have many indirect impacts, such as an increase in service needs. As an indicator measuring the social sustainability of a neighbourhood, the share of older people experiencing loneliness provides information that can be used to develop measures to reduce loneliness. This allows for improving the welfare of older city residents.
The concept of loneliness has various definitions. One key aspect of loneliness is the distinction between social and emotional loneliness. Social loneliness is related to an experience of not belonging to any networks or communities. On the other hand, emotional loneliness is linked to the experience of a lack of close and meaningful relationships (Weiss 1973). Although being alone, i.e. solitude, may also be a positive and desired state that a person has chosen (e.g. Victor et al. 2009, 202–216), the concept of loneliness is mainly used to refer to a situation that the individual perceives as undesirable.
In the context of older people, it is important to consider the perspective of the life course (Grenier 2012) in connection with loneliness: life events and different transitions along the life course shape the person's current experience of their social relationships or related shortcomings. In the lives of today’s older people, these transitions are more diverse than in previous generations, and different life events and turning points are an important part of the life course. Transitions related to housing and changes related to health often provide a background for the experience of loneliness. Changes in family relationships, such as divorces, new relationships and relationship types as well as the loss of family members and friends also form a web on which perceived loneliness is built. (Tiilikainen & Seppänen 2017.)
The above factors are often related to changes in functional capacity (Shankar et al. 2017). Difficulties in moving from one place to another, changes in the senses (visual and hearing) and those caused by memory disorders often limit the opportunities for social participation. Changes in policies on older people that emphasise the importance of living at home are also influencing the currently prevailing situation (Jolanki & Kröger 2015; Vasara 2021). The aim is for all older people to continue to live at home for as long as possible, even when their functional capacity has deteriorated significantly. At the same time, the current lack of communal housing types means that there are very few alternatives and particularly possibilities of taking the social dimension into account in housing.
Loneliness has been studied quite a lot internationally, mainly using quantitative methods. Research on the loneliness of older people has also strengthened in Finland, and studies related to the loneliness of older people have been published in the 2000s, including doctoral dissertations (e.g. Tiikkainen 2006; Savikko 2008; Tiilikainen 2016). So far, little qualitative research has been conducted on loneliness (however, cf. Palkeinen 2008 and Tiilikainen 2016). Measuring the prevalence of loneliness is challenging, as the results depend heavily on the used indicator. Different incidence rates have been observed in the studies, also depending on age limits and the used questions. Up to one-third of older people suffer from loneliness at least occasionally, and it is a serious problem for just under ten per cent (Victor & Bowling 2012).
Demonstrating the explanatory factors and causal relationships linked to loneliness is also challenging. Research has nevertheless identified factors related to loneliness, although the observations are also contradictory in some respects. Factors statistically associated with loneliness observed in various studies worth considering from the perspective of this book include high age, female gender, widowhood, living alone, low functional capacity, poor financial situation, an experience of insufficient access to help and feelings of insecurity (Holmen & Furukawa 2002; Moisio & Rämö 2007; Routasalo & Pitkälä 2003; Savikko 2008; Tiikkainen et al. 2004; Tiikkainen 2006, Victor et al. 2005; Jylhä & Saarenheimo 2010; Dahlberg et al. 2015). Particular attention has been paid to the association between loneliness and health among older people. Loneliness has also been recognised as a risk factor that predicts illness and premature death as well as a risk factor for suicide (Chang et al. 2017).
According to a review on exclusion from social relationships (Burholt et al. 2017) a person's socio-economic status plays a role in social relations: interruptions of social relationships are more common among less educated people as a result of losses and conflicts. They also often have fewer opportunities to establish new relationships. On the other hand, older people with higher education have more networks outside the family. Retirement results in a decline in material resources, which has a greater impact on the ability of low-income people to maintain social relationships. With regard to immigrants, it is known that moving to another country significantly increases the risk of being excluded from both familial and other social relationships. The review also highlighted the importance of where people live; social exclusion is strongly linked to the person’s place of residence. The examination of the prevalence of loneliness in cities has revealed neighbourhood-level variation in the prevalence rates (Scharf & de Jong Gierveld 2008). Indeed, a lot of attention has been paid to the importance of social spaces that either restrict or enable interactions. For older people, home and the residential area as well as public spaces in the city (or neighbourhood) create opportunities and barriers for forming social relationships. (Tuominen 2023). However, as a result of digitalisation, the role of the place is considered to have become less important. Studies examining the use of digital platforms and their association with loneliness among older people have found that the impact is not straightforward: their various uses may either increase or reduce loneliness (Wilson 2018).
Efforts have been made to alleviate loneliness through means such as various group activities, which have been assessed to be effective in alleviating social isolation and loneliness (Pitkälä et al. 2005; Cattan et al. 2005; Savikko 2008). This positive effect of group interventions is estimated to be primarily due to the quality of the social relationships rather than the group activities themselves (Litwin & Shiovitz-Ezra 2006). Interventions related to health and mental health have also been found to alleviate experiences of loneliness (Victor & Bowling 2012; Masis et al. 2011). In many development projects, especially those related to urban environments, increasing communality has been perceived as a key solution to the questions of loneliness: increasing communality could alleviate loneliness and its consequences. In older people, communality can be considered to be related to their place of residence and residential area, although little research is available on the matter.
A study on the Liipola neighbourhood consisting of blocks of flats in Lahti, Finland examined the communality of older people and its realisation. The study found that communality manifested in the neighbourhood as both organised and spontaneous interactions and activities in communal places (resident premises, church, etc.) as well as in building-specific or public spaces (gardens, stairways, a shopping centre, bus stops, etc.). The elements that determined communality included continuity and cyclical time as well as practices that the older people had grown accustomed to. Instead of a place for local communality, however, the residential area could be primarily seen as a setting for communities where not only residents but also people living elsewhere participated in different forms of networked communality. Meaningful activities (e.g. crafts, meals) served as a driving force for communality, whose significance was, above all, built upon a possibility of interactions and a sense of belonging. (Seppänen & Haapola 2016.)
The prevalence of loneliness at the neighbourhood level can be examined using a questionnaire survey. As various methods have been developed for measuring loneliness, the selection of an indicator plays a major role in determining which conclusions and development measures can be proposed based on the results (see e.g. Liu & Rook 2014; Tiilikainen 2016, 31–35). It is important that we can choose an indicator in which social loneliness is a key dimension to serve as the basis for the social sustainability of cities and related measures. Although it is difficult to alleviate the emotional dimension of loneliness using various measures, solutions that also work at the neighbourhood level can be developed to reduce social loneliness (Dahlberg & McKee 2014). An essential issue in data collection is setting an age limit to either people aged 65 and above or 75 and above. Determining this limit involves background assumptions with different emphases; in fact, the further use of the data contained by the indicator is the key factor for determining the age group.
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Pasi Mäenpää is a university researcher and docent of urban sociology at the University of Helsinki. His recent work has explored the transformation of civil society, such as the fourth sector, inclusion, the state of volunteering and communal resilience. He is currently studying the relationship between local civic activity and crisis resilience and the resilience of democracy.
An experience of inclusion in residential areas requires a sense of belonging to the social entity of the area. Inclusion requires an opportunity to encounter other people, interact with them, form groups that constitute communities and engage in joint activities. From the urban environment, this requires both public spaces open to everyone, i.e. shared spaces also known as third places, and an opportunity to utilise these for the shared use of one’s group or community. In practice, these spaces include libraries, residential spaces, youth facilities and the club rooms of housing cooperatives. The existence, quantity and quality of such facilities constitute an indicator of the spatial inclusion of the residential area.
Participation in society is not just about voting or other ways to influence politics and decision-making. Participation includes people’s everyday activities in their living environment and social relationships. Meanwhile, inclusion refers to the relationship of the individual to their social environment and their experience of it. In the context of the examination of a sustainable city, inclusion has been defined as “meaning people's experienced and concrete membership in society and living in a way that personally suits them” (We want to hear you! 2020).
Inclusion emerges on many social and geographical scales. Depending on the nature of the residential area, the most important of these are the city district, city block or other neighbourhoods. Inclusion requires an opportunity to encounter other people, interact with them, form groups that constitute communities and engage in joint activities. From the urban environment, this requires both public spaces open to everyone, i.e. shared spaces also known as third places, and an opportunity to utilise these for the shared use of one’s group or community. In practice, these spaces include libraries, residential spaces, youth facilities and the club rooms of housing cooperatives. The existence, quantity and quality of such facilities constitute an indicator of the spatial inclusion of the residential area.
The indicator can be used to measure or at least examine and compare the spatial prerequisites for the realisation of inclusion in residential areas as part of the assessment of social sustainability. It is also possible to define the baseline that all residential areas should pursue at the national or city level. The achievement of this goal can be assessed by using register data to determine the number of public spaces in relation to the number of residents and by conducting resident and visitor surveys and qualitative studies, for example, by means of co-research or by utilising experts by experience.
The public space is perceived as an essential feature of the European culture, without which Western democracy and, consequently, civilisation and economic prosperity could not have been conceived. Similarly, the deterioration of public space has been perceived as a dangerous deterioration in the structure and order of a proactive society (e.g. Arendt 2002; Putnam 2000). The currently ongoing discussions on the political and social polarisation of the population and the social segregation of cities are linked to changes in the public space.
According to Ash Amin (2006), today’s cities have lost their projection of a good city as a form of social well-being and political ideals of democracy and civilisation. This is precisely due to the segregation of society. However, what we are left with is the exhibition of diversity and heterogeneity as well as an opportunity for togetherness and solidarity. As a result, the way a city can ensure the involvement of all its residents emerges as an important issue.
The openness of the public space means that everyone can come and spend time in the space, but also that everyone has active opportunities to be actively engaged in the space. It is important that the different areas of society that involve alternative activities serve as alternatives to each other instead of closing off into a segregated system. In other words, public spaces do not constitute clubs closed to outsiders but, instead, they are open, at least for their target groups. In this respect, the preservation of the public space is concerned with both continuing the Nordic welfare city model and restoring it to its urban European roots. Finnish urban policy has been marked by involving little mixing of functions through urban planning, but strong social mixing through housing policy. However, the ideal of social mixing, the so-called “urban melting pot”, is based on interactions in public spaces, not in housing.
The urban public space that involves encounters between different people, even just at the level of gaze, includes dialogue that makes society visible and understandable to its members. It contributes to maintaining a shared impression of society and creates social cohesion and solidarity. City residents gather in public spaces to portray themselves for themselves and others, and while doing so, form a communal performance, an image of what our society is like and what is our role in it. The public space can thus be defined as an area of life open to all or a place where society exhibits itself and meets to discuss itself. (Mäenpää 2005.)
As pointed out above, the meaning of a public urban space arises from two dimensions: openness and opportunities for action. Public spaces must be open to everyone, but they must particularly serve those population groups for whom the surroundings of the home constitute the most important public space. These groups include at least children, young people, older people, unemployed people and immigrants. These groups should be approached as the key groups of the indicator for inclusion in neighbourhoods for whom it is important to spend time among other people from the perspective of either growth and socialisation (children and young people) or experiencing inclusion (older people, unemployed people, immigrants). Public spaces cannot be created based on the idea of target groups. However, this does not mean that special groups cannot be taken into account at all. The most important thing is to uphold the idea of public space, openness to everyone and all kinds of activities. A public space is a place that enables expressing private aspirations, wishes and actions for everyone to see, apply and utilise.
Squatting can be considered an extreme example of spatial participation and inclusion. Typically, it involves young people occupying an unused building based on the principle of open participation. Others may join the activity and get involved in developing activities in the space based on a set of rules prepared together. The public spaces in residential areas should apply the same principle to be open and inclusive. This means that different groups should have an opportunity to occupy, i.e. reclaim space to some extent in a spirit of do-ocracy, at least for a certain period of time. Of course, this is in contradiction to the principle of openness in public space and requires ensuring that this is still met as well as perhaps negotiations in order to not rob other groups of the same opportunity, in line with the regular liberalist ethics.
From the point of view of the city administration, this practice is comparable to positive discrimination, which involves allocating resources in favour of certain groups or regions. The city administration can apply the criteria for assessing self-organising civic activity (Mäenpää & Faehnle 2021, 244) when assessing whether the activities meet the requirements set for activities that get favourable treatment. Groups such as young people must have access to such an opportunity to occupy a public or shared space, i.e. exclude others from it similarly as they are offered a room of their own at home. Such an opportunity should also be created for different minorities. At best, these public spaces, usually provided by the city or organisations (mostly through public funds), are approaching shared spaces i.e. commons, which are managed by their user communities and therefore teach their users about the values and practices of democratic governance.
When using the spatial inclusion indicator, problems may arise at least in mapping the public spaces in the residential area, especially when it comes to deciding which spaces this is considered to include. For example, parish facilities may be open to everyone, but may not be suitable for representatives of other religious communities. It may also be difficult to identify communities operating in the area if they are not organised into associations, for example, but only occur as social media groups, for instance. It is also typical that being provided with a space or an opportunity to use one is what it takes for a group to transform into a community and take action. As a result, this indicator must be adjusted to be sensitive to the recognisability and accessibility of public spaces.
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We want to hear you! Insights into inclusion in cities, towns and municipalities 2020. Ministry of the Environment, Finnish Environment Institute SYKE & Et May Oy. https://kestavakaupunki.fi/documents/100251420/110674893/1_Saa_kuulua_Oivalluksia_osallisuuden_edistamiseen_kaupungeissa_ja_kunnissa.pdf.
Henrietta Grönlund is a professor of urban theology in the University of Helsinki. She has specialized in research on prosocial behavior, civil society, and welfare, and especially the role of religion and values in relation to these themes. Her recent projects have focused on the ways in which religion, both in its organized and lived forms, manifests in urban contexts and interacts with urbanity, especially in relation to questions of inequality and wellbeing.
The article examines voluntary assistance as an indicator of social sustainability. In this article, voluntary assistance refers to organised or informal assistance that takes place between people in a certain area. Many studies have linked voluntary assistance to welfare at the levels of the individual, community and society as well as trust, social capital and, for example, resilience. Voluntary assistance and its impacts on welfare are not, however, evenly distributed between different people and regions. Instead, they are accumulated among more affluent people and regions. Measuring voluntary assistance in regions enables us to pay attention to the differences between regions and the segregation of assistance. This helps to direct the focus of the examination to factors that may be the cause of the differences. Understanding the differences allows us to support voluntary assistance and increase its equality in different areas of the city.
In this article, voluntary assistance refers to the voluntary assistance that people give to one another, which is not based on official rights or obligations, for which no compensation or reward is paid, and which occurs outside the person's immediate family. The examination is focused on a neighbourhood or block level, the provision of assistance between people in a certain region. The definition of volunteering that has become rather established in the research literature is applied here. The definition emphasises that volunteering is voluntary by nature, is not subject to remuneration and occurs outside the person’s immediate circle of family and friends, and often also has some organising party, such as an organisation, parish or online platform. (See e.g. Grönlund, 2012; Musick & Wilson, 2008) However, in this article, the definition of voluntary assistance is broader than the most common definition of voluntary activities: here, voluntary assistance refers to all voluntary and unpaid, non-family assistance, whether organised or not. In other words, both volunteering or communal work arranged by an organisation as well as informal assistance between neighbours or residents of a neighbourhood is considered part of voluntary assistance in this article.
Many studies have linked voluntary assistance to the better welfare and success of individuals, communities and societies. At the individual level, providing voluntary assistance has been linked to experiencing happiness and meaningfulness in life, mental welfare and also physical health (e.g. Gray et al., 2024; Poulin, 2014; Townsend, 2014). Meanwhile, receiving voluntary assistance from another person has been linked to, for example, better mood, experiences of inclusion and agency, and a reduction in feeling lonely. The perceived impacts differ from those of the assistance provided by professionals (literature review Grönlund & Falk, 2019).
At the level of communities and societies, voluntary assistance has been considered as a part of social capital, social trust and resilience or a factor that strengthens these. All networking between people increases social capital, trust and the ability to cooperate, and these impacts are emphasised when acting in the best interest of another person or the common good. Networked, interactive and reciprocal communities and regions are more willing and able to work together in times of crises, for instance. (e.g. Mäenpää et al., 2023; Norris et al., 2008.)
As voluntary assistance is, by definition, based on the free will of people, its connection with the equality of society and thus social sustainability is not entirely evident. However, although it concerns the choices people make in their private lives, these choices are linked to the functioning of society and socio-economic factors. The welfare model of society already affects what kinds of expectations are set for voluntary assistance and which roles people take on in relation to helping others. (E.g. Grönlund, 2012; Grönlund, 2013; Salamon et al., 2017.) While the welfare state tradition in Finland often positions interpersonal, voluntary assistance as an activity that complements public sector operations, in reality, mutual assistance occurs widely among people. The majority of Finns provide and receive help from close relatives and friends. Assistance between neighbours and previously unfamiliar people is also common (Grönlund, 2020). Approximately half of Finns participate in organised voluntary activities each year, and some studies even suggest that as many as 80 per cent have helped an unfamiliar person in the past two years. (Grönlund, 2020; Pessi & Oravasaari, 2011) Similarly as at the international level, in Finland, men are more likely than women to provide practical help, while women provide care assistance more often than men (Tanskanen et al., 2020). Readiness to provide assistance and the norm of showing solidarity with neighbours have also been found to be at a high level in Finland (Laitinen and Pessi, 2011).
As discussed above, voluntary assistance is linked to the services provided by society and the welfare model. It is also associated with people’s socio-economic background. In particular, more educated and affluent people are involved in organised assistance, such as volunteering, statistically significantly more than others (e.g. Grönlund, 2020; Lee & Brudney, 2012). For informal assistance (casual, non-organised assistance), the results vary. According to some studies, unofficial assistance is also accumulated among more well-off people (Grönlund, 2020), but it has also been suggested that research does not always recognise the forms of informal assistance that occur in neighbourhoods, for instance (e.g. Junnilainen, 2019). In Finland, socio-economically disadvantaged people have also been found to have less of a sense of community and more dissatisfaction with social life. A poorer sense of community is focused on areas dominated by blocks of flats where rental housing is more common and that are more disadvantaged. (Re:Urbia Final Report, 2023) According to some studies, people who are more well-off also receive more help than average (Grönlund, 2020), which may be related to the accumulation of different kinds of capital. People with higher education and earnings may have more ready-made networks, which is why they often not only provide more help but also receive more help within these networks. They also have time resources, desired competence and a positive understanding of their capabilities and opportunities to help others, which affects their capacity to help others. Through these factors, the welfare impacts associated with voluntary assistance also accumulate in those people and regions, which are determined by higher-than-average income levels and education levels. (See also Mäenpää et al., 2023.)
The use of voluntary assistance as a social sustainability indicator emerges from the above-mentioned study on volunteering and voluntary assistance, which has long identified the link between assistance and the welfare of individuals, communities and society. Similarly, inequalities in volunteering have been long identified, particularly in that, on average, more privileged people are more likely to participate than others. Therefore, voluntary assistance produces key welfare impacts that are differentiated according to the socio-economic situation of the person and the region. From the perspective of urban studies, the observation of the central role of assistance emerges from research on urban resilience and regional segregation, which has highlighted the potential of assistance for urban resilience as well as the regional segregation of assistance in Finland (e.g. Grönlund & Mäenpää, 2020; Mäenpää et al., 2023).
However, inequality in voluntary assistance can be reduced and assistance and the benefits it brings in increasing welfare can be promoted in different ways in society. This makes voluntary assistance not only a meaningful indicator of social sustainability but also a useful perspective for the steering of measures in society. The purpose of social sustainability is to guarantee people’s equal opportunities for welfare. An examination of the voluntary assistance of people at the neighbourhood or city block level allows us to understand cohesion and communality in the area and integration into the area. Voluntary assistance interacts with these indicators and they can all be presumed to support one another. Based on previous research, all these indicators are associated with the welfare of people in the region on the one hand and with socio-economic factors on the other. Enabling and supporting voluntary assistance between people can support cohesion, communality, integration into the region and people’s welfare, which is challenging to directly influence. This also allows evening out the disparity related to socio-economic differences in the opportunities of providing assistance, i.e. increasing social inclusion.
Voluntary assistance can be measured at the individual level simply using means such as surveys that ask respondents whether they provide assistance to (or receive assistance from) other people living in the area. More detailed examination can also concern issues such as who the respondent assists (or receives assistance from), in what ways, how often, and how the assistance is organised (e.g. through an organisation, community, online platform, independent activities). The motives, reciprocity and experiences of assistance can also be examined at the individual level.
These indicators allow examining assistance at the regional level and making comparisons between regions in terms of the frequency and methods of assistance. From the perspective of inequality issues, it makes sense to examine assistance in relation to aspects such as the respondent’s income level, education, life situation and type of housing. It also makes sense to examine regional differences in assistance in relation to issues such as the income and educational level, unemployment rate, use of social assistance and size of household-dwelling units in the region as well as, for example, the share of different language groups of the total population in the region.
It is also interesting to examine assistance indicators both at the individual and at the regional level in relation to organised opportunities for providing and receiving assistance in the region: Which parties and activities that organise assistance are there in the region (organisations, religious communities, regional workers, social media groups, residents’ associations, community centres, projects organised by cities, networks and forms of operation) and how they are linked to assistance at the level of individuals. There are justifications for examining the realisation and equality of the opportunities for assistance regionally in relation to the income and education levels of the regions. Individuals’ opportunities for providing assistance can also be examined based on geographical distances (e.g. the location of the nearest physical premises of the provider or organiser of assistance opportunities, access to them).
All these indicators of assistance and related opportunities can also be examined in relation to the indicators reflecting the sense of community, cohesion and welfare in the region, as these phenomena are all interconnected. This intertwining also poses challenges for measuring voluntary assistance. As mentioned above, assistance is linked in many ways to welfare, cohesion, communality and attachment to the region. When measuring assistance or related opportunities, these other factors and causes and consequences are measured at the same time. Assistance increases the sense of community and the sense of community increases assistance. Assistance increases welfare and welfare increases assistance. However, a key opportunity of the indicator is that measuring it as concrete activities or opportunities for activities is relatively unambiguous. Measurement of voluntary assistance to people in a given region provides both direct information about activities promoting the welfare of people in the region and mutual care as well as indirect information about solidarity, communality and resilience and the differences between regions related to these factors.
Measuring assistance and related opportunities also directly creates development opportunities. Observing issues such as the distribution of participation opportunities offered by NGOs and religious communities or the number of meeting facilities available to people in the region in different city neighbourhoods allows for identifying needs for the allocation of resources. Voluntary assistance and third sector activities which promote voluntary assistance are both fragmentary and regionally varied. By measuring their differences across regions, cities can target measures and resources to increase opportunities for assistance in those areas where assistance is less common. This can also increase social sustainability in those areas. On the other hand, observing regional differences allows us to pay attention to areas where there is more assistance than average and possibly learn from them how to also promote assistance in other areas.
Cities play a key role from the perspective of equality in voluntary assistance and its impacts on welfare at the individual and regional levels. Cities can enable regional physical spaces where people can gather in their neighbourhoods. They can provide organisations and other communities with resources to carry out communal activities in the area. They can also create equal opportunities for children, young people and families to both assist others and receive voluntary assistance in the area, for example through schools. Voluntary assistance activities can also be integrated into the services of cities (or wellbeing services counties), for example in libraries, cultural services and social and health care services, as is already the case in many places. However, there is also variation in the activities in cities. Cities play a key role in the coordination of activities and their equal implementation in different regions and, consequently, in promoting social sustainability.
Finally, it must be noted that the relationship between voluntary assistance and social sustainability is not simple. As noted above, the welfare model of society affects what kinds of expectations are set for voluntary assistance and which roles people take on in relation to helping others. In welfare models where the care services provided by society are limited, voluntary assistance is often more directly focused on care. (For example, Salamon et al., 2017.) If access to public services is difficult, unaffordable or unavailable, voluntary assistance will partly become a necessity and it cannot be perceived as an expression or supportive of social sustainability without criticism. The welfare models that emphasise strong public services start with the idea that no one’s access to help should depend on their economic situation, or charity and the benevolence of others. The welfare models based on a strong role of family and voluntary assistance do not usually produce the most socially sustainable societies. A development that involves placing an increasing amount of responsibility on private individuals to assist others is also apparent in Finland. However, this mainly, albeit not exclusively, applies to assistance given to close relatives, which is most often care provided by women. (For example, Julkunen, 2017.) This perspective must also be taken into account when considering voluntary assistance as an indicator of social sustainability.
Gray, D., Randell, J., Manning, R & Cleveland, M. (2024). Helping in times of crisis: Examining the social identy and wellbeing impacts of volunteering during COVID-19. Journal of community & applied social psychology, 34(1).
Grönlund, H. & Falk, H. (2019). Does it make a difference? The effects of volunteering from the viewpoint of recipients: a literature review. Diaconia. The Journal for the Study of Christian Social Practice, 1/2019, 7–26.
Grönlund, H. (2012). Volunteerism as a mirror of individuals and society: reflections from young adults in Finland. University of Helsinki (dis.).
Grönlund, H. (2013). Cultural values and volunteering: a cross-cultural perspective. In Vakoch, D.A. (ed.). Altruism in Cross-Cultural Perspective. New York, Heidelberg, Dordrecht, London: Springer, 71–84
Grönlund, H. & Mäenpää, P. (2021). Viisas kaupunki rakentuu ihmislähtöisyydelle, yhteistyölle ja kaupunkilaisten osallistumiselle - Case Helsinki-apu ja yhteisöllinen resilienssi. Kaupungit murroksessa: Kaupunkitutkijoiden puheenvuoroja tulevaisuuden kaupungeille. City of Helsinki, 26–31.
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Mari Vaattovaara is a professor of urban geography at the University of Helsinki and the director of the Helsinki Institute of Urban and Regional Studies (Urbaria). Her research is focused on urban areas, segregation, immigration as well as various housing types and policies and their impacts on broader social and spatial development processes.
The moving rate, i.e. rapid resident turnover in neighbourhoods is related not only to the structure of the housing stock but also to experiences of the social structure of the residential area. Neighbourhood-specific monitoring of these elements that shape the urban structure is essential for sustainable urban development. Although diversity and heterogeneity are specific characteristics and strengths of cities and neighbourhoods, segregation and monotonicity threaten the sustainable development of neighbourhoods. To prevent undesirable regional segregation on the one hand and to enable the creation of diverse and pleasant areas on the other, I propose three interconnected indicators to identify the sustainability of residential areas and to monitor their development: the diversity of housing stock, the diversity of residents and resident turnover.
The moving rate has been shown to be linked to the social cohesion and the ability to act as a community of a neighbourhood. Trust and cooperation between neighbours are elements important to maintaining residents satisfaction as well as their safety. Studies have shown how rapid resident turnover can affect not only the satisfaction of residents but also the overall sense of security as well as aspects such as the crime rate in a residential area (Jacobs 1961, Sampson 2012, Wilson 2012).
According to Jane Jacobs’ (1961) classic work in urban design, a good urban and street space is also very much based on human presence. Humans play a key role in building and maintaining the safety and comfort of cities. According to Jacobs, keeping “eyes on the street” also contributes to safety. Based on Jacobs’ description, having as many people as possible moving on the streets at different times of day increases comfort in the neighbourhood. The continual bustle of people will also make people at home look out of their windows. The positive spiral that emerges from the gazes and users feeds both the safety and the comfort of the neighbourhood. Meanwhile, the permanence of residents enables the formation of contacts and social relationships. Therefore, permanence lays the foundation for the construction of social control. As also pointed out in the Finnish Ministry of Justice’s Crime prevention review (2018, 10), one of the cornerstones of safety in a residential area is the permanence of residents in the area, i.e. moderate resident turnover rates.
Numerous studies have highlighted the underlying role of the housing stock in the demographic development of neighbourhoods. Similarly, Jane Jacobs emphasises the significance of the diversity of housing stock in enabling the neighbourhood to respond to changes in time and its residents’ life courses. Residents should have the opportunity to stay in their neighbourhood even when their life stages or social status are changing.
In the Finnish discussions on housing policy, the diversity of the housing stock has long particularly involved mixing different forms of ownership. The principle of social mixing has served as a general objective of the Finnish housing policy (e.g. the Government 2021). Helsinki is a particularly well-known example of the application of the principle of social mixing since the early 1970s (Vaattovaara et al. 2018, Rasinkangas & al. 2023).
In our recent study (Vaattovaara & Vuori 2023), we have described how rapid changes have occurred in the construction methods in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area and Tampere. The volume of the housing stock has decreased, and the focus of housing production has shifted to one- and two-room flats. While, just under 900 one-room flats were annually built on average in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area in the period 2005–2014, as many as 4,800 one-room flats were annually completed in 2019–2021. The combined share of one- and two-room flats of the total constructed housing stock was around 57 per cent in Espoo and Helsinki, nearly 70 per cent in Vantaa and 76 per cent in Tampere.
The share of owner-occupied dwellings of total completed dwellings has also declined rapidly. Owner-occupied housing, which has been traditionally held in high regard, has remained a marginal form of housing in the new small dwellings, and the new one- and two-room flats have mainly ended up as buy-to-let properties. The most extreme example of this is Tampere, where out of 8,650 new units only 330 (4%) were owner-occupied dwellings and 6,875 ended up as buy-to-let properties perceived as an investment by the owner. In other words, contrary to what is stated in housing policy programmes and regional planning documents, there is an often practically non-existent ownership base of many new residential areas: owners amount to only 10–20 per cent of their inhabitants (Vaattovaara & Vuori 2023). Thus the financialisation of the housing market has started to influence the urban development also in the Nordic Welfare States.
Our recent study shows how, in many new neighbourhoods, the demographic structure is skewed right from the start. Based on our research, the population that has ended up living in these areas is clearly less highly educated, and more often have lower incomes and immigrant backgrounds compared to other neighbourhoods. Many of these neighbourhoods are also marked by high resident turnover rates. As a result, the monitoring of housing structure should be made more specific and the indicators of diversity should be considered in more detail. We also know from experiences gathered at the national level how difficult, if not impossible, it is to reverse the trend in residential areas.
The diversity of housing stock aims to ensure that the housing supply will continue to meet the increasingly heterogeneous challenges of residents in the future. The adaptability of housing construction (e.g. Tarpio 2015), identification of minimum housing requirements (Pelsmakers & al. 2022) as well as the diversity of the housing stock – including the planning and monitoring of diversity in possessory relations, size distribution and building types – all contribute to safeguarding a sustainable future. I propose that the diversity of housing should be indicated not only based on possessory relations but also by monitoring the size distribution of housing. It is important to prevent the emergence of “barracks of tenements” dominated by small flats and the risk of segregation and increasingly unbalanced residential areas. Diversity should also be supported through construction methods – by diversifying the typologies of small detached houses and blocks of flats. This would provide a good basis for strengthening the neighbourhoods’ identities as well as their diversity.
While The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs’ classic work highlights the social dimension of the emergence of comfortable and sustainable neighbourhoods, another classic, Oscar Newman’s Defensible Space from 1972 emphasises the role of the design and architecture of spaces. Newman’s perspective puts emphasis on how the design of the physical environment of residential areas can create preconditions for encounters and interactions. Social interaction is a key goal for Newman and good design and architecture are means to increase it. Therefore, the physical characteristics and social dimensions of a residential area are almost inseparably intertwined.
Sustainable neighbourhoods are built on the identity and diversity that arise from residents and locality – not on mechanical monotony. Despite this, our recent study showed that there have been rapid changes in the housing market, and the traditional principles based on mixed forms of ownership appear insufficient to safeguard the sustainable development of neighbourhoods. The development of newly constructed areas should be particularly monitored not only based on population numbers but also using indicators of the diversity of housing stock, the diversity of residents and resident turnover.
In the light of current developments, there seems to be a growing need for setting minimum levels. In the words of the Academician Erik Allardt, a distinguished Finnish social scientist:
“It appears rational to set a demand that no neighbourhood should fall below the relatively high minimum level for services and living spaces. We must therefore set some kind of relatively high threshold below which no neighbourhood should fall. Instead, differences and inequalities could be allowed above this threshold. You see, it is also important to enable people to settle in the environments of their choice within reasonable limits.”
Allardt, Erik (1992) Helsinki sosiaalisena yhteisönä. Teoksessa Antti Karisto & Eero Holstila (eds.) (1992) Helsinki avoin kaupunki. Helsingin kaupungin tietokeskus.
Batty, Michael (2022). On economic and urban growth. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 49(9), 2293–2296.
Glaeser Edward (2017). Reforming land use regulations. Brookings, 24 April. https://www.brookings.edu/research/reforming-land-use-regulations.
Meen, Geoffrey and Christine Whitehead (2020). Understanding affordability: The economics of housing markets. Policy Press.
Pelsmakers, S., Saarimaa, S., & Vaattovaara, M. (2022). Avoiding macro mistakes: Analysis of micro-homes in Finland today. NA, 33(3).
Rodríguez-Pose Andrés & Storper Michael (2020). ”Housing, urban growth and inequalities: The limits to deregulation and upzoning in reducing economic and spatial inequality.” Urban Studies 57.2 (2020): 223–248.
Tarpio, J. (2015). Joustavan asunnon tilalliset logiikat: Erilaisiin käyttöihin mukautumiskykyisen asunnon tilallisista lähtökohdista ja suunnitteluperiaatteista.
Tervo, A. (2021). Domestic Space for Solo Living-Changing patterns in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Finland.
Jacobs, J. (1961). The death and life of great American cities. Penguin, Harmondsworth.
Kortteinen, Matti & Vaattovaara, Mari (2015) Segregaation aika. Yhteiskuntapolitiikka 80 (6), 562–74
Newman, O. (1972). Defensible space. Macmillan, New York.
Rasinkangas, J., Rosengren, K., & Ruonavaara, H. (2023). Asuntokannan sekoittaminen alueellisen eriytymisen ehkäisykeinona: Analyysi Suomen 20 suurimmasta kaupungista.
Sampson, Robert J. (2012). Great American city: Chicago and the enduring neighborhood effect. University of Chicago Press.
Sampson, R. J., Raudenbush, S. W., & Earls, F. (1997). Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy. Science, 277(5328), 918–924. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2892902.
Vaattovaara, Mari & Pekka Vuori (2002). Väestörakenteen ja alueellisen eriytymisen vaikutus Helsingin veropohjaan. City of Helsinki, Urban Research and Statistics Unit research reviews 2002:1
Vaattovaara, Mari & Pekka Vuori (2023). Asuntorakentamisen muutokset pääkaupunkiseudulla ja Tampereella vuosina 2015–2021. City of Helsinki, Urban Research and Statistics Unit research reviews 2023:2 https://helda.helsinki.fi/server/api/core/bitstreams/b2834c35-bf28-47aa-90ef-b67262efb08a/content.
Government (2021). The Housing Policy Development Programme 2021‒2028. Government report 12/2021.
Government (2019). Crime prevention perspective into urban planning
Crime prevention review 2018 Publications of the Ministry of Justice, Reports and guidelines 2019:10 https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/161461/OMSO_2019_10_Rikoksentorjuntakatsaus_2018.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.
Vilkama, Katja & Vaattovaara, Mari & Dhalmann, Hanna (2013) Kantaväestön pakoa? Miksi maahanmuuttajakeskittymistä muutetaan pois? Yhteiskuntapolitiikka 78 (5), 485–97
Wilson, W. J. (2012). The truly disadvantaged: The inner city, the underclass, and public policy. University of Chicago Press.
Sonja Kosunen is a professor of education at the University of Eastern Finland and the director of the Social Studies in Urban Education (SURE) unit. Her research is focused on educational choices, inequality and different forms of segregation, especially from the perspective of the social class.
The indicator of the regional availability and equality of education examines how different forms of education are offered in early childhood education and care, pre-primary education, basic education, upper secondary education, and liberal adult education in cities. The elements of availability include 1) the density of the provision of education, i.e. the number of available education at different levels of education at the neighbourhood and city block level (number of institutions, number of pupil or day-care centre places per institution), 2) the placement of education provision in socio-economically diverse urban areas, and 3) the ownership base of education provision (public/private) in different urban areas.
An indicator on the regional availability of education could be used to observe the regional availability of different levels of education per education level (early childhood education and care, pre-primary education, basic education, upper secondary education, higher education and liberal adult education) in different regions and areas. The availability and accessibility of education are key factors in examining equality and non-discrimination in education: where are schools and day-care centres located and who can access them? The objective of ensuring equal opportunities for children and young people from all kinds of family backgrounds and in regions ranging from cities to rural areas to participate in high-quality education has been at the core of planning the idea of basic education in Finland. The achievement of equality may be currently challenged by a decline in the size of new generations (Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities 2024), which may result in differentiation between regions in the availability of education, financial cuts to education in local government finances and the overall development of segregation and inequality of schools (Kosunen et al. 2024). In studies, the questions of accessibility have typically focused on differences between cities, urban areas and rural areas at the national level (see e.g. Pitkälä 2020). However, a more detailed examination of availability within cities at the neighbourhood or even the block level could produce significant background information in relation to the housing decisions and educational choices made by families. After all, around 70% of Finns live in cities, and as many as one third of schoolchildren live in cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, where the issues of segregation in education are particularly relevant (Bernelius 2024).
This indicator examines the regional availability of different education types (how many day-care centres, schools or folk high schools there are in the area and what is their size), the area where the educational institutions are located in the city (socio-economic structure) and the ownership base of educational institutions (public or private). All of these factors contribute to the achievement of the objective of equality and non-discrimination at different levels of the education system.
The examination of the regional equality of education can utilise the three dimensions of equity of access to education (McCowan 2016): availability, accessibility and horizontality. Availability concerns the extent of available education, i.e. places of study, in a given region. Extensive availability has been pursued nationally, for example in higher education policy, by means of a decentralised higher education institution network and by also spreading the available fields of study more widely across the region (Hölttä 1988; Nevala & Rinne 2012; Välimaa 2004). Accessibility refers to how different groups can actually apply and be selected for different forms of education. The horizontal dimension is used to examine the differences in the quality or status that emerge between the education offered in different regions. Both accessibility and horizontality are always realised in relation to availability, which is different in more densely populated cities and their neighbourhoods than in urban and rural areas. Indeed, when it comes to educational choices, we refer to a landscape of choices (Bowe et al. 1994), in which people make selections on education: it includes the educational institutions that are actually potential day-care centres, schools or other places of education for their children or themselves. A factor closely related to limiting the landscape of choices in education, also in Finland, is the commute to school and places of education (Seppänen 2006). Under the Basic Education Act, travel to and from school that is as safe and short as possible is a key aspect that guides the provision of education and the location of schools (Section 6, Basic Education Act 1998/628). When examined in a more everyday manner, the travel to the day-care centre or school has an even major impact on shaping the daily lives of families, children and young people, and can therefore be an important factor in housing and education choices that are linked to the realisation of equality in education.
The geography of education has mainly been studied in the context of the formal education system. In this case, the focus has been on school selection and the segregation of regions in urban areas (e.g. Berisha & Seppänen 2017; Bernelius 2013; Kosunen, Bernelius, Seppänen & Porkka 2020; Metcalfe 2009). A recent Finnish study on choices on upper secondary education also examines the complex relationship between availability and accessibility (Prix et al. 2024). In upper secondary education, it has been shown that the travel time between the educational institution and the home is relevant: the distance to school has a greater impact on the choice of education in the context of upper secondary schools than vocational upper secondary education. Socio-economic status is reflected in education choices, particularly in those made by girls in families with a lower level of education and boys in families with a medium-level education who especially consider the geographical availability of education and training when making these choices. (Prix, Sirniö & Saari 2024.) This raises the question of the importance of the proximity of the place of education. Therefore, the distance between home and the provision of education is important. However, within the framework of this indicator, distances in urban areas should be viewed as travelling times by public transport, which may vary considerably depending on the direction of travel and the means of transport.
In the context of higher education, the applicant’s place of residence has been found to be connected to choices made on education and the specific field of education (Green 2015; Helland & Heggen 2018; Mangan, Hughes, Davies & Slack 2010; Nori 2011; Saari, Inkinen & Mikkonen 2016). The applicants living in cities are also slightly more likely to be admitted to university than the applicants living in rural areas (Nori 2011). However, focusing the examination of higher education on the neighbourhood or city block level is presumably overly precise as the number of institutions is too low.
The first part of the indicator should include neighbourhood- and city-block-level examination of the extent of the supply of different levels of education (number of institutions, number of pupil or day-care places per institution) and the travel time required to reach these institutions on foot or using public transport. The younger the children involved, the bigger role the proximity of the day-care centre or school may play in the family’s reflections concerning their housing and educational decisions (see Bernelius & Vilkama 2019). At the same time, the number of institutions and student places in them should be proportioned to the number of children and young people living in the areas: whether there is a short supply or oversupply at some level of education at the local level. Of course, this assessment is made more difficult by the school choices made by families that also often include educational institutions located outside the local area (Bernelius 2013; Kosunen et al. 2020).
The examination of availability should also be made to include the characteristics of the areas in which certain kinds of education and training are offered. In research, urban areas have been categorised based on different background variables into advantaged and disadvantaged regions or areas with high or low geographical potential (see Green 2015). It has been noted that the inhabitants of disadvantaged neighbourhoods do not necessarily frequent even relatively nearby advantaged urban areas, and that, despite their relative geographical proximity, top universities located nearby are not perceived as potential environments by the children and young people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods (Browning et al. 2022; Rönnberg & Bernelius 2021). This makes the question of urban educational peripheries also relevant in Finnish cities now and especially in the future (Bernelius 2024).
The socio-economic structure of the area in which the educational institution is located is a key factor that should be assessed as the second part of the indicator. In this context, there is also reason to examine which educational institutions and in what kinds of residential areas offer selected school paths, such as emphasised teaching in basic education or languages starting in primary education other than English (Kosunen et al. 2020). With regard to upper secondary education, the provision of education should also be examined horizontally based on fields of education, i.e. the availability of different degree programmes in vocational education and training, such as the geographical location in different neighbourhoods of the upper secondary schools granted a special task and the admission criteria set for these fields and educational institutions. Does the provision of education develop so that for example general upper secondary schools with high admission-thresholds concentrate in affluent urban areas and, similarly, some other areas become deserted of general upper secondary schools?
Previous studies on the placement of comprehensive schools in the context of Finnish cities have also attempted to examine whether networks of either magnet schools or elite schools emerge in the school market of cities (Kosunen, Bernelius & Hautala 2024). Based on a very rough categorisation, “elite schools” would be located in prosperous neighbourhoods and “magnetic schools” in disadvantaged areas. The idea of “magnetic schools” is to attract the children of middle-class families living in disadvantaged areas to their local schools (see Saporito 2003; Frankenberg & Le 2008; Prieto et al. 2019). In a school network that follows an “elite school logic”, schools are placed in urban areas with an advantaged population base and good transport connections, which aims to attract pupils who are already doing well based on their learning outcomes (e.g. Boterman et al. 2019; Ziegler 2016). In principle, one, both or neither of these logics can be detected in different cities, provided that the city’s schools and their selected target groups are evenly distributed in all kinds of urban areas, for instance.
As a result, the second part of the indicator would focus on the questions of internal diversity in the provision of education (selected and unselected paths, hierarchies between secondary education institutions) and regional placement from the perspective of socio-economic segregation in regions.
The final part of the indicator would address the ownership base of day-care centres and educational institutions located in different residential areas, i.e. whether they are education services maintained by public operators, such as a municipality or the state, or by private education providers. While the number of private education providers has been traditionally low in basic education (nationally less than 3% of providers), in cities like Helsinki, private contractual schools account for approximately 22% of schools and to city residents, they appear as a part of the landscape of choices in which they make selections on schools (Kosunen et al. 2024). Therefore, the differences between cities and rural areas as well as between different cities are complex in the questions on the privatisation of education.
The situation in early childhood education and care is quite different. The service network of early childhood education and care includes a lot of different private operators that operate parallel to the public system. From the perspective of socio-economic segregation, the service units of early childhood education and care, i.e. day-care centres, are even more segregated than schools in similar regions (Bernelius et al. 2018). In fact, previous research knowledge suggests that this could be explicitly explained by the provision of and participation in private early childhood education and care services (Ruutiainen et al. 2023a; 2023b; Alm Fjellborg & Forsberg 2023). As a result, the indicator should assess the ownership base of the available education in addition to the number and location of day-care centres and schools.
The overall challenge of this indicator is that the examination of the availability of education only presents the boundary conditions for the education market within which families, young people and adults can or cannot apply for different forms of education. The “sufficient” amount of available education to ensure equal opportunities for participation, depends on the level of education; for instance, a sufficiently short travel time to a municipal day-care centre is presumably shorter than a sufficiently short travel time to a general upper secondary school. In addition, it should be possible to set the number of places in education and training in proportion to the population base of the region, which poses a challenge to the indicator regarding the differences in population density between urban and rural areas and the distances between educational institutions on different scales. However, in cities, there may be considerable social distances between the educational institutions in advantaged and disadvantaged urban areas even if the distance is short measured in kilometres. The counterpart of availability, accessibility, i.e. who actually has access to these opportunities in education provision, would be a theme complementing this indicator from the perspectives of the social class, gender, ethnic background and minority status as well as geographical location. However, poor availability is also more likely to be associated with poor accessibility, especially in families with low socio-economic status in different urban areas. The indicator also contains a number of sections that are generally challenging to measure simultaneously, as the assessments must be carried out relatively locally in each urban context, taking into account local characteristics.
Alm Fjellborg, A., & Forsberg, H. (2023). Even in preschools: Analysing the preschool and neighbourhood segregation gap in Swedish municipalities. European Sociological Review. Online first.
Berisha, A.-K. & Seppänen, P. (2017). Pupil selection segments urban comprehensive schooling in Finland: composition of school classes in pupils’ school performance, gender, and ethnicity. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 61(2), s. 240–254.
Bernelius, V. (2013). Eriytyvät kaupunkikoulut: Helsingin peruskoulujen oppilaspohjan erot, perheiden kouluvalinnat ja oppimistuloksiin liittyvät aluevaikutukset osana kaupungin eriytymiskehitystä. Tutkimuksia 2013:1. Helsingin kaupungin tietokeskus.
Bernelius, V. & Vilkama, K. (2019). Pupils on the move: School catchment area segregation and residential mobility of urban families. Urban Studies 56(15), s. 3095–3116.
Bernelius, V. 2024. Koulutuksen maantiede: oppimistulokset ja kaupunkikehitys. In Kosunen, S., Juvonen, S., Huilla, H. & Peltola, M. (eds.) 2024. Koulu ja eriarvoisuus. Helsinki: Gaudeamus, s. 46–63.
Boterman, W., Musterd, S., Pacchi, C., & Ranci, C. (2019). School segregation in contemporary cities: Socio-spatial dynamics, institutional context and urban outcomes. Urban Studies, 56(15), p. 3055-3073.
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Kosunen, S., Juvonen, S., Huilla, H. & Peltola, M. (eds.). 2024. Koulu ja eriarvoisuus. Helsinki: Gaudeamus.
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Mangan, J., Hughes, A., Davies, P. & Slack, K. (2010). Fair access, achievement and geography: explaining the association between social class and students’ choice of university. Studies in Higher Education 35 (3), s. 335–350.
McCowen, T. (2016). Three dimensions of equity of access to higher education. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education 46 (4), s. 645–665.
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Nori, H. (2011). for whom will the university gates open? A study of the selection for admission to Finnish universities and fields of study in the beginning of the 21st century. Turku: University of Turku.
Pitkälä, A. (2020). Koulutuksen saatavuus ja saavutettavuus erilaistuvissa kunnissa -esiselvitys. Helsinki: Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities.
Prieto, L. M., Aguero-Valverde, J., Zarrate-Cardenas, G., & Van Maarseveen, M. (2019). Parental preferences in the choice for a specialty school. Journal of School Choice, 13(2), 198-227.
Prix, I., Sirniö, O., & Saari, J. (2024). Better close to home? Geographical and socioeconomic constraints on gendered educational transitions at the upper secondary level. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 89, 100879.
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Kimmo Nuotio is a professor of criminal law and the Director of the Institute of Criminology and Legal Policy at the University of Helsinki. His research activities have focused extensively on the questions of criminal law and criminal policy, also internationally.
Matti Näsi, PhD, is a university lecturer of criminology at the University of Helsinki. In his research, he investigates crime by young people, media and fears, and the new forms of crime.
Forming an overall picture of crime by region is no easy feat. While the crime brought to the attention of the police forms an indicator of sorts of the prevailing situation in each area, so far, a regional examination at the population level that also includes hidden crime is rather challenging. In fact, the available total crime indices primarily provide a view of the situation at the national level. From the perspective of developing the system, allocating resources to an indicator measuring hidden crime would enable the formation of a significantly more efficient and comprehensive situational picture at both national and regional levels.
One of the key cornerstones of the theoretical framework of criminology is the routine activity theory built on the Social Change and Crime Rate Trends, A Routine Activity Approach, an article published by Marcus Felson and Lawrence E. Cohen in 1979. The theory itself differs from many other classical theories in criminology, many of which aim to explain what drives an individual to the criminal path. However, the routine activity theory does not try and explain the behaviour and motives of individuals. Instead, the theory focuses on the conditions that enable crime. Indeed, the routine activity theory has been informed by several disciplines, such as societal planning, ethology and research in total crime. The theory revolves around the idea of a space where a motivated offender, a suitable target and the absence of a guardian meet and where the risk of committing a crime also becomes concrete (Felson & Cohen, 1979; Kivivuori et al. 2018).
At the same time, at the core of the theory is also an observation that the mass of crime events draws from legal routine activities that occur every day and their convergence in time and space so that the crime events are strongly linked to temporal cycles at the annual, weekly and daily level. In addition, the central targets or concentrations in certain places (so-called “hot spots”) of crime events do not emerge in a vacuum but are rather strongly linked to their surroundings. Traffic nodes, popular restaurant and bar areas, summer nights, and uncontrolled and remote sites all create a specific opportunity for mass crime in particular. However, this does not mean that those acts of violence that are rare in terms of numbers but have significant effects would not mainly follow the framework of routine activities. After all, the majority of homicides and their attempts take place during the late hours of the weekend (Lehti et al., 2018).
Therefore, from the point of view of crime, both time and space are clearly relevant. From the perspective of official control, this means that surveillance is not randomly targeted. For example, the police have access to a set of tools that, in addition to general experience, enable targeting control measures to areas and places where the risks of mass crime culminate. At the same time, it should be noted that this may lead to a partly self-perpetuating cycle. The more crimes are committed or behavioural disturbances occur in a region, the more control measures are taken there, which also highlights the differences between regions. However, the way this information on the differences between areas is applied is a separate discussion. This chapter focuses on describing key indicators for collecting data on crime at the regional level.
The public discussions on the prevailing crime situation very strongly rely on crime reported to the police. Youth crime, and the related public discussions emerging at regular intervals, is an excellent example of this. The fact is, however, that the offences notified to the authorities are only the tip of the iceberg, and the majority of crime is never brought to the attention of the authorities. Indeed, we use the concept of hidden crime (Kivivuori, 2011). An overall picture of crime that is as comprehensive as possible, or the concept of the total crime rate, consists of a combination that takes into account both the crime reported to the authorities and hidden crime.
Measuring hidden crime is not easy, but it is supported by a variety of survey and measurement systems developed here and elsewhere. Key measurement systems in Finland include the Finnish Self-Report Delinquency Study, the National Criminal Victimisation Survey and the Finnish Homicide Monitor. Additionally, the National review on the crime situation aims to compile a general situational picture annually. Indeed, these systems serve as indicators at the national level for the overall crime situation in Finland.
As noted, the aforementioned systems are key tools, especially for forming a national situational picture. As the word ‘national’ lies at their core, this also means that it is somewhat challenging to apply them to the regional, city-specific, or neighbourhood- or block-level analyses. While data can be collected in police information systems using address-based data, measuring hidden crime does not allow for similar accuracy. The reasons for this are obvious: The police respond to alerts that are addressed to clear targets. If the alert concerns a private dwelling, for example, this information is obtained as soon as the police are notified of the offence and the patrol is sent to the correct destination. On the other hand, location-specific information about a crime event that is never reported to the authorities will never be registered in any system. Survey-based information on the exact location of the offence, whether it is the perspective of the perpetrator or the victim, usually remains somewhat incomplete. However, this does not mean that it is impossible to develop a survey-based system into a system that produces highly detailed information and also enables an accurate regional examination. Ultimately, it is always a question of the available resources. However, this chapter briefly examines the current situation from the perspectives of two key indicators.
In examining crime reported to the police, researchers can make extensive use of the regional perspective as the information produced by the police’s data system enables tracking factors such as places in urban spaces and crime scenes even down to individual houses. Already at the turn of the millennium, Kortteinen and colleagues (2001) examined the social geographical structure of Helsinki and assault crime using data that combined police crime statistics and socio-economic data at the population level. Partly the same mechanism can therefore be used to form an up-to-date regional situational picture of crime reported to the authorities, even based on each type of crime. Of course, there is a challenge that for many types of crime, the number of offences can be very moderate, so the focus would have to be on mass crime, partly dictated by necessity.
The crime reported to the police therefore constitutes a certain kind of indicator and overall view on the situational picture in a city, even through the indicator does not enable examination of the prevailing situation on hidden crime. At the same time, it should also be noted that, as a rule, the police database is not a system created to produce information from the perspective of research. Instead, it is designed for internal use by the police. The data collected by the system are incomplete in many respects and rely on data recorded by police patrols, which may result in significant regional differences for certain types of crime. Nevertheless, the data recorded and left unrecorded is a different discussion. From the point of view of researchers, the database does not lend itself to developing a system, or an indicator, which constitutes clear boundary conditions for its use. Despite its shortcomings, the statistical data produced by the police is the most comprehensive and up-to-date indicator for examining the situational picture in the different areas of the city.
When it comes to the key indicators of hidden crime, the National Criminal Victimisation Survey is probably the most useful available system. The system is used to collect information on the victims’ experiences of property offences and violence during the previous year. The survey also collects data on issues such as fear of crime among respondents. In 2023, the basic sample of the survey included 19,500 people aged 15–74 living in Finland, and it corresponds to the age group on a miniature scale. The survey was carried out annually between 2012 and 2021, but from 2021 onwards, the data will be collected once every two years. Although on paper, a sample of nearly 20,000 respondents may seem fairly comprehensive, non-responses result in 5,000–6,000 respondents being available for analysis purposes. As a relatively small share of these respondents have fallen victim to a crime within the 12-month time span covered by the survey, the statistical regional analysis of crime victims will occur at a rather general level. At the moment, the National Criminal Victimisation Survey system enables making comparisons between police department districts; in practice, this means comparisons at the county level. While city-level comparisons are naturally also possible, they require combining the data sets from several different years. This means that we will not be able to form a comparison between cities for an individual year, but will have to rely on a time window spanning several years. The national survey system thus enables compiling city-specific information on the situational picture of crime, but examining the differences between the neighbourhoods within cities would require a significant increase in resources in the form of increasing the sample size.
In the current situation, some of Finland’s largest cities conduct their own studies on safety and security from time to time. Of these, the safety survey by the City of Helsinki must be the most comprehensive, and it also provides information that enables making comparisons between residential areas on topics such as perceived security and fears related to crime. The survey has also collected data on property offences and the experiences of victims of violence. From the perspective of resources, we may consider whether individual cities should carry out these rather expensive studies separately, or whether they could rely on the national system by purchasing an additional sample covering their own city or wellbeing services county. This would also enable the development of a hidden crime indicator and its much more effective use at the regional level. From 2023 onwards, the National Criminal Victimisation Survey system will enable combining the survey data and different register sources, which will also enable a more comprehensive comparison of areas.
Forming an overall picture of crime by region is no easy feat. The crime reported to the police plays a rather strong role in steering the public discussions on the view of security at the city level, even though the majority of crimes will never come to the attention of the authorities. The existing indicators and instruments used to measure hidden crime help to form an overall picture, but so far, their applicability to the level of individual cities remains insufficient. From the perspective of developing the system, allocating resources to a single indicator measuring hidden crime would enable forming a significantly more efficient and comprehensive situational picture at both national and regional levels.
At the same time, it is also important to consider to what extent and at what level there is a desire to discuss issues such as differences in safety and security in different residential areas and what is done with this information. It is one thing to collect this data for purposes such as targeting crime prevention measures or helping marginalised families or those at risk of social exclusion by the means of society, but quite another to produce this information out of purely commercial interest. Reflecting on this matter is important, as there have been long-term efforts in Finland’s housing and land use planning policy to prevent developments that would make some areas considerably weaker and less desirable living environments than others.
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Kivivuori, J. (2011). Discovery of Hidden Crime: Self-Report Surveys in Criminal Policy Context. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kivivuori, J. K. A., Aaltonen, M., Näsi, M. J., Suonpää, K. E. M., & Danielsson, P. M. (2018). Kriminologia: Rikollisuus ja kontrolli muuttuvassa yhteiskunnassa. Gaudeamus.
Kortteinen, M., Tuominen, M., & Vaattovaara, M. (2001). Helsingin sosiaalimaantieteellinen rakenne ja pahoinpitelyrikollisuus. Yhteiskuntapolitiikka, 66:4
Lehti, M. M., Suonpää, K. E. M., & Kivivuori, J. K. A. (2018). Henkirikokset. Rikollisuustilanne 2017: Rikollisuuskehitys tilastojen ja tutkimusten valossa (pp. 15-50). University of Helsinki, Institute of Criminology and Legal Policy.
Söderholm, S. (2020) Syyttömyysolettamasta ”syyllisyysolettamaan” ja epäilyksen kulttuuriin – potentiaalisia rikoksentekijöitä ennustavat predictive policing -algoritmit, Master’s thesis, University of Helsinki, Faculty of Law.
Lasse Tarkiainen is a docent of demography and a university researcher at the University of Helsinki’s Helsinki Institute for Demography and Population Health. In his research, he focuses on differences between residential areas in the residents’ health and socio-economic status, as well as long-term changes in the social factors affecting health.
Liina Junna is a Doctor of Social Sciences and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki’s Helsinki Institute for Demography and Population Health. Her research deals with the link between labour market status and health and the socio-economic determinants of health.
Pekka Martikainen is a professor of demography at the University of Helsinki and the director of the Helsinki Institute for Demography and Population Health. His research addresses the causes of socio-demographic health inequalities and their change from a cross-generational perspective, as well as the social consequences of the ageing of the population.
There are major differences between Finnish neighbourhoods in the mortality and morbidity of residents. In the 2000s, socio-economic health disparities have been strongly driven by diseases and accidents related to alcohol and substance abuse. To understand and monitor the health disparities between residential areas, it would be useful to monitor a neighbourhood-level indicator that uses available datasets on the prevalence of the use of outpatient care services, hospitalisations and deaths caused by substance use. This indicator shows the regional context in which the hard core of national socio-economic health disparities emerges and how these differences are linked to other regional well-being indicators. As the harms caused by substance abuse are strongly linked to social disadvantage, the indicator also helps to monitor the regional accumulation of social problems and substance-related harm and identify areas where substance-related harm is either not decreasing or is decreasing at a very slow rate.
In international discussions on sustainable urban development, health and mortality are particularly related to the health threats caused by air pollution and natural disasters, as well as the accessibility of green areas that promote opportunities for physical activity (WHO, 2020; Giles-Corti et al., 2022). However, in Finland and other developed welfare states, the processes that determine the health of city residents are primarily not related to the characteristics and nature of cities or neighbourhoods. Individuals’ personal characteristics and socio-economic resources, such as education, income and professional status and the related family background, are strong predictors of their health. However, as a result of processes at the individual, family and societal levels as well as due to migration, cities and neighbourhoods also differ considerably in terms of morbidity and mortality. In Helsinki, for example, the difference in life expectancy between the districts of Vironniemi and Jakomäki was 10.5 years for men and 6.5 for women in the period 2009–2014 (Mäki, 2015). Similar major differences in life expectancy have also been observed nationally between income and education groups. For example, the difference in life expectancy rates between the highest and lowest income quintiles was about 11 years for men and 6 years for women at the end of the 2010s (Tarkiainen et al., 2024).
In the 2000s, health disparities between income and education groups have been strongly driven by factors related to substance abuse. In the period 2018–2020, approximately one quarter of the difference in men's life expectancy between the highest and lowest income quintiles was due to alcohol-based diseases and poisonings (Tarkiainen et al., 2024). In other Nordic countries, approximately 13–25% of life expectancy differences between income categories were also due to these reasons (Östergren et al., 2019). There are major regional differences in alcohol mortality in Finland; in 2022, the highest mortality rates (approximately 40 deaths per 100,000 20–64-year-olds) were found in regions with relatively few urban settlements, such as Kainuu, Kymenlaakso and Lapland. The lowest mortality rate was recorded in Ostrobothnia (less than 20 deaths per 100,000) (THL, 2024). However, there may be significantly higher regional differences in alcohol mortality within cities than between regions. For instance, in the early 2000s, the alcohol mortality in the central major district of Helsinki (including neighbourhoods such as Kallio, Vallila and Pasila) amounted to over 100 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, while in the other major districts, the mortality rate ranged from under to over 50 (Valkonen et al., 2007).
To understand and monitor the health disparities between residential areas, it would be useful to monitor a neighbourhood-level indicator that describes the prevalence of hospitalisations, the use of outpatient care services, and deaths caused by high substance use. This indicator would also show in which regional context the hard core of national socio-economic health disparities emerges and how these differences are linked to other regional well-being indicators.
At the regional level, high levels of substance abuse morbidity and mortality are predicted by a high share of unemployed people and those in manual occupations and, at the individual level, low education, low incomes, manual occupation and living alone (Blomgren et al., 2004; Duke et al., 2011). Indeed, as the proposed indicator is strongly linked to socio-economic and social disadvantage factors, it also indirectly describes the regional accumulation of social disadvantage. The basic precondition for a well-functioning indicator is that the data used in measuring is easily available, affordable, up to date and lends itself to long-term monitoring. The basic data needed for forming the proposed indicator exists. The data is based on register data collected routinely in healthcare and therefore enables the long-term monitoring of the indicator in the future and even an examination of historical developments for decades to come. Similar indicators are already available in the Sotkanet indicator bank maintained by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare at the municipal level, but the data is not provided at a more specific regional level, such as by neighbourhoods.
The measurement of hospitalisations and deaths caused by high substance use rates at the level of Finnish neighbourhoods involves challenges despite the good availability of data. Although the number of substance-related deaths and hospitalisations is high at the whole country level, the smaller the examined region, the fewer cases occur in each area during the year. This increases random annual variation, and as a result, the indicator better lends itself to calculating the averages of several years. The indicator should not be calculated for areas with a small population base, but the used definition for a neighbourhood should be reasonably broad, such as the division of districts (34 areas) used in Helsinki. This allows for minimizing annual random variation.In general, particular attention must be paid to data protection in the publication of sensitive and often regionally rare indicators.
Regional differences in health and mortality in cities are mainly the result of differences in population structure in Finland. So far, no such characteristics of neighbourhoods with strong causal effects on the health or mortality of residents that would dominate the residents’ personal characteristics have been observed (Mäki, 2021). In other words, even if factors such as the availability of alcohol and income and education levels in the region as well as the share of people living in rental dwellings or alone were linked to substance-related harms, changing these regional characteristics is highly challenging and would probably have a relatively small impact on health indicators independent of the residents’ personal characteristics. However, the accumulation of social disadvantages may cause self-perpetuating development paths in the long term, and these may have negative impacts on the substance use and health of local residents. Finland has so far managed to curb, albeit not fully prevent, the regional accumulation of social problems through active social policy and land use planning. The data produced by the health indicator related to substance abuse helps to monitor both the accumulation of substance-related harms as well as whether the development of substance abuse harms is the same everywhere or whether there are regional pockets where the harms are either not decreasing or are decreasing very slowly. The indicator can also be used to support decisions on the location of substance abuse services, but active macro-level substance abuse and social policies that reduce harm are generally more effective than neighbourhood-level interventions.
While the role of substance-related hospitalisations and deaths in the cycle of health disparities and social disadvantage is significant in the Finnish context, the relevance of the proposed indicator may vary internationally and when applied to other urban environments. It is also possible that the harm caused by substances will change in character over time in Finland and the link to social disadvantage will shift. For example, due to cultural reasons substance abuse among immigrant groups with poor socio-economic status may not have a similar impact on health disparities. In addition, morbidity and mortality rates caused by illicit drugs are still low in Finland compared to those caused by alcohol use, but their significance has nonetheless increased considerably and may have a stronger impact on regional health differences in the future.
From the perspective of a better understanding and monitoring of the internal development and segregation of urban areas, we encourage the parties producing national statistics to also add areas smaller than municipalities to the openly available data sets where possible. In fact, information based on population-level register data should be produced routinely at the neighbourhood level using different health indicators as well as other variables describing segregation in urban areas.
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Herttua, K., Martikainen, P., Vahtera, J. and Kivimäki, M. (2011) ‘Living Alone and Alcohol-Related Mortality: A Population-Based Cohort Study from Finland’, PLOS Medicine, 8(9), p. e1001094. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001094.
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Mäki, N. (2021) Sairastavuus- ja kansantauti-indeksit koko Helsingissä ja peruspiireittäin 2019. Helsinki: Helsingin kaupunki, kaupunginkanslia, kaupunkitieto, p. 14. Available at: https://kaupunkitieto.hel.fi/fi/sairastavuus-ja-kansantauti-indeksit-koko-helsingissa-ja-peruspiireittain-2019 (Accessed: 14 February 2024).
Östergren, O., Martikainen, P., Tarkiainen, L., Elstad, J.I. and Brønnum-Hansen, H. (2019) ‘Contribution of smoking and alcohol consumption to income differences in life expectancy: evidence using Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish register data’, J Epidemiol Community Health, 73(4), pp. 334–339. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1136/jech-2018-211640.
Tarkiainen, L., Martikainen, P., Junna, L. and Remes, H. (2024) ‘Contribution of causes of death to changing inequalities in life expectancy by income in Finland, 1997–2020’, J Epidemiol Community Health [Preprint]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1136/jech-2023-221705.
THL (2024) Sotkanet.fi, Tilasto- ja indikaattoripankki. Available at: https://sotkanet.fi/sotkanet/fi/taulukko?indicator=szY2AAA=®ion=szZ3tc7UMwQA&year=sy5zBgA=&gender=t (Accessed: 13 February 2024).
Valkonen, T., Martikainen, P., Kauppinen, T.M. and Tarkiainen, L. (2007) Elinajanodotteen kehitys Helsingissä ja sen väestön osaryhmissä 1991-2005. Helsinki: Helsingin kaupungin tietokeskus. Available at: https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/publications/elinajanodotteen-kehitys-helsingiss%C3%A4-ja-sen-v%C3%A4est%C3%B6n-osaryhmiss%C3%A4-1 (Accessed: 17 February 2024).
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Jarkko Rasinkangas is a university lecturer in social work at the University of Turku. His research focus has been on housing policy, segregation and homelessness and the efforts to influence them.
Child poverty reflects the share of children under 18 living below the poverty line out of all children. It is an established indicator for monitoring child inequality in international and national comparisons. However, it has not been used to measure inequality within cities. Its use would be justified, as child poverty undermines the well-being of children living in poverty in many ways and can have far-reaching consequences for their future. Research in Finland has shown that segregation has increased in the major cities and that children and young people are more vulnerable to the cumulative effects of the negative consequences of segregation. Measuring child poverty as an expression of spatial inequalities in cities would therefore help, among other things, to target services. From the perspective of preventing problems associated with disadvantage, this is a question of early intervention close to children's everyday lives.
Child poverty typically refers to the share of children aged under 18 years living below the poverty line out of all children. Its parallel concept is poverty in families with children, which describes the share of families with children living below the poverty line out of all families with children. However, child poverty pays particular attention to the poverty experienced by children and links this perspective, through the children themselves, to intergenerational equity and sustainable development. Child poverty reduces the well-being of children living in poverty in many ways and prevents the realisation of the children's rights. The negative effects are not limited to the present moment but can extend far into the life of the individual.
The United Nation’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development aims to eradicate poverty worldwide in all its forms by 2030. Finland is committed to this goal, in which reducing child poverty would play an important role. Every child and young person who is marginalised costs society millions to. According to calculations by the Itla Children’s Foundation, the operating costs of substitute care for families with children amounted to EUR 0.9 billion in Finland in 2020. Although Finland has a low child poverty rate in an international comparison, it tripled between 1994 and 2007 and has since stabilised at around 10 per cent. In 2021, 12 per cent, i.e. around 121,000, of children lived in low-income families. The emphasis is particularly on families with young children. The share of children with a foreign background in low-income families is almost four times higher than that of children with a Finnish background, and their risk of poverty can be up to six times higher depending on their country of origin.
In the Nordic countries, the risk of child poverty is significantly reduced when taxes and income transfers are included in the family’s income. This is related to the ability and willingness of different countries and welfare models to share resources. Research in Finland shows that since the 1990s, the savings and cuts to services for children and young people have led to a decline and reduction in services. According to an estimate presented by SOSTE, the planned cuts in social security would increase the number of children living in poverty by more than 10,000 in 2024.
Childhood poverty has far-reaching effects on a child’s life, ranging from material deprivation to reduced opportunities for participation, well-being, and social relationships. Finnish longitudinal studies show that financial deprivation experienced in childhood is associated with later unemployment, mental health problems, poor school performance and over-indebtedness. In particular, poverty experienced in early childhood increases the risk of social disadvantage in adulthood, such as intergenerational dependency on social assistance. The impacts of child poverty is also reflected in children’s peer relationships, as they are aware of the financial situation of their own families and those of their friends. In the most severe cases, poverty can lead to children being excluded from groups and being subjected to bullying. Studies also show links between poverty and child protection measures. A higher share of families receiving social assistance in a municipality also means a higher share of substitute care. Overall, the polarisation between children from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds has increased considerably over the last decade.
The most commonly used indicator of child poverty is the relative child poverty rate. The measurement method used by the OECD is well established in international poverty studies. According to the OECD, households are defined as relatively poor if their income is less than half of the median of the average income of the population. In Finland and the EU, 60 per cent of the median is generally considered to constitute to be the poverty threshold. The measurement of child poverty is therefore an internationally established method, although international comparisons often require simplification of the measuring for the sake of comparability. This also applies to the measurement of child poverty.
One of the advantages of the child poverty indicator, apart from using an established measurement method, is that it takes into account the general income level, consumption habits and lifestyle of society. However, it does not reflect how close or far from the poverty line each household is, or how persistent poverty is. Furthermore, the relative poverty indicator does not take into account essential household expenses, such as housing costs, which are known to be high in large cities, for example. The indicator is also sensitive to economic fluctuations. For example, in times of high unemployment, median income falls, leading to a lower poverty threshold. This will also reduce the low-income rate, even if the disposable income of those on low incomes falls. Moreover, it does not always reflect the actual material well-being of the child, as families have different ways of spending income and saving their income. Even a low-income family may prioritise the child’s opportunities for consumption and hobbies.
Child poverty as a whole represents a multidimensional challenge, and its understanding, definition and development of which is an ongoing process. Income poverty alone does not provide a comprehensive picture of the phenomenon, as poverty is primarily manifested as material deprivation, but also has a psychosocial dimension. However, relative poverty measured on the basis of income is a very useful and understandable indicator to illustrate financial inequality.
The perspective used in analyses of child poverty has been on broader international or national comparisons, such as examining differences between countries and municipalities. In the context of Finland, we know that child poverty is particularly concentrated in municipalities with high unemployment, which have been most strongly affected by the structural development of the economy and the labour market and by economic fluctuations. However, based on segregation studies, we know that the risk factors for child poverty described above affect the population unevenly, even within our largest cities. There may be greater differences between neighbourhoods than between municipalities, and segregation may be more pronounced among children than among the adult population.
However, child poverty has so far not been one of the indicators used to monitor the differences between the neighbourhoods in cities, at least not commonly. Many cities have established ways of examining spatial disparities based on individual indicators created for administrative purposes. For example, there is a fairly clear understanding of the distribution of families with children and children of different ages in different neighbourhoods. Meanwhile, Finnish studies on segregation have included indicators that are well established for measuring income distribution, employment and demographic factors. However, they have not included child poverty. Children are only included through their households.
Studies on school segregation and the so-called neighbourhood effects come closer to emphasising the children perspective. The former refers to the role of the school system and the related school choice in reinforcing or reducing spatial differences. The latter concerns the importance of the social environment and peer relationships for the life course of children and young people, which is a controversial research topic. Both pay attention to the impact of the environment in which children grow up and to equality of i opportunity. The potential negative effects of the segregation accumulate particularly children from disadvantaged family backgrounds. Monitoring child poverty would, therefore, have a significant added value for socially sustainable urban development. In particular, it would highlight the perspective of segregation, because although poverty is a social problem at the individual level, its prolongation and spatial accumulation also result in an increase in the risks of aggravating the socio-spatial differences of cities. It is precisely these factors that we should pay attention when monitoring child poverty.
For a long time, inequality and the increasing poverty among children have been key issues in Finnish policy discussions and decision-making. Several solutions, have been proposed to reduce child poverty, related to social security, parents’ employment, education, and the service system, as well as everyday costs. Policies for children and young people are underpinned by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, through which Finland has committed itself to respecting children’s rights and reporting on related measures. Inequality has been addressed in policy strategies, most recently, in the Child’s Time – a National Strategy for Children 2040. The strategy set out vision for the implementation of preventive measures. It should be noted that influencing child poverty depends largely on national policies and programmes. This is largely a matter of addressing the root causes of inequality embedded in children's growing up conditions by supporting parents and families.
However, this does not mean that the spatial monitoring of child poverty and influencing it at the level of urban areas is of secondary importance. Measuring child poverty as an expression of spatial inequality in cities would also serve target services. With a view to preventing problems associated with disadvantage, help should be offered to families at early stage and close to children's everyday lives. In addition, monitoring child poverty would be relatively easy from a technical point of view and would allow not only monitoring but but also comparisons between trends and cities.
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Sanna Ala-Mantila is an assistant professor of sustainable urban systems at the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences of the University of Helsinki. Her research is focused on alliances of ecological and social sustainability in cities, such as environmental justice and the links between the demographic structure and the urban sustainability of residential areas.
The proposed energy vulnerability indicator provides a tool for monitoring energy and transport poverty by relating the euros spent on mobility and energy by households to their total disposable income. This composite indicator reflects the financial capacity of households to meet these basic needs. The interpretation is based on the limit value determined for the indicator based on research in the field, for instance. Exceeding the limit indicates a problem, i.e. a challenge in covering energy and/or mobility costs. The application of the indicator may utilise either household-specific data or data aggregated at the neighbourhood level. The indicator provides an opportunity to understand in more detail the factors linked to residential areas that affect energy and transport poverty, and its monitoring highlights the probably increasing importance of these phenomena in the sustainability transition of cities.
The indicator I propose would be used to monitor the euros spent on mobility and energy and their relation to households’ disposable income:
Energy vulnerability = 0,5*energy consumption in euros/disposable income+0,5*transportation related consumption in euros/disposable income
Therefore, the indicator gives a number between 0% and 100%, which is interpreted in relation to a certain limit value. Exceeding this threshold is considered a problem. The level of the limit value may be determined based on the threshold values presented in the literature or the calculated values that are more clearly applicable to the Finnish context. In this example, each section has equal weight, but a different distribution is also possible in the weighing. Different mathematical methods may also be used (e.g. the highest weights are given to variables with the highest resolution, i.e. the highest variation).
The indicator can be applied in several ways. Either by calculating the share of households that meet the definition in the area based on the indicator, i.e. by using household-specific data, or by using data aggregated at the neighbourhood level, and using this to describe the phenomenon in the area in more general terms. Each part of the indicator may also be followed separately, and they will also provide valuable information this way, but the view they provide together is more comprehensive. The composite indicator is also suitable for today’s world in the sense that in the case of electric cars, it can often not be clearly distinguished whether the energy consumption is concerned with electric heating of the home or charging an electric car, for instance.
Where possible, the costs used should also take into account the capital costs related to energy and travel by car (either actual or modelled), such as energy efficiency renovations or the purchase of a car. If these costs are taken into account, they must also be taken into account when determining the limit values.
The indicator presented here describes the cost burden on a household in a given consumption sector and is simple to understand and interpret. It relies on a widely applied indicator of energy poverty at the household level; a household is classified to be energy poor if it spends 10 per cent or more of its income on energy services (typically after deducting housing costs). This much-used 10% rule is based on the double median method proposed by Boardman (1991) (i.e. households whose use is twice as high compared to the national median are defined as energy-poor) and this threshold was 10% at the time when her article was published in England. This measurement method has also been applied in transport poverty research; a household is classified as transport poor if it spends more than 10% of its expenditure on meeting its transport needs (Alonso-Epelde et al., 2023). Transport costs typically include costs related to both private transport and the use of short or medium-distance public transport services, but not travel types such as holiday trips abroad. Another typical, slightly newer indicator, which has been often in research and practice, is the so-called Low Income, High Consumption (LIHC) indicator. According to the LIHC indicator, a household is defined as energy/transport poor if the costs it spends on that sector exceed the average (often the national median level) and if it used that amount, it would be left with an income below the (national) poverty threshold (Hills, 2012). The third indicator used in official contexts is Low-Income Low Energy Efficiency (LILEE), which categorises a household as energy poor if the home has a poor energy efficiency classification and if after deducting the modelled energy costs and housing costs, the household’s remaining income falls below the poverty threshold (e.g. Croon et al., 2023). While no indicator similar to LILEE has been presented for mobility, it is possible to imagine that, in the future, similar absolute terms could be related to the driving power and/or fuel consumption of cars, for instance.
Other types of indicators are also used in literature, including different subjective, survey-based estimates of the adequacy of funds in different sectors. One example of the proposed indicator type based on objective indicators is the so-called 2M indicators: a household is classified as energy-poor when it is paying more than double the median, double the average, double the median share and double the average share of its total income for energy services (Castaño-Rosa et al., 2019).
The indicator makes it possible to address energy and mobility poverty. Not paying too much attention to the more fine details of the definition, this kind of poverty refers to situations where the household is unable to use an adequate amount of necessary energy and transport services mainly due to economic constraints. The scientific discussion has increasingly highlighted overlaps between energy and transport poverty, and this set of circumstances has been referred to as dual energy vulnerability: situations where households are faced with difficult choices, such as whether to eat, heat their home or travel by bus (Martiskainen et al., 2023). These phenomena have naturally been studied most at the household level and in the context of the home, but it is clear that the properties of residential areas and their connections to services as well as energy and transport providers also play a significant but less understood role (Martiskainen et al., 2023).
A neighbourhood-level energy vulnerability indicator would help identify and understand the contextual factors underlying energy and transport poverty. Bouzarovski and Simcock (2017) theorise energy poverty as a 'socio-spatial phenomenon', i.e. a phenomenon that is affected by the living environment (in a broad sense). Indeed, it is clear that the underlying factors for energy poverty include the age and other characteristics of the housing stock, while the ones for mobility poverty include issues such as the availability of public transport and the distances between the residential area and other key services/workplaces. The phenomenon is also relevant in the urban context, even though, off the cuff, one might think that energy and mobility poverty would mostly affect sparsely populated areas where the building stock is old and which may not be covered by district heating and public transport services. However, research findings on, for instance, mobility poverty in England show that the affordability of driving costs is a problem that affects a wide range of different social groups and region types and should not be considered a problem that merely applies to suburbs or rural areas (Mattioli et al., 2018). It is nonetheless important to bear in mind that the indicator used also has an impact on the status of regions of different types. For instance, a study by Robinson et al. (2018) also carried out in England shows how the transition from the 10% indicator to LIHC has led to a relative transfer of energy-poor households to regions with higher housing costs and urban areas.
This situation can also be roughly outlined in Finland. For example: In a 120 m2 single-family house with electric heating in Espoo, the cost estimate for electricity consumption at the peak prices in 2023 was on average EUR 599 per month (Housing expenses 2023 - Finnish Home Owners' Association, n.d.), and if it is proportioned to the average monthly disposable income of EUR 4,957 in Espoo (SVT 2024), the ratio increases to 12%, i.e. it exceeds the 10% threshold for energy poverty. Although urban sustainability discussions are often focused on neighbourhoods with blocks of flats and dense population, residential areas consisting of detached houses are also very typical in the context of Finnish cities (Ala-Mantila et al., 2023). Meanwhile, a similar rough calculation of mobility poverty can be made based on Statistics Finland’s Household Budget Survey (2022). The euros spent on transport (the national average (1)) in relation to the average disposable income of a Helsinki resident is 10.1%. Even simple average calculations suggest that the phenomenon is also topical in Finland, and a more detailed examination at the neighbourhood level would probably reveal interesting differences.
Energy vulnerability will increase in the future due to measures aimed at a low-carbon society and cities, which will affect issues such as favouring cleaner forms of energy production and the electrification of the car stock. In addition to mitigation measures, the inevitable progress of climate change will also affect how and where energy will be used and demanded due to aspects such as the increasing heat island phenomenon in cities and the increased cooling needs associated with it. It is likely that the differences between residential areas may be exacerbated once so-called easy system-level solutions have been exhausted (e.g. abandoning coal in district heating), and the solutions of individuals and communities will be emphasised. Literature has shown that the adoption of innovations is clustered spatially (Graziano et al., 2019), which means that social networks and information flows between peers, such as neighbourhood residents, may have an impact on issues such as the adoption of various low-carbon innovations. On the other hand, differences in infrastructure continue to play a key role: there is also evidence of a causal relationship between the availability of public charging infrastructure for electric cars and an increase in the use of electric cars (Schulz and Rode, 2022).
Monitoring energy and transport poverty at the neighbourhood level would also help to understand how residents in neighbourhoods act instead of looking at the opportunities in the supply side only. For example, in a situation where a neighbourhood has comprehensive and accessible public transport, but it is still used less (i.e. a lot of euros are spent on mobility) than could be expected based on the resident structure, it could be possible to explore the deeper causes of this non-use. For example, is public transport in the area unsafe or unpleasant to use for some other reason? What kinds of services are available or lacking in the residential area?
In the implementation of the green transition, fairness between individuals and regions is important and has also been highlighted in the policy agenda, for example in the EU’s just transition mechanism. Similarly, we have evidence that shows that carbon neutrality policies get less support from certain groups when these are perceived as unfair. For example, in 2018, the Yellow Vests Protests movement was motivated by a demand for fairer fuel tax policies, and European farmers have recently been putting up resistance due to issues such as environmental policies considered excessive. It is well known that both socio-economic and spatial contexts affect environmental attitudes and opportunities to act according to these attitudes (Weckroth and Ala-Mantila, 2022).
Although these examples do not directly apply to urban environments, it is possible that in the future, regional differences in environmental burden sharing and the experiences of fairness that reflect them will also culminate in the context of cities. According to our still unpublished results, income-based segregation of residential areas has been increasing throughout Finland’s 20 largest cities (Kurvinen et al., under evaluation). Combined with rising costs, this may naturally also have an impact on the regional accumulation of phenomena such as energy and transport poverty. In the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, for example, there is pressure to renovate blocks of flats, which are located in large masses in housing estate-type areas (Kurvinen et al., 2024). As a result, development paths that involve this accumulation may materialise in neighbourhoods representing certain eras and with a higher-than-average amount of low-income households and older building stocks. Meanwhile, financing the repair costs may be challenging especially in the housing estates of smaller cities, where the prices of housing are going doing in some cases.
This text contains a number of possible alternative models of the indicator and various choices that need to be tested and developed based on experiences in implementing the indicator. It also needs to be considered whether it makes sense to calculate the indicator for all households, at least in this simple ratio format, or whether it should focus on a certain part of the households in the region, for example, those that fall below the average income or the lowest income quadrant.
In the context of data, the denominator of the indicator, disposable income, is the easiest part of the indicator, as register-based information on household income is widely available in Finland, for example at the 250x250 m grid level in the databases of Statistics Finland (Grid Database) and the Finnish Environment Institute (Liiteri). The main challenge of the information base for the indicator is related to sector-specific consumption expenditure. The problem is not so much that data would not be collected about our consumption, but rather that there is a need for more investigation regarding gaining access to the data for this purpose and linking it to sufficiently precise regional units and households. The data on households’ consumption produced by Statistics Finland could be one of the first sources of data rendered down to a general level. However, the challenge for the data sets is that they are survey-based, i.e. samples are unlikely to be representative at the exact neighbourhood level and they have poor temporal coverage (studies are typically carried out once every six years), which means that they make it difficult to react to rapidly changing situations (e.g. the recent energy price crisis).
I would like to present a requirement that monitoring these kinds of phenomena also necessitates access to the data sets of private operators for wider use for the general good. One groundbreaking example of such use is the research cooperation carried out by the S-Group on the carbon impacts of food purchases (Meinilä et al., 2022). The indicator presented here could also be further developed if data on issues such as fuel purchases was available and also if energy companies provided access to their data on energy consumption and/or euros spent on energy. While this preliminary indicator proposal is only focused on energy and mobility, the number of examined categories could be increased if so allowed by the available data.
From a broad perspective, the indicator is positioned in the field of sustainable consumption, i.e. as part of the discussion on how it is important to pay attention to consumer behaviour, choices and lifestyle to achieve a sustainable future, in addition to improving the environmental efficiency of production (Jackson, 2004). In the long term, both energy and mobility poverty can be alleviated by shifting to more sustainable forms of consumption, but high investment costs mean that the transition will not be possible for vulnerable households without support. On the other hand, it is also possible that the interpretation of this indicator, which originally focused on identifying vulnerability and poverty, could be expanded towards identifying unsustainable consumption in the future. In the current situation, where the effects of our consumption habits exceed the planet’s carrying capacity, these kinds of sectoral examinations enable us to identify problem areas and their links to the regional level. It is also possible to move from indicators such as the euros used for consumption to an emission calculation that complements the overall picture, for example using the extended environmental input-output calculation models developed by the Finnish Environment Institute.
It is also important to bear in mind that a simple examination at the neighbourhood level such as the one presented above is prone to obscure important differences between individual and household levels. For this reason, neighbourhood-level indicators such as those presented in this article need to be accompanied by other types of examinations that give more attention to the internal distribution of the area and the situations of households and individuals, which are concealed by the indicator. It would also be interesting to make the indicator include spatial-data-based materials and an analysis of how aspects such as the locations of services affect the phenomena described by the indicator.
No averages from the municipal or built-up area type level are available for the most recent Household Budget Survey. However, it should be noted that the average sum used by Helsinki residents is likely to be lower than the national average. The cost of international travel has also not been reduced from this average.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Ákos Gosztonyi for his useful comments on the subject of this article.
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Eva Heiskanen is a professor of sustainable consumption at the Centre for Consumer Society Research at the University of Helsinki. Her research is related to the energy transition and related tensions in the everyday lives of citizens as well as the opportunities to create space for the genuine inclusion and trust of citizens in the midst of crises.
Citizens' opportunities to contribute to the energy transition and produce their own energy are important from the perspectives of both sustainable energy supply in cities and the self-sufficiency of urban residents. Placing as many solar panels as possible in buildings enables saving land for nature and protecting biodiversity. At the same time, residents get an opportunity to benefit from inexpensive, self-produced energy. However, the opportunity to participate in energy production depends on income and wealth. While there is a desire for energy communities to provide a solution to a more democratic and accessible sustainable energy system, even energy communities are not equally accessible to all inhabitants. There are also solutions from other parts of the world where participation in an energy community does not require significant wealth. This article suggests that the regional and economic accessibility of energy communities could be measured by monitoring the socio-economic status of the members of energy communities or the share of energy communities in residential areas with a lower socio-economic status.
Citizens' opportunities to contribute to the energy transition and produce their own energy are important from the perspectives of both sustainable energy supply in cities and the self-sufficiency of urban residents. In 2022, the produced solar electricity amounted to just under one per cent of Finland’s total electricity production (Finnish Energy Authority 2023), but it is expected to grow to more than 5 per cent by 2035 and more than 15 per cent by 2050 (Koljonen 2022). The production of solar electricity requires a considerable surface area. Placing as many solar panels as possible on buildings would allow for saving land and protecting its biodiversity (Molnár et al. 2022). At the same time, residents get an opportunity to benefit from inexpensive, self-produced energy.
However, the opportunity to participate in energy production depends on income and wealth. While there has been a desire for the energy communities to serve as a solution to a more democratic and accessible sustainable energy system (Szulecki (2018), energy communities also contain a risk of ecogentrification i.e. social segregation that emerges from ecological improvements in the built environment (Wallin 2021).
Energy communities are alliances of consumers who produce energy for their personal use. More officially, a local energy community refers to a legal person that voluntarily provides energy services to its members who use these services on the same property (Government decree on electricity supply settlement and measurement 767/2021). It is therefore a question of communal energy production that promotes renewable energy and energy self-sufficiency. In Finland, the largest number of energy communities will probably be established in housing companies, which can produce electricity using solar panels and produce electricity for their shareholders under the new legislation. As the self-production of electricity is the most profitable when the producer is able to use most of the produced electricity (e.g. in refrigerators and freezers used throughout the year), the possibility of establishing an energy community makes solar electricity production significantly more profitable in housing companies with multi-storey buildings or terraced housing (Motiva 2023).
This article suggests that the regional and economic accessibility of energy communities could be measured by monitoring the socio-economic status of the members of energy communities. There is no comprehensive register of energy communities in Finland, but electricity network companies have information on the energy communities producing electricity that operate in their area. Monitoring the socio-economic status of community members is not particularly easy. Potential rough indicators could include the sales prices of housing sold in the area, which would reflect the wealth of the community members or the share of energy communities in residential areas with different socioeconomic profiles.
The underlying reasons for the legislation on energy include a desire to increase citizens’ opportunities to be active participants in the energy market also through joint cooperation (Directive 2019/944) and, at the same time, to open up the energy system to a wider citizen democracy, i.e. to promote energy democracy (van Veelen and van der Horst 2018). The transfer of power over energy production and related decision-making to citizens is expected to bring about a more democratic energy system.
The possibility of cooperation opens up the energy market to a wider group of citizens. Energy solutions can be procured together, which allows lowering the threshold for investment. In practice, the residents of blocks of flats, who amount to 47% of Finns (Statistics Finland 2023) have so far been unable to participate in energy production sensibly and in a way that benefits them. However, there is a threat that energy democracy may turn into an “Athenian democracy” (Dudka 2022), where only those who own properties can participate in energy production and, through this, contribute to the decision-making on the energy system. In addition, property owners (or shareholders) are in a fairly unequal position in Finland, as the property value is largely determined by location. Therefore, not everyone has access to the capital required for investments. In addition, not everyone has property, even though almost all Finns have a home of some kind. If the challenge of energy democracy is taken seriously, those who do not own their dwellings should also have an opportunity to get involved in the energy community.
Measuring the regional and economic accessibility of energy communities by monitoring the socio-economic status of members of energy communities would help to stay on track of the extent to which the legislation that enables energy communities has succeeded in promoting energy democracy in Finland’s cities and other municipalities. This would simultaneously allow for preparing for the prevention of the segregation of residential areas in a situation where local energy production starts to become a norm in cities. And, as noted at the beginning of this article, the use of empty roofs for energy production helps to protect land areas and the biodiversity these enable.
Other potential indicators that measure roughly the same issue may also be developed. Research in ecogentrification often focuses on green spaces (Wallin 2012), which are, of course, a useful indicator. In fact, the accessibility of green spaces has already been measured in Finland (Heikinheimo et al. 2023). The energy efficiency of buildings could also be monitored, reflecting not only the reputation of the residential area but also the energy costs of its residents. However, the energy efficiency of buildings is easily a function of building age and the waves of renovation based on buildings of different ages. In addition to, or instead of, energy communities focusing on solar electricity production, residents can invest in other common energy solutions, for example by replacing the district heating connection with geothermal wells or other solutions based on heat pumps. These solutions can be monitored by means such as the building register, even if the data is not fully up-to-date (Kangas et al. 2020).
Nevertheless, monitoring the accessibility of energy communities would help to follow an issue that is relatively independent of the investment cycle of a building. It could be used to monitor the extent to which it is possible to participate in the energy transition and its benefits regardless of social and economic status. As an indicator, it would challenge cities to open up their information-based and financial resources in a way that would involve residents across social classes in the energy transition.
The indicator is related to academic discussions on energy democracy and energy citizenship. The discussion has several dimensions (Heiskanen et al. 2021; Wahlund and Palm 2022). The discussion on energy democracy perceives decentralised, citizen-owned production as a way of empowering citizens’ influence in the energy system, which has been previously considered technocratic (Islar & Busch 2016; Ruostetsaari 2017; Szulecki 2018). In this discussion, the role of citizens is not always limited to the ownership of production equipment and the power gained through it, but also to the possibility of challenging the commercial logic of the energy system through co-ownership of production equipment and collaborative management that emphasises member democracy (van Veelen and van der Horst 2018).
More active participation by citizens is also seen as a prerequisite for the energy transition. Participation may bring new, “more patient” (i.e. with lower and more long-term revenue potential) capital to energy investments (Heiskanen et al. 2017). An energy system based on variable production also requires citizens to be more extensively educated on energy, as energy consumption needs to be regulated more and more according to production. Producing energy for personal use may increase awareness of energy consumption as well as willingness and investments related to regulating consumption (Galvin 2021). As the energy transition makes progress, citizens will also have to perceive and adapt to changes in the energy system. Concrete participation through personal production is considered to increase political support for the energy transition (Jacobsson and Lauber 2006).
However, only those who have sufficient financial and information resources to procure means of production can participate in energy production. Energy communities have emerged in different countries in Europe to overcome these challenges. This diverse experimentation based on cooperative principles eventually led to confirming the legal status of energy communities in the EU’s energy market directive (Sciullio et al. 2022). However, confirming the legal status of energy communities does not remove all barriers related to finances and competence. Energy production for personal use, even when realised in a communal way, required decision-making on the location, some capital from each participant as well as organisational and technical capabilities. As a result, most energy communities based on communal management have also emerged in middle-class environments, and their active members are usually highly-educated men (Bode 2022).
In the literature on energy democracy, there is a broad consensus that the social structure of energy communities should be diversified. There is a need for new ways to involve groups such as poor people, those belonging to ethnic minorities and women in the activities (Wahlund and Palm 2022).
In Finland, communications concerning energy communities are primarily directed at housing companies, which links the opportunities to participate in energy communities in the ownership of shares in a housing company (Heiskanen et al. 2021). Other opportunities should also be explored, developed and promoted. An example of an energy community project aimed at a residential area on social grounds can be found in Great Britain. Repowering London is a non-profit community that commissioned the construction of four solar electricity systems on the roofs of rental buildings in Brixton in collaboration with the residents and partly through crowdfunding while enabling young residents to participate in installation work through a traineeship programme (Williams and Hintz 2023). In Germany, a model called Mieterstrom has been developed to enable tenants to benefit from the production equipment that their landlord has installed on top of their building by purchasing the energy produced through it and by obtaining their share of the benefits of surplus production sold online (Bode 2022).
In Finnish cities, the limited liability housing company is a common form of housing, so many people can benefit from the opportunity to invest in renewable energy in their buildings. However, there are major regional differences in the wealth of housing companies and their shareholders (Eerola et al. 2020), which affect the housing companies’ and their shareholders’ investment opportunities. New funding opportunities are offered by the European Investment Fund’s Sustainability Guarantee Fund, in which Finland also participates with a guarantee of nearly EUR 100 million (TEM 2022). The guarantee is intended to help banks loan money for the (as such profitable) procurement by households, housing companies and small- and medium-sized enterprises of renewable energy on better terms. However, the loans have not been actively marketed: cities would have a good opportunity to activate investments, for example, by providing advice on a “one-stop shop” principle that includes both technical support and access to funding channels (Bertoldi et al. 2019).
The achievement of energy democracy is not complete at a point where middle-class households have a legal opportunity to set up an energy community and through it, can obtain affordable renewable energy. Having enabling legislation in place does not as such guarantee the far-reaching political ambitions of energy democracy for genuine civic participation instead of mere energy consumption. It is even more worrisome that the legislation that enables energy communities threatens to create new deficiencies by excluding some citizens – or urban residents – from the benefits of the future energy system. To put it in the most concrete terms: the transition to a new fossil-free energy system threatens to lose its political support unless citizens have equal opportunities to participate in it (Schaller & Carius 2019). By monitoring the equality of access to energy communities, cities have the opportunity to both promote sustainable energy production and inclusion and to prevent social segregation in their residential areas. The monitoring of the indicator also creates incentives for cities to mobilize citizens, property owners, financiers and the state for actions that promote energy democracy and a sustainable fossil-free energy system.
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Ranja Hautamäki is an associate professor of landscape architecture at Aalto University. Her research is focused on urban green structure and nature-based solutions in mitigating and adapting to climate change, combating biodiversity loss and supporting well-being.
Anne Laita is a land use planning biologist at the City of Jyväskylä. She works on the biodiversity and sustainability issues of urban planning. Her work involves the preparation of local detailed plans and local master plans as well as various development projects of the city.
Tree canopy cover in cities refers to the percentage of the area covered by the tree canopy of the total area in a city or neighbourhood. Tree canopy cover is a sustainability indicator for the green infrastructure that combines many climate and welfare benefits. Trees enable containing heat waves, act as carbon sinks and produce recreational benefits. The tree canopy cover indicator makes it possible to set quantitative targets for urban tree stand at the city, neighbourhood and city block levels. It can be used to ensure a sufficient amount of trees in new neighbourhoods and to identify development areas in existing neighbourhoods where tree canopy cover should be increased. The tree canopy cover indicator is gaining more significance, as it is linked to the EU’s approved Nature RestorationLaw, and it also includes an international recommendation for 30% tree canopy cover for neighbourhoods. The implementation of the indicator requires the harmonization of the used calculation methods and a better understanding of the significance of trees in safeguarding the climate resilience and comfort of cities.
Tree canopy cover in cities refers to the percentage of the area covered by the tree canopy of the total area in a city or neighbourhood. As an indicator, it provides information about the number of trees in a city, but it is also linked to other aspects: studies show a direct link between tree canopy cover and climate change adaptation and mitigation, for instance alleviating urban heat island effect, enhancing carbon sinks and residents’ well-being. Tree canopy cover alleviates heat waves; planting trees is estimated to lower the temperature by 0.1–4°C (Ziter et al. 2019, Finnish Climate Change Panel 2023). Combined with permeable surfaces, tree canopy cover is also linked to the mitigation of urban flooding (Artmann 2016; Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities 2012). Trees and their biomass as well as soil also play a significant role in carbon sinks and long-lasting carbon stores that accumulate as the trees age (Lindén et al. 2020, Hautamäki et al. 2023).
In addition to producing climate benefits, trees also increase the well-being of both people and biota more extensively. Numerous studies have shown that urban green spaces and particularly trees support physical, mental and social well-being (e.g. Marselle et al. 2021, Tyrväinen et al. 2014) as well as health (Aivelo & Lehtimäki 2021). At the same time, the fair distribution of the number of trees and their benefits, known as “Tree equity” in a city has been emphasised (e.g. Zhou et al. 2021, American forests 2021). Tree canopy cover may also be important for the diversity of urban nature. Trees provide organisms withhabitats, food, shelter, places for nests and routes. While canopy cover has a positive relation to diversity for many groups of species, the impacts on biodiversity cannot be directly derived from tree canopy cover; instead, they depend on factors such as the age of the trees, tree species and the growing environment. Thanks to several proven benefits, tree canopy cover can be considered a multi-benefit indicator underlining the importance of green infrastructure in safeguarding climate resilience and comfort for cities.
There has been a strongly growing interest in the tree canopy cover indicator in recent years. For example, in Sweden, Naturvårdsverket published a 25% crown coverage target for cities in 2021 (Naturvårdsverket 2021). Barcelona, Bristol, Malmö, Canberra and Vancouver have set a 30% canopy coverage target (Konijnendijk 2023). Tree canopy cover also includes tree planting actions, a good example of which is the ambitious target of the City of Paris for planting 170,000 trees by 2026 to improve the city’s climate resilience (Plan Arbre 2021).
Tree canopy cover is also strongly included in the EU’s Nature Restoration Law. The Law (article 8) defines a 45% vegetation cover threshold and a 10% tree canopy cover threshold for urban ecosystems by 2030, after which these should follow an increasing trend until a satisfactory level is reached. In the Finnish context, a tree canopy cover of 10% is very low; for example, the tree canopy cover in Helsinki is 32% (Kinnunen 2023). Meanwhile, dense European cities may not meet the threshold value (European Environment Agency). The complex formulation of the Law leaves a number of open questions, for instance, concerning the functionality of the threshold value, determining a sufficient level for tree canopy cover and measuring tree canopy cover.
While tree canopy cover is often monitored at the city level, it should be assessed and developed especially at the neighbourhood level, as the mitigation of heat waves and urban floods as well as recreational benefits occur particularly at the local level. This is also emphasised by an international recommendation published in 2022, which sets a 30% tree canopy cover requirement for neighbourhoods (Nordic Council of Ministers 2022, Konijnendijk 2023). This is an important guideline as tree canopy cover and its benefits are unevenly distributed. For instance, in Helsinki, the tree canopy cover ranges from 4 to 65 per cent depending on the neighbourhood (Kinnunen 2023). A study conducted in Helsinki shows that in more densely built neighbourhoods with less room for vegetation, trees produce clearly fewer climate benefits, such as carbon sinks and heat adjustment, compared to more spacious and green neighbourhoods (Leppänen et al. 2024). Although it is not possible or appropriate to make all neighbourhoods equally green, more attention should be paid to the tree stand at the local level.
Figure 1. Urban green spaces are not evenly distributed in Helsinki. The tree canopy cover (woody vegetation of more than 2 metres in height) of the different neighbourhoods in Helsinki ranges from around 4 per cent to around 65 per cent, and the two extremes are the most densely populated neighbourhoods (shown in the lightest shade of green) and the sparsely built neighbourhoods with a high amount of tree stand (the darkest green). The amount of tree canopy cover also has a direct link to climate benefits: an area begins to serve as a clear carbon sink when its tree canopy cover exceeds 15–25%. Figure: Antti Kinnunen 2023.
Unlike many other indicators, which are mainly used for monitoring and confirming the prevailing situation, an advantage of the tree canopy cover indicator is its potential as an indicator guiding urban planning. Tree canopy cover is a simple and multi-benefit indicator that can combine various objectives related to issues such as the climate, biodiversity and well-being, while at the same time combining the policy objectives of different sectors. Tree canopy cover is also directly linked to several other important indicators, such as vegetation cover (urban green spaces) and soil sealing, which are particularly important for stormwater management.
Tree canopy cover may guide urban planning at many levels, from national steering to the local master plan and local detailed plan. A good example of this is Sweden, where quantitative targets have been set for tree canopy cover at both the national and city levels, and even at the neighbourhood level in Malmö (Malmö stad 2023). The tree canopy cover indicator can be applied both to the planning of new neighbourhoods and improving the existing city structure by adding trees to areas with poor tree canopy cover.
Despite international interest and the examples from numerous cities, tree canopy cover has been hardly studied or utilised in Finland as an instrument for steering urban planning. For example, the municipal climate action plans include no tree canopy cover objectives even through many cities have set the goal of securing carbon sinks. Indeed, we may ask whether we think that our cities are already green enough. Despite all this, the data on the tree canopy cover of Helsinki shows that although the tree canopy cover at the city level exceeds the international 30% recommendation, for instance, there are considerable differences at the neighbourhood level and action is needed.
Although Finland is lagging slightly behind in integrating tree canopy cover into urban planning, there is growing interest in the topic. Tree canopy cover is used as an indicator in several cities (Tampere, Jyväskylä, Helsinki, Savonlinna), even though no target level has been specified for it. For example, Tampere has included safeguarding and developing its tree canopy cover in its tree policy and the draft phase master plan, which aims at increasing tree canopy cover (City of Tampere 2020, 2021). Jyväskylä has developed methods for monitoring its tree canopy cover and carried out a change analysis of the development of tree canopy cover in the city's central urban area. Tree canopy cover also gains new focus in the pursuit of no net loss, as this also means safeguarding the tree stock in urban areas and replacing lost tree stand. We therefore need strategic objectives at the whole city level as well as binding objectives at the neighbourhood level.
In principle, tree canopy cover is a very unambiguous and easy-to-use indicator, and ready-made data sets are available for calculation. Europe-wide and national data sets can be used to produce comparable data on tree canopy cover in different areas and regions. The Copernicus Land Monitoring Service provides spatial data for the monitoring of tree canopy cover in European urban areas. The Urban Atlas Street Tree Layer dataset (Copernicus 2018 a) provides vector data on the more uniform wooded areas in urban environments (10 m evaluation accuracy) with a six-year update cycle. The High Resolution Layer Tree Cover Density dataset (Copernicus 2018 b) provides raster data on tree canopy cover (0–100%) with a three-year update cycle at a resolution of 10 metres.
The most accurate tree canopy cover data can be produced using laser-scanned point cloud data. The National Land Survey offers pre-ground-classified point cloud data, which includes categories such as “High vegetation” (vegetation points representing 2–50 metres in height). The laser scanning method (scanned using either a helicopter or a drone) can produce point cloud data with the desired accuracy. Data in the point cloud data describing the tree canopy cover is usually converted into raster data for analysis. More accurate data can also be used to describe individual trees, which may be left out of rougher data. The accuracy of blind spots may also be enhanced using aerial photography data.
Figure 2. Datasets produced in different ways provide different information on tree canopy cover and its distribution in a city. The image on the left shows tree canopy cover data on the Jyväskylä city centre produced from the city’s own point cloud dataset (2020). The image on the right shows the same area based on the High Resolution Layer Tree Cover Density data of the Copernicus Land Survey Service (2018). The point cloud data shows individual trees on plots and streets with higher accuracy than Copernicus, which displays tree canopy cover on a more general level and, in some cases, more extensively than in reality.
Although tree canopy cover is an unambiguous indicator, its use involves several uncertainties and development needs. The most significant of these is concerned with data accuracy. The point accuracy of the point cloud data on the one hand and the resolution of the raster data produced from the point cloud data on the other affect the mapping of the tree canopy cover and the conclusions derived from the data. For this reason, the tree canopy cover results derived from different datasets may differ from each other and cannot be compared. Even very accurate point cloud data may ignore individual trees, for example in the case of trees growing near buildings.
Differences also arise from the height of the vegetation to be included in the tree canopy cover calculation. Some tree canopy cover calculations have set over 2 metres of vegetation as their criterion, while others have set the height as 5 metres, for instance. Indeed, this lack of standardised calculation methods for tree canopy cover makes it important to document the source material and the choices made in processing and calculating it. There is a need for national steering to develop the tree canopy cover indicator to ensure that the produced data is reliable and comparable. A good example is the calculation model produced by Boverket in Sweden and the tree canopy cover survey that applies to all cities (Boverket 2021, 2023).
Tree canopy cover is a promising sustainability indicator for the green infrastructure that combines many climate and welfare benefits. It is also an indicator suitable for planning that enables setting quantitative targets for urban tree stand at the city, neighbourhood and city block levels. The local level is the most important, as the benefits of tree canopy cover are primarily local. It can be used to ensure a sufficient amount of trees in new neighbourhoods and to identify development areas in existing neighbourhoods where tree canopy cover should be increased. It also provides an opportunity for monitoring changes occurring over the long term and monitoring the no net loss target. However, ensuring that the indicator is capable of producing reliable and comparable data requires developing it and establishing its calculation methods. Such development work and information steering would be urgently needed at the national level to ensure that the indicator is introduced at the municipal level. At the latest, the Nature Restoration Law will make tree canopy cover an essential part of urban planning. Trees are part of the critical infrastructure of our cities, which must be systematically assessed and developed – and also appreciated.
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Ziter, C. D. et al. (2019) Scale-dependent interactions between tree canopy cover and impervious surfaces reduce daytime urban heat during summer. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – PNAS. [Online] 116 (15), 7575–7580. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1817561116.
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The Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (2018 b). High Resolution Layer Tree Cover Density. https://land.copernicus.eu/en/products/high-resolution-layer-tree-cover-density.
Topi Rönkkö is a professor of aerosol physics at the University of Tampere and the head of a research group on aerosol emission and air quality research. His research covers emissions released from transport, energy and heat production into the atmosphere as well as air quality research, with a particular focus on the emissions, formation processes and properties of the smallest aerosol particles, and the formation of secondary aerosols.
The air quality index aims to provide information on the concentrations of air pollutants harmful to human health in cities, using a single, easy-to-understand indicator. The air quality index is affected by both local and distant atmospheric emissions. Most of these emissions originate from human activities. Meteorological factors and, in cities, factors such as the features of the building stock and urban planning may also affect the air quality index.
The air quality index is based on the measured concentrations of several different air pollutants and, in some cases, also modelled concentrations. It aims to describe how healthy and safe it is to breathe the air. While various cities are widely using an air quality index, its definition is not entirely uniform at the international level. This creates difficulties when making comparisons of the air quality indices defined in different environments, but at the same time, it allows for better consideration of local characteristics and trends.
In other words, the air quality index aims to use a single indicator to describe the concentrations of air pollutants harmful to health in the air in cities. In Finland, the air quality index is calculated based on the concentrations of sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), inhalable particulate matter (PM10), fine particulate matter (PM2.5), carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3) and total reduced sulphur compounds (TRS), depending on the availability of measurement results. There is scientific evidence that these air pollutants may cause health hazards. Air quality indices are based on health impacts and rely on a broad scientific understanding of a link between the concentrations and health risks as well as the WHO air quality guidelines and related monitoring (World Health Organization, 2021). In Finland, different colours are used in communications about the air quality index. You can read about the determination of the air quality index and its use in communications on the HSY website, for instance (HSY, 2024).
The aim of the air quality index is to communicate about the harmful effects of air pollution in living environments and other environments where people spend their time. It is important to note that air quality is affected by both local and long-range transported air pollutants and the most significant emissions originate from human activities. Local atmospheric emissions include exhaust plumes from transport, street dust released into the air from transport, smoke originating from wood heating in houses, smoke from heating saunas and, in some cases, industrial emissions and emissions from heavy goods vehicles (see e.g. Teinilä et al., 2022). Long-range transported air pollution may originate from a wide range of sources and typically affects air quality in a relatively large area. In Finland, this includes smoke from forest fires in the east or air pollution from central Europe.
Meteorological factors and, in cities, factors such as the features of the building stock and urban planning affect air quality. For example, heating the buildings in a neighbourhood with fireplaces may affect the air quality of the residential area if the wind blows from a certain direction, while in city centres, the various air pollutants emitted by traffic may be at a considerably higher level in urban canyons surrounded by high-rise buildings compared to open environments (see e.g. Barreira et al., 2021). The proximity of large transport routes or airports, for instance, may have a major impact on the amount of certain air pollutants.
The quality of the breathing air affects human health. This has been observed both in epidemiological studies and in toxicological studies on health impact mechanisms. The effects of poor global air quality and air pollution are reflected annually in millions of premature deaths as well as cardiovascular diseases, strokes and cognitive effects, for example. The impacts are typically the most prominent in those places with a high level of air pollution and a high population density. From the perspective of health impacts, many studies have identified particulate air pollutants as the most significant type of air pollution. These pollutants are most commonly described using the aforementioned PM2.5, i.e. the mass concentration of particles that is 2.5 μm or less in diameter. However, it should be noted that PM2.5 does not reflect the concentrations of the tiniest particles, i.e. the so-called ultrafine particles. Ultrafine particles are less than 100 nm in diameter, and their sources in urban environments particularly include vehicle traffic and other engine emissions. Metrics describing the concentrations of ultrafine particles include the number of particles, black carbon content and the concentration of the so-called lung deposited surface area. In its latest guideline on air quality monitoring in 2021, the WHO recommended the initiation of both particle number measurements and black carbon measurements, and for the first time defined high and low concentration limits for the particle number concentration.
The highly advanced measurements, long measurement series and air quality modelling expertise have improved the accuracy of the data related to air quality. A good example of this is the so-called air quality map developed by HSY and the Finnish Meteorological Institute used in Finland in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area which is based on a fairly comprehensive measurement network and air quality modelling. The air quality data provided with applications such as air quality maps is available in real-time with a city-block-level resolution, which enables people to obtain highly accurate air quality information and allows for taking air quality data into account in urban planning and construction, for instance. It is quite clear that air quality should be taken into account in the design of buildings and in urban planning. This enables making the dense housing in cities more comfortable and less harmful to health. These activities should pay attention to the fact that there is not yet a full understanding of all the impacts of air quality and related mechanisms or all the roles of air quality various emission sources and atmospheric processes.
As mentioned above, the WHO has recommended the initiation of the monitoring of ultrafine particle concentrations (World Health Organization, 2021). Planning by the EU related to the air quality monitoring indicate a similar trend (European Commission, 2022). This direction highlights the role of traffic as a factor affecting air quality, as it has been identified in many studies as a very important source of ultrafine particles (Rönkkö et al., 2017). It is quite possible that the current methods of defining the air quality index will change in the future so that ultrafine particle and black carbon concentrations will be taken into account in defining the index.
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Teinilä, K., Timonen, H., Aurela, M., Kuula, J., Rönkkö, T., Hellèn, H., Loukkola, K., Kousa, A., Niemi, J.V., Saarikoski, S. (2022) Characterization of particle sources and comparison of different particle metrics in an urban detached housing area, Finland. Atmospheric Environment, 272, art. no. 118939. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2022.118939.
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Kim Yrjälä is a docent of microbial ecology at the University of Helsinki’s Department of Forest Sciences and has worked as a professor of microbial ecology at Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University in China in the period 2018–2022. He is an expert in the carbon-neutral circular economy at the SYKLI Environmental College in Helsinki. He is the assistant editor of the Frontiers in Terrestrial Microbiology journal. He has studied soil microbes that are important for the functioning of different ecosystems, such as mires, forests and agricultural fields. In his research, he examines biomass pyrolysis and how biochar can be used for soil improvement. He completed the Circulator 2.0 circular economy incubator programme in 2023 and developed an idea for the science-based implementation of carbon sequestration and biodiversity in urban planning.
An indicator describing the use of space in cities could serve as a sustainability indicator. Cities are becoming increasingly dense, their number of residents is constantly increasing, the street network is dense, and shops and premises require space. We need green spaces and, above all, soil that provides vital ecosystem services when climate change strikes cities in the form of rising summer temperatures and increasing floods. We need more open surfaces where trees and plants can grow in good quality soils and diverse microbial communities affect carbon sequestration, biodiversity of organisms and the mitigation of floods and heat waves. Quantitative soil monitoring requires an assessment of soil quality. Spoilt soil can be found in all cities, which also must be taken into account in urban planning in accordance with the principles of a sustainable circular economy.
Urbanisation is a strong global trend. People come to cities in the hope of work and a better livelihood, but at the same time, environmental problems and climate challenges are emphasised in a densely populated city. Could cities also bring hope for the achievement of the green transition, heralding sustainable development and increasing the number of green spaces or particularly their quality in the form of a more sustainable urban lifestyle? City officials are informing us that we are running out of space. Cars as well as shops, boutiques and premises require space and parking lots. At the same time, land is increasingly expensive in cities, which is why making room for green spaces is considered economically challenging. Additionally, urban planners may at times lack sufficient competence or knowledge of the possibilities of implementing sustainable development. They may not have sufficiently concrete knowledge of climate change and biodiversity loss which could lead to more goal-oriented and motivated contributions to the green transition. For example, the public image of cities and urban living involves a lot of cars, poorer air quality, asphalt, cement, and, at the personal level, challenges with adaptation after moving from a rural area to the city, a new and unfamiliar environment.
Finland’s new Climate Act (Climate Act 4237/2022) contains a provision based on which Finnish cities and municipalities must draw up a climate policy plan that supports the achievement of the national climate target. However, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo's Government has decided to revoke the entry. The Ministry of the Environment is currently preparing a government proposal to abolish the climate policy plan obligation of municipalities from the Climate Act. A hearing specifically aimed at municipal and regional operators was organised in February 2024 (Climate policy plans of municipalities). Thankfully, some cities that aim to be pioneers in the field have already prepared their climate policy plans, but the implementation of the plans may now slow down. In cities, not enough attention is put on soil ecosystem services. Soil is part of large regulation systems or support services that maintain ecosystem services. Soil biodiversity is essential for most ecosystem services (FAO 2020). Soil sealing or the replacement of soil with materials such as asphalt and concrete, combined with condensation of lower soil layers due to urban development and infrastructure construction, will lead to irreversible loss of significant soil ecosystem services. On average, the “artificial land cover” or consumption of soil amounted to 711 km2 per year between 2012 and 2018 (European Environment Agency, 2019). This growing concern for soil consumption stems from the non-renewable nature of soil. Soil functions are essential for both humans and non-humans inhabiting urban environments. By the end of 2023, the EU’s Soil Strategy for 2030 set out to establish measurable and verifiable national and local targets for reducing land use by 2030 in the EU Member States (European Commission, 2021). This strategy will also strengthen the objective of “no net land take” by 2050. The proposal for a directive to protect and restore soil was published in 2023. These targets are faced with various obstacles. The first obstacle is the state of soil in cities with a strong industrial history and high volumes of contaminated soil. The term ‘soil sealing’ is used to refer to covering the soil. Soil sealing represents a dramatic deterioration of the soil functions (Tobias et al., 2018). A disruption in the soil-regulated water circulation may cause floods, droughts, heat island effects and contamination of surface- and groundwater water.
Climate change has exacerbated everyday life in cities, resulting in heat waves in the summer that endanger the well-being of older people and city residents in poorer health as well as increases in heavy rainfall, causing floods that result in widespread suffering and unexpected economic losses. Solving these problems require cooling measures that affect the temperature, as has been done in Paris, for example, by planting a huge number of trees around the city centre areas (Plan Arbre 2021). This has meant transforming impervious, potentially hot surfaces into open soil areas. This enables reducing the highest summer temperatures in city blocks, allowing for the soil to serve as a water collector during heavy rainfall. The vital functions of soil include, however, carbon sequestration and the maintenance of highly diverse organisms, which together enable plant growth and food production. Soil contains more than 25 per cent of the Earth’s biodiversity and is the basis of food chains that feed people and biodiversity (EU Soil Strategy). If we want, we can increase biodiversity in cities considerably by increasing open soil. So far, little attention has been paid to the fact that favourable microbes in soil and plant root systems ultimately affect human health by improving the functioning of our immune system through the skin microbiota. In construction, too little room is left for green spaces, or their quality and nature do not sufficiently take into account the requirements of sustainable development or existing research data related to climate change and biodiversity loss. The indicator outlined in this chapter highlights the key quantitative and qualitative importance of space in the city and helps to see and find the necessary solutions for the green transition at all spatial levels, including both neighbourhoods and city blocks. In practice, the use of this indicator means that land use is visualised using GIS (Geographic Information System) technology. The Copernicus Land Monitoring Service CLC provides open geographical data on soil sealing and related changes, land use and the state of vegetation in Europe and globally. Urban green spaces can be monitored using the Urban Atlas service of the Copernicus system. This and Finnish open data programmes can be used to monitor changes in soil sealing. Combining newly produced data with city maps enables the identification of the soil cover dynamics at the neighbourhood or city block level. This indicator seeks to pay attention to soil, which is a highly valuable resource and a foundation for all life on earth and through that for plants that use carbon dioxide and ultimately for microbes and various soil animals that contribute to carbon sequestration in the soil.
The idea of this indicator stemmed from natural sciences and more precisely from ecology, soil microbiology and microbial ecology, where methodological developments have enabled precise research into soil microbial diversity, including both quantitative and qualitative research. The diversity of soil and plant microbes can largely be investigated using DNA/RNA-based molecular genetic methods that utilise the large-scale sequencing of microbial genetic material. As a result, Finnish researchers discovered a link between the soil and the microbiota on the human skin and, further, the gut microbiota. Their results showed that, through this pathway, soil microbes can influence the development and functioning of the human immune system (Fyhrquist et al. 2004). The soil has been particularly considered a geological, physical and chemical subject, ignoring the fact that it is full of life that has a significant and concrete impact on the vital functions of the planet. The circulation of organic and inorganic elements in the soil is carried out by the microbes living there, and the greenhouse gases produced are the result of microbial metabolism. Ecology is still a relatively new field of science paving the way by explaining the tasks of living organisms in different ecosystems and in shaping our environment. Microbes were known as pathogens until it was discovered that people also carry a quarter of a kilogram of microbes in their bodies, and it was not before the 2000s that these gut microbes began to be studied more closely using the methods of microbial ecology. This study is focused on microbial communities and understanding microbial diversity. Phytoremediation is a type of phytotechnology in which plants are used to solve environmental problems, such as soil contamination, using trees and plants and the microbes that live in and around them. It also emphasises the importance of so-called endophytic microbes, which live in plant tissues and cells. Different plants can bring various benefits to the urban environment. There is good reason to get rid of monotonous lawns and replace them with diverse plant cover. In Helsinki, street dust is a problem in late winter and spring, and trees with leaves that bind and absorb air pollution can be used to combat this in areas with a lot of traffic. Perennials are important for pollinators and should be grown in sufficient amounts throughout the city. In the remediation of contaminated soils, the quality and quantities of the environmental problem can be illustrated by using the GIS method (maps with local data) to visualise the problem. Local biological data can be collected from neighbourhoods or city blocks and combined with other land use data on maps to include living nature in urban planning.
When I was looking at the basic planning map of the Viikki campus area by the City of Helsinki in 2023, I noticed that something was off. In the map, grey buildings dominated nearly all the area, and green spaces were hidden from view. I was worried that the campus would still not develop in line with sustainable development. Indeed, the question is how we can examine the undertakings of cities through the lens of the green transition and highlight the perspective of science and research in an easily understandable way. Among other things, this question concerns what it is valuable to understand in the development of a city, how nature works and how we can take care of nature and people as part of nature. While trees are the best at carbon sequestration through photosynthesis, they also transfer part of the carbon they bind to the soil through their roots, improving soil quality and activating the root microbes to grow, thus increasing soil diversity. The increasingly sterile environment in cities is causing allergies to increase in humans. At the beginning of the millennium, Finnish researchers Tari Haahtela and Ilkka Hanski showed that children in kindergartens with trees and soil lived healthier lives. The researchers identified a single soil microbe that affected the microbial flora on the children’s skin and through this their gut microbiome, which had a positive effect on the functioning of the immune system (Fyhrquist et al. 2004). We interact with the living environment on a daily basis, and not only need soil and its plants for a better life, but also soil that binds flood waters and trees that provide us shade during hot periods in the summer and protect us against the wind.
On its own, an indicator of the relative shares of sealed surfaces and green spaces does not provide all information about the state of sustainable development, but it brings the use of space to the forefront in neighbourhoods and city blocks. The indicator must be perceived as a dynamic descriptor of land use. New construction and renovation affect the number of sealed areas, and even if we look at soil sealing at the neighbourhood or city block level, it is important that we simultaneously look at the whole and pay attention to whether the changes at the city level are positive from a sustainability point of view. The indicator described here is a good tool for urban planning. It is important to take into account what the sustainability indicator of an area is compared to, and where its usefulness is put to the test or challenged. The indicator can therefore be used in various ways in making comparisons. In 2022, the Helsinki Region Environmental Services Authority HSY used artificial intelligence to map out impermeable and permeable surfaces for the first time. The new Helsinki region land cover dataset classifies land area into impermeable surfaces, green surfaces, open rock, bare ground and water areas. The data is used for purposes such as stormwater analyses and monitoring the state of the environment. The dataset is an example of how indicators can be developed to a more accurate direction. A more detailed qualitative examination can be carried out when examining the quality of permeable surfaces. This could be made to include biodiversity parameters, such as the diversity of vegetation and microbial diversity as a brand-new descriptor of soil quality and, consequently, soil carbon sequestration potential. Opening up (and restoring) soil is therefore a key change that enables cities to better adapt to the consequences of climate change.
The indicator presented in this article is the ratio between impermeable and permeable surfaces. In the indicator, permeable surfaces include green surfaces and bare ground. The used surface classification follows the one used in the Helsinki region land cover dataset. While the Helsinki dataset also includes the separate categories of open rock and bodies of water, this indicator does not take them into account. Green surfaces can be scored according to carbon sequestration and diversity. Bare ground can be scored according to the soil quality (including contaminated soil) and the diversity of the microbiota living in the soil.
Bossard et al. (2023) presented their case study on the Brussels Capital Region at the Reykjavik Conference of 22 June–24 June 2023. In line with a multi-level approach, the Heyvaert neighbourhood was selected as the case study and the urban parcels of the neighbourhood are studied in detail. In the below soil cover image of Brussels (Bossard & Cavalieri, 2023), built surfaces are displayed in black, sealed surfaces in grey, unsealed surfaces in light blue and water in darker blue. On the left of the lower part of the image, the percentages of the covered built and built and sealed areas are given. On the right is the use of spaces adjusted according to the RRU rules with different building intensities.
Figure 1 (Bossard & Cavalieri, 2023)
Opening up the soil may have significant side effects in cities such as Brussels, with a strong industrial history and large amounts of contaminated soil (Bossard et al. 2023). Soil washing is necessary when opening contaminated soil. Soil remediation may cause significant greenhouse gas emissions, high energy consumption and waste production, which will result in high costs (Grifoni et al. 2022). These issues have led to the emergence of the ideas of “risk-based land use management” or “green remediation”. This advocates for creating a better balance between the effects of remediation and its environmental and social benefits. Therefore, the qualitative indicator analysis may be extended to the examination of contaminated soil, giving visibility to the locations of these areas and how environmental risks can be reduced in densely populated areas. This can be done, for example, by using in situ remediation methods, such as phytoremediation, which utilise the ecosystem services provided by the soil (Yrjälä et al. 2017). The case study on the Brussels Capital Region is particularly interesting as it reflects a renewed interest in soil issues in the region. The “Good soil” strategy (Centre d'Ecologie Urbaine et al., 2020) will be implemented with the aim of preserving, improving, and collecting information on urban soil. Among other things, it has led to the introduction of soil quality monitoring tools. There is growing awareness of the need to pay attention to soil in the field of urban planning (Barcelloni Corte & Boivin, 2022; Vialle, 2021; Viganò & Guenat, 2022). Nevertheless, the perception of soil as a living and complex space challenges the current, more limited view of soil as nothing more than a technical support function.
In Brussels, Belgium, regional regulations are developing in a direction where a greater share is reserved for unbuilt and uncoated soil in new projects and building renovation projects (Projet de Règlement Régional d'Urbanisme (RRU), 2022). A new regulation sets a minimum requirement of 30% for unbuilt surfaces, and at least 75% of this unbuilt surface should be uncoated and converted into a green area.
Barcelloni Corte, M., & Boivin, P. (2022). Soils for Transition: Towards an Urbanism of ‘Living Soil’. Oase, 110.
Bossard, Alexandre; Cavalieri, Chiara; Ska, Olivier; Pourtois, Joëlle (2023). Urban Soil Assessment: Limiting Negative Environmental Impacts and Optimising Ecological Benefits of Urban Soil Transformation. EURA 2023 (Reykjavik, Iceland, 22/06/2023 - 24/06/2023).
Centre d’Ecologie Urbaine, ULiège, Études et Recherches Urbaines, & CSDIngénieurs. (2020). Good Soil, Étude exploratoire en vue d’une gestion intégrée des sols en région bruxelloise, D1: Diagnostic (p. 233) [Text]. Bruxelles Environnement.
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European Commission. (2021). Soil Strategy for 2030, Reaping the benefits of healthy soils for people, food, nature and climate. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52021DC0699.
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Finnish environment institute (Syke), European Environment Agency (EEA), Urban atlas, 2018. https://ckan.ymparisto.fi/dataset/kaupunkiatlas-urban-atlas.
Fyhrquist, Nanna; Ruokolainen, Lasse; Suomalainen, Alina; Lehtimäki, Sari; Veckman, Ville; Vendelin, Johanna; Karisola, Piia; Lehto, Maili; Savinko, Terhi; Jarva, Hanna; Kosunen, Timo U.; Corander, Jukka; Auvinen, Petri; Paulin, Lars; von Hertzen, Leena; Laatikainen, Tiina; Mäkelä, Mika; Haahtela, Tari; Greco, Mari; Hanski, Ilkka; Alenius, Harri (2004). Acinetobacter species in the skin microbiota protect against allergic sensitization and inflammation. J Allergy. Clin. Immunol. 134-6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaci.2014.07.059.
Grifoni, M., Franchi, E., Fusini, D., Vocciante, M., Barbafieri, M., Pedron, F., Rosellini, I., & Petruzzelli, G. (2022). Soil Remediation: Towards a Resilient and Adaptive Approach to Deal with the Ever-Changing Environmental Challenges. Environments, 9(2), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.3390/environments9020018.
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Tobias, S., Conen, F., Duss, A., Wenzel, L. M., Buser, C., & Alewell, C. (2018). Soil sealing and unsealing: State of the art and examples. Land Degradation & Development, 29(6), 2015–2024. https://doi.org/10.1002/ldr.2919.
Yrjälä, K., Sipilä, T.P., Mukherjee, S. (2017). Rhizoremediation in Cold Climates. In: Margesin, R. (eds) Psychrophiles: From Biodiversity to Biotechnology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57057-0_29.
Jukka Käyhkö is a professor of geography at the University of Turku and the leader of the Turku Urban Climate Research Group (TURCLIM). He chairs the Working Group for Sustainability in Education of the University of Turku and served as a member of the Finnish Climate Change Panel in the period 2020–2023. His research is extensively focused on global change; interactions between humans and nature in both cities and natural environments. His research themes include wind erosion, floods, reindeer husbandry, and urban climate and its links to health.
Most of us have personal experiences of urban heat islands. On a hot summer day, we tend to seek shelter from the uncomfortable heat of stone-built city centres and head for parks or even away from the city. Meanwhile, when winter temperatures sway around zero, white snow is but a distant dream in the city: people wade through wet, dreary slush on city streets. How do urban heat islands emerge and what can they tell us about the sustainability of the city?
An urban heat island (UHI) refers to the relative warmth of the city in relation to its surroundings. In Finland’s conditions, the emergence of heat islands is based on two main phenomena: 1) especially during the summer, solar radiation is absorbed by the city’s structures during the day and released at night in the form of thermal radiation, and 2) especially during the cold season, lost heat from buildings and traffic is released to the atmosphere. As a whole, a city typically acts as a big, warm island, while smaller, separate heat islands may also form inside the city. These include e.g., densely-built housing estates, between which there may be cooler sparsely-built areas. In other words, differences in temperature can be examined on different scales, starting from the building and block level, and the selected scale is proportional to the given information need. In practice, however, the capacity to quantify the heat island is often limited by the number and accuracy of the available temperature data – reliable observations are not available for all areas.
The formation of a heat island is always case-specific and its intensity reflects roughly the size of the city – the larger the city, the more extensive and intense the heat island. The factors regulating the urban climate can be roughly divided into four categories (Oke et al. 2017, 20–25): the materials of which the infrastructure is composed (fabric, including metal, glass, asphalt etc.), the quality of the land cover in the city (land cover, permeable, impermeable, covered by buildings etc.), the assembly of the infrastructure (structure, urban canyons, building height and distance etc.) and city functions (metabolism, traffic, heating, cooling etc.).
The overall climate of the region naturally dictates the limits of temperature variation, and the climate of the city is part of the local climate, which is also influenced by many factors other than the infrastructure and metabolism of the city. In other words, in addition to buildings, covered surfaces, transport and other actual urban parameters, the climate of a city is also affected by “natural” factors, such as elevation variations, water areas and various manifestations of vegetation. The climate of a city is a complex local phenomenon consisting of systemic interactions of these different factors.
Regional differences in temperature have a diurnal rhythm in relation to the effect of various background parameters. As a result, in addition to the urban heat island, also a reverse, more subdued urban cool island (UCI) phenomenon can occur under suitable conditions, such as due to shading by high-rise buildings, especially during daytime (Yang et al. 2017). Large-scale weather patterns play a major role in UHI formation. Strong wind dissolves the heat island before it has even had time to form. Meanwhile, advection by weak airflow can dislocate the forming heat island in downwind direction. Indeed, calm or weak-winded weather is an important precondition for the emergence of a heat island. Cloud cover in turn reduces regional temperature differences by preventing the heat radiating from the ground from escaping into space and rather radiates it back towards the ground. Typically, the heat island phenomenon is the strongest during calm, cloudless nights a few hours after sunset; the surroundings of the city cool down rapidly, while the solar heat stored in the city's structures during daytime – and in winter, heat lost from buildings and traffic – radiates to the environment and keeps temperatures higher in the city centre. For example, in Turku, temperature differences of more than 10°C have been observed between the city centre and its surroundings (Suomi & Käyhkö 2013).
In Finland, seasonality has a clear impact on the regional occurrence of the heat island phenomenon. In late spring and early summer, sea and lake areas are typically relatively cool after winter forming a cool zone near the shoreline in coastal cities. In late summer and early autumn, the opposite effect occurs: the relatively warm water areas raise the temperature of shore areas, especially at night time (Väyrynen et al. 2017).
Several methodological challenges are associated with the identification and quantification of heat islands. Typically, cities have only a handful of temperature observation points, with large blind spots between them. Only a few cities have a network of temperature observation points dense enough to allow mapping the heat islands in detail. Distance-based interpolation between the observation points does not serve as a reliable method, as the temperatures do not change linearly, but instead involve major local variation regulated by the parameters listed above.
The lack of direct thermometer observations can be compensated by modelling. While numerical weather models are capable of producing reliable temperature forecasts (Suomi et al. 2024), they require high computing power that undermines their wide application. In addition, the spatial resolution of weather models is at best only in the range of several hundred metres. Another, more affordable method involves using remote sensing data. Many satellites today have sensors that detect thermal radiation emitted from surfaces. Such datasets can be used as the basis for forming thermal maps (e.g., Monteiro et al. 2021). However, it must be understood that the observed temperatures are ground (or other surface, such as rooftop) temperatures, not air temperatures. The surface temperatures detected by remote sensing technology can be used as the basis of predicting the air temperature computationally with the help of open data (e.g., Alvi et al. 2022), but even in this case, challenges emerge due to the relatively coarse spatial and temporal resolution of thermal satellite sensors.
The TURCLIM research group of the Department of Geography and Geology at the University of Turku has made detailed observations on the local climate in the City of Turku and its surroundings since 2001. Automatic sensors record air temperature and relative humidity at the height of 3 meters every 30 minutes, currently in over 80 observation points. Such a high-frequency and long-term urban climate observation dataset is unique even in global terms. The collected point data can be used as such for the observation and interpretation of regional temperature differences, but naturally, there are still blind spots between the observation points. However, such a dense network of observation points provides an opportunity for high-resolution spatial modelling. The key parameters affecting the city’s climate – soil cover and buildings, water bodies and elevation differences – have been used to build linear regression models, which allow for constructing spatially continuous temperature surfaces (Hjort et al. 2011, Suomi & Käyhkö 2011, Suomi et al. 2012, Hjort et al. 2016). The used datasets are open data (CORINE land cover dataset, digital elevation model DEM). This method has been employed in producing temperature maps for the Turku region with a grid size of 100 x 100 m2 – in other words, on a scale roughly equivalent to a city block. Modelling can be used to determine the regional occurrence and intensity of heat islands, and the models can also be used to calculate diurnal temperature differences or averages for longer periods of time in selected situations, such as during heat waves.
The linear regression model built for Turku has also been applied to other large cities in Finland: the overall local temperature has been taken as the basis for calculating regional temperature differences using the above-mentioned environmental parameters in a regression model (see Figure below).
Heat island maps depicting four urban regions during a week-long heat wave on 25–31 July 2018 at 02:00 a.m. at night, when the heat island phenomenon is typically the most pronounced. The maps have been calculated using a linear regression model based on TURCLIM data collected in the City of Turku. The magnitude of the nocturnal heat island was three to four degrees Celsius in all the urban regions. Source: TURCLIM/Juuso Suomi
Many of the root causes of the urban heat island phenomenon can be found in the city’s land cover and the infrastructure fabric and assembly. The existence and intensity of the heat island therefore reflect the urban planning solutions that have been made over time and are actualising around us today. Urban heat island is well-suited as an indicator of phenomena occurring at the level of city blocks and neighbourhoods, as the emergence and manifestation of the heat island occur on a roughly equal scale. Urban heat island is one of the factors indicating the heat risk, which is a combination of a hazard (e.g., a heat wave), exposure (e.g., inhabitants of the urban heat island area) and vulnerability (e.g., the elderly, people with chronic diseases, and other vulnerable groups) (Jurgilevich et al. 2023).
Based on a series of observations made over two decades, the average intensity of the heat island in Turku is slightly over 2 °C. As a reference to this two-degree difference, we may consider it to be of the same magnitude as the predicted increase in the global average temperature from the pre-industrial era to the end of the current century. In other words, the inhabitants of city centres can be considered to be living in future climate temperatures compared to the surrounding areas. People living in different areas of cities are exposed to heat stress in different ways both today and in the future.
A collaboration project HERCULES between the University of Turku, the Finnish Meteorological Institute and the University of Helsinki (2020–2023) studied the impact of global warming and urban heat islands on cardiovascular mortality in Finland. The excess mortality caused by heat waves was studied in Finlands’ six largest cities during the summer seasons of 2000–2018 based on an extensive cohort dataset covering over 360,000 inhabitants (Kivimäki et al. 2023). The cardiovascular mortality rate was 1.7 times higher during heat waves than with normal summer temperatures, and at the population level, three per cent of all cardiovascular deaths during summer were explained by heat. From the point of view of heat islands, there was a worrying observation that the risk of heat-related death was the highest in densely built residential areas where temperatures rise more than in their surroundings. This elevated risk was also observed in disadvantaged residential areas and residents of blocks of flats, those over 65 years of age, and persons with lifestyle risk factors such as obesity or high alcohol consumption. This result sends an important message for the land use planning and construction of residential buildings in cities, also from perspectives such as the segregation development.
Understanding the underlying mechanisms of the heat island phenomenon provides an opportunity to plan a better city when the global warming is challenging society’s ability to mitigate and adapt to change in multiple ways. In an increasingly urban society, both in Finland and globally, cities play a key role in this context.
Urban planning aims at mitigating climate change on the one hand and adapting to the changing climate on the other. Increasing the density of the urban structure is commonly considered as a feasible climate change mitigation measure, as it reduces the need for transport and related energy consumption and translates into lower greenhouse gas emissions. However, in a dense urban structure the heat island phenomenon intensifies. Based on the regression model prepared for the Turku urban area, a 50 per cent increase in urban land use raises the temperature locally by around half a degree (Climate-Proof City – The Planner’s Workbook, s.a.). From the perspective of climate change adaptation, urban planning should instead aim to make the structure sparser and increase green spaces to suppress the urban heat island effect.
In a changing climate and with the growing risks caused by extreme temperatures, discussions on how to take into account different, often opposing perspectives, have emerged among the key questions of urban planning – how to accommodate compromises in the urban design concept. Jurgilevich et al. (2023) point out that in addition to the direct effects of high temperatures, there are numerous deferred and indirect impacts, whose identification and related adaptation measures require increasing attention. Examples of such deferred effects include different challenges related to mental well-being and gradually developing diseases caused by heat stress. Examples of indirect impacts include vector-borne diseases and reduced quality of water and air. The lack of indicators describing the practicality of adaptation measures has been identified as a particular challenge. In a focus group discussion carried out in Helsinki, Tuomimaa et al. (2023) identified 16 adaptation indicators that are proposed to be introduced to urban planning.
Urban heat island indicates the different dimensions of sustainability in complex systemic ways. It is linked to social sustainability in the form of heat risk that emerges through exposure and vulnerability. Urban planning process should avoid the placement of vulnerable groups in heat island areas. Including more green spaces in these areas could alleviate extreme temperatures. The new construction production in cities should ensure that it does not lead to intensifying existing heat island areas, nor producing entirely new ones, at least without awareness of these adverse effects. Ecological sustainability is linked with urban heat island especially in densely populated areas where only a small number of green spaces remain: not enough room has been reserved for ecosystem services such as rich biodiversity and stormwater management. Green areas are known to have positive connections also to residents’ mental well-being (Fagerholm et al. 2022), which means that ecological and social benefits are strongly intertwined. Urban heat islands have links even to economic sustainability: an increase in urban green infrastructure enables alleviating the heat island phenomenon, but the economic interests of investors and building constructors often dominate over green spaces in urban planning. As a versatile sustainability indicator, the urban heat island phenomenon encourages us to consider new, innovative ways to reflect on the broad, systemic benefits of a more spacious urban structure from the perspective of the different dimensions of sustainability.
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Tommy Lindgren is an architect and a lecturer in urban design at Aalto University. He works with design, architecture criticism and research. His research is focused on the tools, processes and discourses that shape the built environment around us.
The built environment serves as a stage for different material and energy flows – maintaining the operation of an environment and continuously developing it requires materials and energy. However, by looking at cities, we may conclude that different regions meet their needs in various ways and have distinct metabolisms. Therefore, describing the material and energy turnover of a region with a single indicator allows us to summarise how it responds to different needs for change. The indicator informs us whether the region is capable of sustaining its operations in a sustainable manner or whether it requires large amounts of energy and material over time. The indicator is defined as the ratio between material and energy flows and total floor area based on data provided by the methods of calculating the properties of the built environment used in Finland. The challenges and open questions related to the definition of the indicator are described for further development.
When we are looking for examples of a sustainable urban environment on the scale of neighbourhoods and city blocks, two candidates emerge that appear very different on the surface level. On the one hand, environments such as Eco-Viikki in Helsinki, Finland, or Vauban in Freiburg, Germany are worthy of their titles as sustainable built environments, thanks to their numerous technical and ecologically conscious solutions that reduce energy consumption and promote emission-free urban life (e.g. Medearis and Daseking, 2012); on the other, it is also easy to perceive environments such as Ullanlinna in Helsinki or the Old Town of Stockholm as sustainable, as they have literally sustained the test of time without any changes at the surface level. What these two environmental types that reflect sustainability in considerably different ways have in common, however, is the stability of their energy and material turnover. Rapid flows in energy production and consumption as well as slower movements of material reserves incorruptibly provide us with information about change in cities.
Minor or negative material and energy consumption is an indicator of a sustainable built environment. A successful built environment does not consume an unreasonable amount of energy to maintain its operations (heating, cooling, systems and mobility), nor does it require drastic changes (producing demolition waste and demanding new construction material). This kind of indicator does not take a stand on the physical nature of the environment as such – the energy and material turnover speaks for itself.
The indicator can be used to:
In other words, energy and material turnover can, at the neighbourhood level and as an indicator of sustainable urban development, provide us with new insights concerning changes in regions and differences between regions, and it also can enable even surprising findings on the relationships between the properties of regions. Meanwhile, at the theoretical level, the indicator can serve as a multidisciplinary concept between very different discourses: the indicator is based on calculations of emissions, but simultaneously provides an opportunity to open aesthetic-ethical discussions on waste, patina and the value of renovations.
The definition of the indicator requires a description that takes into account material and energy flows in a manner proportional to the existing building stock in the area.
When formulating the definition of the indicator, we have to solve a number of challenges. These can be classified as involving, above all, spatial and temporal limitations, as well as the commensurability of the examined issues and the comparability of the indicator. By clarifying the boundaries and describing the comparisons, we end up with a proposal for an indicator that provides us with an idea of the sustainability of an area.
Even by its definition, a neighbourhood or city block level indicator requires a clear spatial frame: what kinds of boundaries do we set for the spatial units that the indicator concerns? In the literature on material and energy flows, the concept of urban metabolism (Wolman, 1965) plays a central role, including both the amounts of input and output of materials and energy, but put in this context, the concept of space has been found problematic and complex (Bahers et al. 2022). In the literature on urban metabolism, the different scales used in spatial framing are typically considerably larger than a city block or neighbourhood (for example, comprising a densely built area and the surrounding rural area) and taking the consumption-based calculation of emissions into account as part of the whole also poses a particular challenge. Indeed, Ala-Mantila et al. have aptly described cities as “condensations of a global metabolism” (2022, p.229, translation from Finnish by the author), areas with blurred borders that exist in large flow networks. Huuhka et al. (2024) have addressed the challenges of assessing material flows and related emissions, as well as the properties of Finnish datasets – even with their shortcomings, our construction and infrastructure registers enable forming a fairly accurate picture of material reserves in international comparisons, and steps have already been taken towards forming more comprehensive centralised public registers.
As pointed out above, the material and energy turnover includes a huge range of issues from construction materials to energy and consumer goods to food as well as waste. However, in practice, the measurement methods require simplification and choosing some unit or presentation method, even though this will lead to losing some nuances of the overall picture.
Various regional sustainability calculation or scoring systems are currently in use internationally (1). Methods based on full life-cycle assessment (LCA) are typical, even though they are problematic due to the selected life cycles (whether 50 or 100 years): the life cycles of the built environment cannot be unambiguously assessed; instead, empirical knowledge shows that aspects such as technical or material obsolescence may not be the reason for disassembly (Huuhka & Lahdensivu, 2016; Huuhka & Kolkwitz, 2021). In Finland, regional examination and planning can be carried out with the assistance of tools such as the MALTTI tool to support low carbon-neighbourhood construction (Säynäjoki et al. 2014), the regional eco-tools for urban development KEKO (Lahti et al. 2012) and the low-carbon assessment method for Helsinki’s local detailed plans HAVA (Puurunen et al. 2021).
Of the tools presented above, HAVA demonstrates the multidimensional nature of careful assessment. The method takes into account the impacts of preconstruction, infrastructure and public areas, buildings and plots, energy consumption, transport and soil (Puurunen et al. 2021, pp. 17–43).
HAVA serves as an assessment method at the local detail plan level, and its accuracy can therefore be considered suitable for examining neighbourhoods and city blocks. Thanks to its coverage, HAVA or a similar method can serve as a source of data for the turnover indicator, and the unit used by HAVA to describe the carbon footprint and handprint, kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e/a) per year, is also suitable for both material and energy. The tool also enables making a clear distinction between material stocks and embodied energy, as well as incoming and outgoing materials and operational energy.
We can now draft a more detailed description of the indicator based on the environmental characteristics expressed in commensurate units. It is also essential that the indicator is related to the built surface area; in this case, the relation should be established with the total floor area of the area (k-m2, ; in this context, floor area is understood as an area according to buildings’ main purpose outlined by the outer surface of the exterior walls, as this is the definition used in Finnish planning documents). By distinguishing between the material base in the area and the energy this contains, which is not, in principle, part of the indicator’s value, and the incoming and outgoing materials and operational energy, which in turn acts as the indicator's numerator (E o), we can present a formula of the relationship between these and the floor area, which provides meaningful information about the material and energy turnover in the area over a one-year period.
Material and energy turnover indicator.
As a rule, the indicator takes into account all kinds of material flows and operational energy described as emissions, i.e. reflecting the emissions required for maintaining the area in a situation where the floor area remains unchanged. Disassembling or further constructing the built environment simultaneously affects the floor area and material flows in the area – emissions from materials in the new floor area will be included in the material flows in the area, as will the emissions from disassembly.
For example, if areas x and y include the same amount of built-up environment but the maintenance of y requires less energy, its metabolism indicator will be lower than that for area x in a typical year. However, if some of the buildings in area y are first disassembled and then a corresponding floor area is newly constructed, the amount of material and energy flows described as emissions will increase, and the value of the indicator will probably exceed the value of area x.
The roles of material and energy are not unambiguous; for example, the production of solar power in an area technically allows generating free energy – from solar radiation– but the emissions embedded in the materials used in solar panels must also be taken into account. Energy coming from outside the area must be calculated based on the emissions caused by its production method.
This draft provides a proposal for an indicator that can be called the material and energy turnover of an area or the area’s metabolic rate. Testing the indicator in practice will demonstrate its viability and the specifications or generalisations required by the definition. This article has already touched upon some weaknesses and areas requiring more detailed articulation – particularly in relation to problems related to framing – and these open questions are addressed below for further development: in particular, there is a need for development regarding the nature of disassembly and construction materials, problems with the definition of spatial limits, challenges in taking location into account, and the choice of suitable timeframes .
The kind of rough examination, as presented in this paper, fails to pay attention to interesting observations essential from the perspective of the circular economy, for example concerning the type of disassembled and constructed buildings (Huuhka & Kolkwitz, 2021, p. 954). This is a major shortcoming, especially if the built environment is examined as a bank of spare parts or an “urban mine” (Huuhka et al. 2024, p. 19). For example, how can the nature of buildings designed for disassembly – or other reuse of construction materials – be taken into consideration? In some cases, the disassembly or relocation of buildings may have a significant impact on the metabolic indicator, even if the disassembly is done sustainably – leading to structure relocation or to the reuse of construction materials and components.
By defining a neighbourhood or a city block as our unit of examination, we exclude a number of dimensions that play a key role in urban metabolism, such as emissions that are essential for consumption-based assessments related to the location but occur elsewhere. In this respect, the assessment of the emissions related to the production of construction materials is a good start, but in assessing the emissions of many other types of consumption we have to still to rely on statistical models and generalisations. An even more precise spatial framing, for example to the city block level, may also lead to situations where unique individual cases effect the indicator at the expense of describing the general nature of the urban environment. The measurement of emissions, which is problematic even at the neighbourhood level, becomes increasingly challenging as the area examined is made smaller. A good example of the challenges of a city-block-level examination (and some models to be developed further) can be found among the entries to the Low2No competition organised by Sitra, where the city-block-scale and comprehensive sustainability guided working groups (Edelman & Kirkinen, 2010).
Similarly, characteristics relevant to a place and its location and the impacts this has, such as transport emissions, are ignored. The question of location remains open in this proposal – in principle, it would be possible to include the effects of relative location in the assessment (i.e. what is the location of the city block like in relation to the rest of the urban structure and the transport and service network). Similarly, excluding the infrastructure required by the city block from the examination is relevant – can we talk about a sustainable city block if it also requires heavy infrastructure to function as part of the urban fabric?
A neighbourhood or city block level indicator also requires a clear temporal framing: which limits do we set for the temporal units that the indicator is based on? The temporal observation periods pose a different challenge for us as changes in the environment rarely constitute a simple cumulative series, an overall picture that is constructed from one moment to another, but rather conditions that may remain stable for a long time only to change qualitatively in the blink of an eye. Examined through the lens of energy and material, the built environment consists of areas that are interdependent in different ways: the environment must be able to maintain its purpose of use (e.g. as a living environment), and if this is lost, either as a change in the material properties of the building stock or in energy flows, the whole will not only change quantitatively but also qualitatively. Instead of the one-year period presented here, longer periods consisting of multiple years could be taken into account, and periods of several decades might be most illustrative of the sustainability of the urban environment from the perspective of this indicator.
An unsustainable environment produces high emissions, either continuously or sporadically, while a sustainable environment only produces moderate emissions or binds them continuously. At best, material and energy turnover reflects the characteristics that a sustainable city needs: energy wisdom, repairability and cherishability.
Endnotes:
Bahers, J.-B., Athanassiadis, A., Perrotti, D. and Kampelmann, S. 2022. The place of space in urban metabolism research: Towards a spatial turn? A review and future agenda. Landscape and Urban Planning, 221(2022), pp.1–11.
Edelman, H. & Kirkinen, J. 2010. Low2No – A sustainable building design competition. Helsinki: The Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra.
Lahti, P., Heinonen, J., Nissinen, A., Rantsi, J., Seppälä, J. & Säynäjoki, E. 2012. Alueellisen ekotehokkuuden määrittely. Espoo. VTT Tutkimusraportti VTT.
Huuhka, S. & Kolkwitz, M. 2021. Stocks and flows of buildings: Analysis of existing, demolished, and constructed buildings in Tampere, Finland, 2000–2018. Journal of industrial ecology, 25(4), pp. 948-960.
Huuhka, S., Köliö, A., Kuula, P., & Lahdensivu, J. 2024. Rakennetun ympäristön sisältämät materiaalit ja niiden virrat: Katsaus menetelmiin ja aineistoihin yhdyskuntasuunnittelun näkökulmasta. Yhdyskuntasuunnittelu, 61(3), 14–47. https://doi.org/10.33357/ys.113003.
Huuhka, S. & Lahdensivu, J. 2016. Statistical and geographical study on demolished buildings. Building Research & Information, 44(1), pp. 73–96.
Medearis, D., Daseking, W. 2012. Freiburg, Germany: Germany’s Eco-Capital. Beatley, T. (ed.) Green Cities of Europe. Island Press/Center for Resource Economics.
Puurunen, E., Mattinen-Yuryev, M. & Soininen, S. 2021. Helsingin asemakaavojen vähähiilisyyden arviointimenetelmä (HAVA). Helsinki: City of Helsinki.
Säynäjoki, E., Heinonen, J., Säynäjoki, A., Ala-Mantila, S. & Pääkkönen, L. 2014. Työkaluja vähähiiliseen aluerakentamiseen-MALTTI–matalahiilisen aluekehityksen tukityökalu.
Wolman, A. 1965. The metabolism of cities. Scientific American 213(3), pp.179–190.
Yli-Paunu, K. 2023. Guidance for neighbourhood level life cycle assessment. Espoo: Aalto University.
Laura Uimonen is a postdoctoral researcher in the Biodiversity Interventions for Well-being project of the Natural Resources Institute Finland funded by the Strategic Research Council and a university teacher at the Faculty of Built Environment at Tampere University. Her research focuses on biodiversity in urban nature and the utilisation of the health effects of nature in urban and landscape planning.
From the perspective of the species in nature, it is particularly important to enable the life cycle and renewal of native species in their original area, as this allows the organisms with interdependencies to find a habitat as the natural succession of vegetation progresses. Dead wood continuity refers to the different stages of dead wood, all of which involve specific species dependent on decaying wood. At the level of neighbourhoods, enabling the entire life cycle of trees in the forest patches, parks, recreational areas and the courtyards of buildings in densely populated areas provides an important opportunity to improve the biodiversity of urban nature. This makes the amount of dead wood at different stages of degradation an apt indicator of the diversity of neighbourhoods and city blocks. However, understanding the organic cycle of urban trees as part of urban planning and design requires not only extensive cooperation between different sectors and environmental protection, management and maintenance but also space solutions for plots and a new mindset related to the processing of organic material in neighbourhoods.
Keywords: blue-green infrastructure, life cycle of trees, dead wood, dead wood continuity, urban nature
There is increasing knowledge in urban planning of the fact that the carrying capacity of nature is not sustainable without a strong blue-green infrastructure. Good carrying capacity determines whether cities will be able to cope with natural disasters whose risk is increasing as the climate changes (Chester 2024, Chester & Lawton, 2022; Rebuild by design 2018; Gregov et al. 2021). Vegetation, soil and water circulation in cities must be planned increasingly carefully, taking into account the cultural and ecological importance of urban trees.
Trees provide a habitat for thousands of accompanying species including fungi, mosses, lichens, insects, birds and mammals. Old, decomposing and dead trees are exactly what many species, of which there are approximately 5,000 in Finland, need. (Keto-Tokoi & Siitonen 2021, 6–9) Dead wood refers generally to a dead tree trunk or part of a trunk where the decayed part may be recently dead hard wood or wood whose degradation has progressed further as well as brown or white rot depending on the type of fungus species causing the wood to rot.
Dead wood occurs naturally in large amounts in old-growth forests, where trees grow old and are exposed to winds, lightning strikes and chipping by woodpeckers. Older trees known as veteran trees (Siitonen 2012:390) occur especially in cities. Wood decay is a valuable intermediate phase of the life cycle of trees that sustains life. Dead wood at the different stages of decay is one of the most important characteristics of wooded habitats and indicators of their natural state (Punttila 2023, 108). The scarcity of wood decay in forests is a major problem for biodiversity in Finland. The majority of Finnish forests are commercial forests. Indeed, it may come as a surprise that urban trees are more diverse than commercial forests. Similarly as in old-growth forests, fungi and polypores that are causing wood decay, as well as the insects, birds and other organisms that exploit them are part of urban nature. (Korhonen 2022, 2021)
When old-growth forests are scarce or remote from each other, old trees in the urban environment can serve as substitute environments. Urban trees are susceptible to stress caused by factors such as pollution, drought due to impervious surfaces, soil compaction, heat fluctuations due to the heat island phenomenon, winds and damage due to human activity. Nevertheless, urban trees often grow to be old in parks, forest islands and on streets and squares. Older trees are also found in nature reserves and arboreta created within urban structures in Finland. Urban trees play an important role in controlling biodiversity loss, as the decayed wood matter of sturdy temperate deciduous trees, such as oaks and maples, is valuable for many endangered species, even if the large deciduous trees have previously been saved in cities mainly for landscape reasons. Dead wood can serve as a microhabitat, i.e. as hollows in decaying trees, the rot that emerges inside hollow trees, dead branches and forks, even merely as woody decay or dead roots which serve as habitats for specific species. (Nieminen 2020, 10–13; Hyvärinen et al. 2019, 32–47; Siitonen 2012, 151, 386) The full benefits of dead wood are not yet entirely known. Understanding the importance of organic cycles is increased by research findings on the health impacts of beneficial microbes in plant material and soil on immunity in humans, a topic which was examined in the Adele project and the ongoing Biodiversity Interventions for Well-being (BIWE) research project (Puhakka et al. 2019a, 2019b; BIWE 2021-2023).
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have increased the value of green spaces at all levels of planning, from regional plans to individual detailed plans. Internationally, urban trees are significant as ecosystem services and in playing a part in climate change adaptation (Rötzer et al. 2018; Lu et al. 2021). In Finland, municipal tree policies, tree registers and testing of varieties capable of adapting to climate change serve as evidence of the efforts to preserve urban trees (Tampereen kaupunkipuulinjaus 2020, Turun kaupunkipuulinjaus, Helsingin kaupunkipuulinjaus 2014, Helsingin kaupunkikasviopas 2020). For years, municipalities have guided the planting of trees as a part of building permits and supervised the felling of trees on private plots. Deadfall, insect hotels and decaying fences have been included in the green factors in land use planning (e.g the City of Tampere’s Green Factor). In addition, the climate guards and biodiversity programmes recently introduced by municipalities take into account how all decaying organic matter affects the carbon cycle and soil health, which is connected to planetary health (City of Tampere 2023; Kataja-aho & Haimi 2024). In Sweden, policies on sturdy trees ensure that trees that are particularly old can age and decay at their growing site, but the programmes mainly only extend to public green areas (e.g. Gothenburg 2011). Internationally, ancient trees are included in biodiversity metrics (UK 2021, Biodiversity Metrics), but the long-term planning related to the entire process of the life cycle of trees, including dead wood, is still missing especially in local detailed plans in urban environment.
Dead wood is an established indicator in the valuation of forests and wooded areas (UNECE 2021). In forest areas, the total amount of dead wood is monitored by collecting data on tree species, snags, dead standing pines and high tree stumps, and deadfall is examined to determine whether the wood is still hard, decayed at the surface or whether the rotting process has already progressed far. The diversity of dead wood can also be described using a diversity index calculated from the measurement results (Siitonen 2001). The organisms living in dead wood are examined, including wood-rotting organisms, insects, birds and mosses, which provide information on the status of the natural habitat type (Mäkelä & Salo, 2024). Decaying wood is also already being studied in urban forests, which have been highlighted as areas complementing nature conservation networks (Korhonen et al. 2020). As land use planning results in increasingly dense urban structures, it is important to save and restore sufficiently large forested and wooded areas to ensure that these potential ecological stepping stones are connected to the ecological network, safeguarding sufficient habitats for organisms. In parks, dead wood has been mostly explored from the perspective of the effect of wood-rotting organisms on the health and safety of people.
Dead wood is also a suitable indicator of the diversity of neighbourhoods and city blocks. A dead wood indicator in a city is a rather new idea, even though wood-decay fungi in parks have been a topic of interest for both professionals specialising in tree health as well as researchers of biodiversity for a long time. Land use planning must take the perspectives of both the potential risks as well as benefits of trees for all urban residents into account (Kiema 2023a, 7-8). The methods used in forest areas can be applied to urban nature, as the majority of the tree species in parks are varieties processed from forest species. There is no strict boundary between urban trees and forest trees; in Finland, parks around city centres often continue to coastal forests and wooded mires, along the unbuilt water routes to the unbuilt areas surrounding cities, to forests and agricultural environments, forming special habitat networks (Häkkinen 2023, 4).
To mitigate biodiversity loss, pruned trunks of trees that are under the threat of falling are increasingly often left in park areas, tree trunks are left in place and carved into artworks, and trunks are left as deadfall and shaped into benches or used as part of flower beds. Rotten standing trees and snags that are important for birds and insects are left standing in wetlands and beaches, and dead standing pines are left on rocks. Large tree trunks felled to make room for road construction are moved to public areas. (Nieminen 2020; 9–10) Valuable old veteran trees are located in urban parks, on squares, in urban forests, in the grand parks for the oldest public buildings and along park alleys, but also in private yards. According to arborist Sami Kiema (2023a), Esplanade Park in Helsinki is the most central deadwood garden in Finland. The life cycle of trees has been allowed to continue almost without disturbance in suburbs where the loose structure of regional construction and the goal of saving trees from the 1950s to the 1980s resulted in wooded neighbourhoods (Uimonen 2023).
The dead wood indicator is concerned with reserving space in a neighbourhood for the sprouting, spreading and planting of trees, decomposing and composting their leaves, the growth of various tree species separately and together and, ultimately, dying trees. An initial assessment can be used to apply methods obtained from forest areas and develop them as pilots for the purposes of neighbourhoods and city blocks. The local detailed plan and construction guidelines can be used to ensure that trees can die in their natural site or nearby and regenerate naturally or by planting. The carrying capacity of the blue-green infrastructure will increase when attention is paid to the landscape structure, soil and water conditions, as well as the current amount of dead wood and opportunities for the life cycle of trees.
An example of the life cycle of trees can be found in the Sorsapuisto Park (Duck Park) in Tampere, which has been used to preserve individual trees representing various tree species, the trunks and stumps of dead wood have been left in the shore zone, and the abundance of the species is further increased by testing new varieties A new silver willow (Salix alba) has been planted next to a veteran silver willow that has cultural historical significance. (Lehtimäki 2023.)
Figure 1. The Sorsapuisto Park, which surrounds the Sorsalampi pond in Tampere, is an example of a biodiversity concentration in inner city blocks, which serves as a stepping stone to nature. Map Laura Uimonen, City of Tampere open data sets 2024, aerial photograph 2022. CC By 4.0 licence.
Figure 2. Silver willows in the Tampere Sorsapuisto Park. Photo Laura Uimonen 2022
Figure 3. Sorsapuisto Park 2024. New maple species are being tested near old maples. A decision has been made to leave to the park a wooden artwork carved by Operation Pirkanmaa and the artist Juha Käkelä from a lime tree removed to make room for a tram line. The piece was moved to a suitable location in the park where it can continue to decay undisturbed. Photos Laura Uimonen 2024
It is likely that trees will become an equally important part of land use planning as buildings and infrastructure. The life cycle of trees often extends beyond that of buildings if the growth conditions are good. Urban planning, which often spans several decades, can take the life cycle of trees into consideration. Despite decaying, a tree may continue to live upright for centuries and subsequently remain as deadfall for several decades depending on the tree species, trunk age, soil, vegetation and biota of the field layer as well as the microclimate (Kiema 2023b, 11–13). Fostering an ecosystem with a large variety of species in the biota contributing to the decay process requires a lot of information on increasing and monitoring the possibilities of dead wood. The life cycle of trees at the local level is essential, as it is not yet sufficiently well known how the transfer of tree trunks from one area to another affects biota or the ecosystems of urban habitats that are still inadequately known.
The landscape structure of cities and their natural habitat types guide the use of nature-based solutions. The indicators used as an aid and the measurement of biodiversity form extensive entities in which various indicators are inevitably interlinked. The emergence of deadwood and increasing its volume in neighbourhoods require time, which is why master plans and local detailed plans provide a natural opportunity for reserving space for the life cycle of trees. Safeguarding the dead wood continuity in a neighbourhood and even in an individual city block requires multidisciplinary and cross-administrative work. Including dead wood in the urban environment also requires the provision of information and environmental education on the benefits of dead wood and consideration from a safety perspective.
The EU Soil Strategy has identified land take for the construction industry as a key soil degradation factor leading to a significant and irreversible loss of soil ecosystem services (European Commission 2021a, Haavisto 2023, 130). Construction inevitably reduces the ecological quality of the soil, for example through soil compaction and sealing (Finnish Association of Landscape Industries). Organic cycles and wood-rotting organisms are known to improve soil biodiversity, as up to 40% of the total biomass of trees is located underground in the root system. While there is a lot of knowledge of the root system of forest trees and the microbial population of the soil, the root system of urban trees and urban soil remain less well-known (Repo, T. et al. 2011). In cities, soil quality has mainly been examined from the perspective of contaminated soil, radiation and foundation conditions. Meanwhile, knowledge of the positive health impacts of vegetation and soil exposure on the human immune system is only now approaching land use planning process (Grönroos et al. 2019).
In the green factor used in land use planning, deadfall tree is considered a so-called bonus element. Municipalities use the green factor to pursue various nature-related objectives, such as biodiversity and comfort (e.g. the green factors of Tampere, Helsinki and Turku). Developing the deadfall element into an actual dead wood indicator requires information on the tree species, decay rate, dead wood continuity and, above all, a connection to the life cycle of trees.
The life cycle cannot always be facilitated fully on an individual plot, especially when the soil is fully sealed. In this case, a regional green factor set for an individual city block or the neighbourhood as a whole provides an opportunity to promote the lifecycle of trees and the subsequent emergence of dead wood. A regional green factor tool has been developed in the C/O City project and further at Aalto University’s Mainstreaming the Green Factor Tool projects (C/O City 2017, 24-26; Aalto 2021), which have already identified preserved sites (K2), such as old large trees, hollow trees and deadfall as surface area as well as dead wood and insect hotels as point-like objects (K10). The measures to save and protect existing trees in planning projects directly affect the amount of dead wood in the future. If trees need to be removed to make room for construction, both the soil and wood material should be placed on the plot and any trees damaged by construction should also be saved.
The renewal of tree species in their original area is important to ensure that the organisms dependent on them can find a new living space as their natural succession progresses. The indicator supports the life cycle of branches, leaves, forest debris, snags and deadfall on the same plot or area while preserving the organisms dependent on dead wood and restoring soil diversity. Consideration must be given to the urban composting of organic matter, the exploitation of the resulting dirt, the life cycle of trees from seedlings to new sown or sprouting seedlings and the transformation of an old tree into soil, as well as the controlled non-management of the shrub and field layers related to the natural habitat type, such as the decomposition of leaves in the place where they have fallen. At the city block level, space can be allocated to garden composts, dead wood gardens and deadfall by converting areas reserved for lawn into wooded grasslands and by reclaiming space from asphalt-covered roads and parking areas for expansions to parks in city blocks and planting new trees according to the Paris model (Plan Arbre 2021–2026).
In the urban space, it is challenging to achieve the deadwood continuity that the dead wood organisms require. At the same time, good deadwood continuity should include recently dead trees, wood with heat rot and wood at an advanced stage of rot in the same area, all of which have their own species. As wood decay progresses, an individual tree is only a temporary habitat for organisms (Korhonen 2022). The accompanying species of dead wood often require a specific type of dead wood, which is why it is important to ensure the continuing availability of a suitable dead wood type for many species on a scale determined by the ability of the species to spread, which can only be some dozens of metres (Punttila 2024, 108–111).
The dead wood indicator can utilise the information on tree canopy cover and tree groups in spatial data sets and the examination of the species in their field and shrub layers. The dead wood emerging in and transferred to urban areas requires active monitoring and research. The indicator can be made to contain a link to a plan entry for future veteran trees also known as monumental trees (Lehtimäki 2024). In plans, space should be reserved for the underground root system of such trees, avoiding infrastructure construction causing disturbances in the area and providing sufficient space for the tree to grow, taking into account the entire life cycle of the tree. This entry on monumental trees could be piloted both at the local detailed plan level and in underground plans, in line with the Paris method of finding places in historical maps for restoring urban trees by removing asphalt.
In addition to cooperation in environmental protection, management and maintenance, the life cycle of trees requires planners to create solutions for leaving space on plots and use a new way of thinking about the handling of organic material in neighbourhoods. The role of landscape architecture, urban ecology and biology as well as expertise in a number of special characteristics, such as water circulation, is increasingly important in land use planning when aiming for carbon-negative cities. Planning that pays attention to biodiversity requires both areas with new trees and the placement of dead wood material in parks, gardens, and public spaces. Urban forests and wooded patches in cities and suburbs serve as important reserves as areas for natural cycles, soil diversity, original bedrock and the natural life cycle of trees. The treatment of soil masses and organic matter should be enabled at the neighbourhood level to minimise transport emissions. Urban composting, dead wood gardens, fences, deadfall, snags, standing pines and wooden sculptures are already partly included in urban green spaces. Increasing their number will create new learning environments for environmental education, biology, ecology and several recreational groups. In urban landscapes, the life cycle of trees has been a natural part of the aesthetics of cities, which continues to take new forms.
The dead wood indicator requires the provision of information to ensure that the decay process is perceived as a value. The development of the indicator from public green spaces to private gardens could be carried out gradually as pilots, as a starting point for planning competitions and could also utilise the results of biodiversity parks.
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Elias Willberg is a postdoctoral researcher in the Digital Geography Lab research group at the Department of Geosciences and Geography of the University of Helsinki. His research examines sustainable mobility, accessibility, and travel environments, with a particular focus on walking and cycling, as well as the opportunities offered by novel spatial data and geoinformatics.
Tuuli Toivonen is a professor of geography and geoinformatics at the University of Helsinki and the leader of the Digital Geography Lab research group. She has been investigating accessibility, people’s mobility, and the use of space in cities and nature areas with a multidisciplinary group for 15 years.
Accessibility is a key factor influencing people’s everyday choices and travel behaviour. Spatial accessibility indicators describe people’s opportunities for interacting with one another or with places and services, which is why they have become important sustainability indicators for planners and decision-makers. While measuring accessibility may appear simple, it requires a lot of consideration. A genuinely sustainable accessibility indicator pays attention to factors such as the comparability of different travel modes, the variation in travel opportunities over time and between people, the quality and healthiness of the travel environment, and the environmental costs arising from travel. As a result, examining accessibility from multiple perspectives and with various indicators is increasingly important. Such multidimensional examination requires multidimensional data. Thankfully, the improved availability of accessibility data and the rapid development of computational tools offer better opportunities for this work.
Should I go to work today by car or bike? If I go by bike, will I be on time to pick up my children from daycare? What about to the shop? Or should I work from home and save the commuting time? At the collective level, our everyday travel choices have a central impact on the sustainability of cities and societies. What these questions have in common is that they are all linked to spatial accessibility.
Accessibility, meaning the opportunity to interact with other people, services, and regions, has emerged as an important tool not only in research but also in urban planning. Accessibility correlates with many regional indicators ranging from the distribution of population and jobs to the average income level and the price of housing (Cervero, 2005). In the context of workplaces, we can talk about job accessibility, while in relation to services, we refer to service accessibility, and in connection with green spaces to green space accessibility. At the neighbourhood level, their walking accessibility may be of interest.
Accessibility is therefore a key sustainability indicator. From a social perspective, the advantage of accessibility indicators is that they directly describe people’s opportunities for making choices (Wachs & Kumagai, 1973; Handy, 2020). Accessibility is directly linked to the individual well-being, and poor accessibility has been shown to be a significant determinant for social exclusion (Lucas, 2012). Indeed, researchers focusing on transport equity usually pay attention to the accessibility distribution between regions, groups of people and modes of travel (Martens, 2017; Järv et al., 2018).
From the environmental perspective, accessibility-oriented planning offers more alternatives for increasing people’s opportunities without increasing the total amount of travel and the related environmental impacts and energy consumption (Banister, 2008). Dense and mixed land use as well as the good connectivity between places promote opportunities for walking, cycling and public transport instead of private car use, especially in cities.
So how one should measure accessibility? Our research group has been examining this question for over a decade. Accessibility researchers from different fields have developed a large set of methods for measuring accessibility, considering its various dimensions, including land use, transport network, people and time. (Geurs & van Wee, 2004; Miller, 2018). However, travel time has remained the basic unit of accessibility. In one way or another, accessibility indicators measure the cost of travel between two places, which is typically measured in the time spent. Meanwhile, this information can be used as the basis of determining the number of accessible places from a certain location within a certain amount of time.
From the perspective of the sustainable mobility, simple accessibility indicators may include:
The above indicators can be applied to compare regions and examine changes in accessibility landscapes when time series are available. This allows us to better estimate whether the sustainability transformation is moving in the right direction. For example, the greater the temporal difference in travel time between private car and sustainable modes of travel, the higher the number of people who typically choose the fastest travel mode, usually private car, except for the more densely built urban centres.
Despite its apparent simplicity, measuring accessibility requires considering many factors to produce indicators that genuinely reflect people’s opportunities and regional sustainability. Accessibility measuring also involves a paradox. The simpler indicators are easier to communicate and apply in an everyday planning context, but they describe accessibility more roughly compared to more complex indicators (Handy, 2020). Indeed, we will next discuss the dimensions that should be considered in accessibility indicators based on our research.
Comparability is a key requirement for considering different travel modes. Before the 2010s, accessibility research focused largely only on private car accessibility, and when comparisons were made, travel times were not necessarily comparable. The door-to-door principle, which we proposed, and which has later become a common practice in accessibility research, means that all parts of the journey are counted as travel time (Salonen & Toivonen, 2013). From the perspective of private car, this means considering not only driving time but also the delays caused by congestion, the time it takes to reach and walk away from parking areas and the time it takes to find a parking space. Meanwhile, for public transport, the principle also pays attention to the time spent walking to a bus stop and any transfers and waiting times. Cycling accessibility should also include the time spent on locking and unlocking the bicycle.
In accordance with this principle, we have published an open data product called the Helsinki Region Travel Time Matrix in 2013, 2015, 2018 and 2023. The matrix includes comparable travel times by walking, cycling, public transport and private car from all centroids of a 250 × 250 m YKR grid data intended for monitoring the urban structure of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area (Tenkanen & Toivonen, 2020; Fink, Willberg, et al.., 2024). The values behind the calculations have been based on, for example, measurements of typical driving times at different times of the day (Perola, 2023), the time it takes to search for a parking space (Vesanen, 2020) and timetable data based on the GTFS standard for public transport. The methodological principles have been based on openness, transparency, and simplicity to promote the usability and reliability of the data.
Accessibility is not static but is constantly changing in time. Although this simple observation has been recognised in the accessibility research for decades (Hägerstrand, 1970), it is still rarely taken into account in empirical accessibility indicators.
For example, in the context of service accessibility, typical temporal variation is affected by opening hours, changes in the transport network, congestion, public transport timetables, and changes in the presence of the population and related rhythmic patterns. In a 24-hour period, service opening hours particularly have a significant impact on accessibility (Järv et al., 2018; Bergroth et al., 2022). The accessibility of public transport deteriorates significantly in the evenings and at night. In addition, seasons may reduce accessibility, especially when walking, due to slippery and snow-covered streets (Willberg, Fink & Toivonen, 2023). It is important to take these changes into account when planning for equitable access to services for different groups of people with different needs.
Changes in the presence of the population should also be considered. One of the most common assumptions of accessibility analyses is the home address as the origin of a journey. However, for a large part of the population attending work or school, this is true only during certain times of the day and may thus distort the results of accessibility analyses, as we have noticed based on mobile phone data (Bergroth et al., 2022).
Figure 1. Comparable travel times to Helsinki Central Station based on the door-to-door principle using different modes of travel in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. (Tenkanen & Toivonen, 2020)
Accessibility also depends on variations in characteristics, capabilities, and preferences between people. While this neither is not a new observation (Wachs & Kumagai, 1973), accessibility models still typically measure the accessibility of the “average person” (Miller, 2018).
From a social perspective, the assumption may be problematic, as an “average person” is usually assumed to be a capable adult. In this case, accessibility indicators may overestimate accessibility for those population groups where physical limitations are more common. For example, the walking accessibility of everyday services for older people may be substantially poorer than the average accessibility for the general population, when considering physical disabilities (Willberg, Fink & Toivonen, 2023). In fact, in recent years, research in accessibility has paid increasing attention to perceived accessibility and found that perceived accessibility and measured accessibility do not always correspond to each other (Ryan & Pereira, 2021). As a result, we should ask how valuable an indicator is if it measures accessibility but does not correspond to people’s experiences.
At the same time, however, it is important to remember that when measuring the accessibility of regions and groups of people, relying on some kind of averages is necessary. In addition, variations between individual people within population groups may easily be greater than differences between population groups. (Willberg, Fink & Toivonen, 2023). From this perspective, basing planning and accessibility indicators on the needs of those who are less mobile ensures better accessibility for the entire population.
The travel environment also has a key impact on accessibility, especially on walking and cycling. Even a short distance can be considered inaccessible if the route passes through an unsafe area or crossing, or if it lacks a safe walking or cycling path (Ryan & Pereira, 2021). Even good public transport connections may not help if people cannot easily reach or leave a transport stop. The accessibility indicators are increasingly considering factors related to the infrastructure along the route, such as the existence and condition of walking paths, or the number of traffic lights (Gaglione, Cottrill & Gargiulo, 2021). Taking these factors into account may also help to narrow the gap between the perceived and measured accessibility indicators.
In recent years, as a part of an international research trend, we have also paid increasing attention to the healthiness and environmental exposure of routes during travel, including factors such as air quality, noise and greenery exposure (Poom, Willberg & Toivonen, 2021; Willberg et al., 2023). Although it is increasingly possible to integrate environmental exposures describing the route environment into accessibility indicators, extensive integration of health costs is still in its early stages.
In addition to the factors already mentioned, the rich tradition of accessibility research has involved paying attention to and developing ways to integrate several other factors into accessibility indicators. Examples include limited service capacity (e.g. number of hospital beds) (Luo & Wang, 2003; Pereira et al., 2021), competition for jobs and demand for different types of jobs (Pan, Jin & Liu, 2020) as well as financial costs arising from travel, such as the price of fuel or public transport tickets (El-Geneidy et al., 2016). These factors also affect the accessibility landscapes that people have.
What about the environmental burden caused by travel? The transport sector is one of the largest producers of greenhouse gas emissions and directly or indirectly affects all known planetary boundaries when considering life-cycle costs (Dillman et al., 2021). While environmental costs rarely explain people’s travel behaviour, they are crucial to the sustainability of societies, which is why understanding the total costs of accessibility is increasingly important in planning and decision-making (Cui & Levinson, 2018).
Figure 2. The doughnut model for accessibility suggests that accessibility should be measured taking into account social and environmental boundaries. (Willberg et al., 2024)
The “doughnut model for accessibility” that we propose suggests that when measuring overall sustainability, we should consider both planetary boundaries as well as the social minimum limits, which enable meeting everyone's basic needs (Willberg et al., 2024). Above all, the model highlights many contradictions related to social and environmental sustainability. From a social perspective, for example, enabling equitable travel opportunities may well require safeguarding or even increasing the possibilities of private car use in sparsely populated areas. On the other hand, this may mean greater pressure in urban areas to move towards sustainable modes of travel and reduce environmental loads. As a result, the broader question is: is it even possible to offer equitable and sufficient accessibility within environmental limits to the entire population and under what circumstances may this be possible? Although these questions have not yet been extensively explored, we find that addressing them is increasingly central to achieving sustainable societies, cities, and residential areas.
Fortunately, the significant advances in the availability of accessibility data and the development of tools now enable the inclusion of all the aforementioned factors in accessibility indicators, in addition to travel time alone. The availability of accessibility data is at an excellent level in Finland, starting from the hourly locations of the population (Bergroth et al., 2022) road networks, public transport timetables and service opening hours. New open-source accessibility tools, such as r5 and the r5py implementation we have developed alongside the former (Fink, Klumpenhouwer, et al., 2024), enable measuring the accessibility of large areas in a reasonable time and with high resolution and allow for testing different assumptions. Above all, these advances enable us to examine accessibility from many different perspectives, which in itself is a prerequisite for genuine sustainability, considering the many dimensions of sustainability. Indeed, researchers and planners working with accessibility have now better opportunities than ever to tackle sustainability challenges and support planning and decision-making based on diverse and robust accessibility indicators.
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Anssi Joutsiniemi is an associate professor of urban design and planning at the University of Oulu and the editor-in-chief of the Yhdyskuntasuunnittelu journal. His research interests lie in modelling urban development and steering mechanisms.
Historically, street spaces have had a significant impact on the development and formation of cities. The basic assumption is that streets are still not merely channels of mobility, but also serve as key social and cultural environments. Urban planning should shift from an overemphasis on transport towards a broader perspective that recognises and appreciates the diverse role of streets as a producer of a more diverse urban environment. This article is particularly focused on the importance of streets and intersection density as indicators of the quality of urban space. Examining the number of intersections enables revealing other important characteristics of the urban environment related to diversity.
Streets have been an integral part of cities and built-up areas, serving as not only transport routes but also places for social interaction, trade and civic activity. The concept of the street is closely related to urban settlement and the social structure of communities. ”Think of a city and what comes to mind? Its streets. If a city’s streets look interesting, the city looks interesting; if they look dull, the city looks dull.” (Jacobs 1961). Although international literature contains such definitions of the diverse significance of the street, they only somewhat apply to today’s Finland.
The English term road originates from the Old English word rad, which refers to horseback riding. Subsequently, it began to be used to refer to a way or path that was worn by travel, typically by foot or by means of a vehicle. Meanwhile, the term street stems from the Latin word strata, which refers to a paved road from Latin sternere, to spread or cast down. Historically, streets were paths paved with rocks or other durable materials to facilitate and make mobility in urban areas more pleasant. Meanwhile, the primary task of roads is to provide efficient routes for moving between remote locations.
In the Finnish language, the origin of the words katu (street) and tie (road) can be mostly identified based on the way they have been adopted in everyday language. The word tie has ancient Finno-Permic origins and is related to words in related languages, such as tee in Estonian. The etymology of the word katu stems from the Proto-Germanic languages, which have influenced Finnish for centuries through trade, conquests and other connections. It is related to the Old Swedish gata and the Gothic word gatwo. These words initially referred to paths or passageways in cities limited on two sides(Meri 1982, 74). Nevanlinna has made an amusing remark that, in Finnish, the conceptual content of the street is negative, while it is positive through concepts related to the road (2001, 31).
Although from a cultural-historical viewpoint, there is a significant difference between the street and the road, which can also be distinguished in our legislation, no actual role has been attributed to the street in modern Finnish. The legal basis of both the road and the street is bound to public administration in an unusually straightforward manner in Finland. It is important to recognise that our set of concepts related to cities is strongly defined through institutions. (Vantovaara et al. 2021, 106) Legislation makes no room for actual users or use, and regular people on the street are treated as nothing but unhappy participants in the work of the authorities.
The definitions related to streets can be identified from different laws. This is how the story generally goes. The legislation concerning Finnish cities is about the history of ownership and governance. This also determines how the space in cities is conceptualised and what kinds of operational frameworks are being built for different operators today. The international discussions on public space remain inaccessible to institutionalised planning in Finland. The closest equivalent found in Finnish legislation is the definition of yleinen alue, “public area”, which only attains a specific and narrow segment of the penetrating social aspect of the concept of the public space.
A public area refers to an area intended for implementation by the local authority, state or other public body. It can be designated as a street area, market place, traffic area, recreational area or some other corresponding area (section 83 of the Land Use and Building Act). The rules for public areas are exceptionally focused on administration, relying on public administration expertise to solve users’ needs. The concept of the park that was previously closely linked to recreational areas has become general in legislation and the municipality no longer has any obligations to build them or obstacles to changing their purpose. (see Vaattovaara et al. 2021, 210).
Some years ago, the Highways Act (503/2005) openly redefined the criteria for road planning. Road management for which public administration is responsible comprises road 1) planning, 2) construction and 3) maintenance and 4) traffic management (ibid. section 3; section 9 pre-2018). Traffic management refers to improving the safety and smoothness of traffic. The state is responsible for this management. Street management, defined elsewhere in legislation, can be used as a point of comparison to this definition.
In accordance with its history, street management is an integral part of land use, involving the use of land in the literal sense. However, this use has been established in a specific way through various historical path dependencies. The definition of street management is naturally included in the Land Use and Building Act (132/1999). According to the definition in the Act, street management comprises street 1) planning, 2) building, 3) maintenance, and cleaning and clearing (ibid, section 84). We can easily derive the most essential difference between road management and street management from the above descriptions. Street management is a type of road management that does not involve traffic management – or, alternatively, road management is a type of street management that has become safe and smooth. In addition, cleaning and clearing are included as a segment in street management that exists separately from other traffic area management, whose significance is lost at the travel speeds used in road management. Unlike on roads, society may oblige the owners or plots located next to the street area to keep a 15-metre wide section of the street clean.
For other parts, municipalities are responsible for street management and designations for reservations for the areas required by the management are entered in the local detailed plan. A 'street area' comprises the street area so designated in the local detailed plan, including service conduits, equipment and structures. (section 84 of the Land Use and Building Act) There is no actual subject for the use of the street and it can only be derived indirectly. A person who uses the road under the Act can be interpreted as a street user. Drug legislation does not make a distinction between the street and the road. Instead, a road user refers to anyone on the road or in a vehicle or tram on the road. Under road legislation, a separate area must be placed to serve the needs of “road users” “for kiosk shops and, for rest areas, for café and restaurant services, fuel distribution, motor vehicle servicing and other services to road users (section 8 of the Highways Act).
If we compare the change in the dimensioning of the spaces for mobility with history, it is easy to see that there is a trend towards a less dense urban structure. The construction code of the Bjärköa Court (BO) and the County Law of Magnus Eriksson (CLME) of the 1300s set the width of the street at eight cubits, or about 4.8 metres. This applied to all public streets and roads where driving and riding were permitted (BO 33: Section 4, CLME Cap. 6 see Kirjakka 1982). The Decree on the construction of cities of 1856 defines that streets must follow a regular direction and have a width of at least 30 cubits (17.81 metres); in an area granted and intended for the construction of smaller houses, the width of the streets may be 20 cubits (11.88 metres). (Section 3, Decree on the construction of cities) A key objective for increasing the width of street space was to reduce the density of the urban structure to promote fire safety. In addition, neighbourhoods had to be separated from each other by avenues with a width of 60 cubits (42.7 metres) (Lilius 1989, Kirjakka 1996).
We have described in another publication how also in urban areas, the size of streets and other traffic areas have been growing disproportionately in relation to the actual need for space for means of transport, and how traffic management has taken over. This has resulted in a transport network in which the dimensions related to traffic on main streets alone have resulted in main streets whose dimensions match those of esplanades considered ideal in the classical construction of cities in the 19th century. (Vaattovaara et al. 2021, 123)
The management of traffic and traffic areas has become the only function of the streets protected by law. The actual regulations on street planning are based on the need for planning, building and maintenance determined through the smooth flow of traffic. Other measures in the street area are acceptable only insofar as they are necessary to reconcile the street area with the underground, surface and above-ground service conduits, equipment and structures. (Section 84 of the Land Use and Building Act) The predominance of traffic is emphasised by the fact that, according to the Act, the street-management duty commences when the ”realized land use based on the local detailed plan so requires”. (Section 86 ibid)
As this “traffic need” that appears to be some sort of modern mysticism has made its way to the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is also already considered somewhat outdated, in today’s urban planning, there is good reason to as what are the exact criteria for this traffic need. According to the basics of transport technology, traffic is a type of derived demand, and as a result, it would make sense for us to know what the “end product” of this journey is that serves as the basis of deriving the demand. Due to the nature of road planning, the site, i.e. the destination of the journey, is located far away and the planning criteria derive from the above-mentioned assessment of safety and smoothness. Transport solutions that support both of these characteristics have been studied by analysing intersections that are also the sites where the greatest disturbances to the traffic flow and accidents occur. In other words, controlled traffic can be achieved by reducing the number of intersections and reducing the potential points of encounter in the traffic flows in the intersection areas. This will result in a hierarchical street network that is highly optimised by traffic technology, in which the number of intersections is minimised and the geometry of crossings is simplified.
Figure 1. The effect of the shape of the intersection on the number of “encounters”. In terms of traffic technology, dismantling X intersections into two T intersections is about streamlining traffic and reducing points of conflict in traffic flows. However, these solutions result in losing something essential to the urban structure. Can you think of what it is?
Urban traffic, which the street network should serve, is more challenging in many ways because the destinations are located within the street network itself and along the street segments. Some people may also go for a walk, cycling or driving just to pass the time, and as a result, the whole attempt to examine traffic as a derived need crumbles. This sort of traffic behaviour, which is more ambiguous than the one described preciously, follows its own logic, which the aim of transport technology planning to reduce “encounters” does not serve, but the need can be even presumed to be the opposite. The social dimension of urban traffic emerges through encounters and mobility episodes (Cullen 1961, Aura 1989). The current urban planning institutions in Finland make no room for these.
Just as war is too important a social issue to leave up to generals, it would also be absolutely necessary to seize the planning or urban spaces from transportation planners. An overemphasis on the dimensioning of traffic is particularly detrimental to other forms of land use, as the produced technical solutions result in the dispersion of different functions from one another and contribute to strengthening the role of differentiated transport planning (Lampinen 2015). In this article, I have mainly addressed the ways in which street planning has been seized to serve the needs of transport technology based on the criteria it has defined for itself.
The current Finnish institutional framework makes no room for developing non-traffic indicators that serve as criteria for the goodness of the street space, and planning is dominated by principles which were originally created for the planning of main roads in the United States. Contending international research on the structure of the street network – at the levels of morphology and topology – has been carried out for a decade. Dozens of non-traffic indicators have been developed in an attempt to understand and explore the connectivity, integration, depth, intelligibility, betweenness, control etc. of the mobility network (e.g. Kansky 1963, Hillier & Hanson 1984, Turner 2000, Peponis et al. 2008, Porta et al. 2006, Joutsiniemi 2010, Berghauser Pont & Haupt 2005). One of the difficulties in Finnish urban planning is that even the richest family of indicators will not change the prevailing planning hegemony. Even the best analysis is irrelevant if no institutional home can be found for it or if it is only used as an additional attribute.
In the highly advanced segregation of professions, it is not important to provide new information that will lead to greater diversification but to rather unveil contradictions in the current analysis. Instead of trying to convince transport planners to challenge their field of study, I urge the planners to examine the urban space created through individual decisions made in plans. Intersection density provides an easy indicator for assessing the non-traffic quality factors of our urban space. In all its simplicity, the number of intersections can be used to create an overview of the distribution of plots, the diversity of the routes within the area as well as the grain size of the urban structure. Let us measure all this with the unit of intersection density: the number of intersections per area unit. If the aim is to even more strongly challenge the unpleasant urban space created by the indicators at the traffic service level (Nevala et al. 2003), the number of encounters in the intersection types may be used as the weighting factor of said indicator (see Figure 1).
Aura, S. (1989). Episodi liikkumisen analyysiyksikkönä. Tampereen teknillinen yliopisto.
Berghauser Pont, Meta & Haupt, Per (2005). The Spacemate: Density and the typomorphology of the urban fabric. Nordisk Arkitekturforskning 2005:4.
Cullen, G. (1961). Townscape. Architectural Press, London.
Hillier, B.; Hanson, J. (1984). The Social Logic of Space, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Joutsiniemi, Anssi (2010). Becoming Metapolis. Datutop, Tampereen teknillinen yliopisto.
Kansky, K.J. (1963). Structure of Transportation Networks. Relationships between Network Geometry and Regional Characteristics. The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL.
Kirjakka, Marjut (1982). Kaupunkirakentaminen Suomessa vuoteen 1875. YTK, Teknillinen korkeakoulu.
Kirjakka, Marjut (1996). The Orthogonal Finnish Town 1620–1860 – It’s Structure, Components and Dimensions. YTK, Teknillinen korkeakoulu.
Act governing the municipal upkeep of streets and other public spaces (669/1978). https://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/ajantasa/1978/19780669.
Highways Act (503/2005). https://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/ajantasa/2005/20050503.
Lilius, Henrik (1989) Kaupunkirakennustaide 1800-luvun jälkipuoliskolla. In: Sarajas-Korte, Salme (1989) ARS – Suomen taide. Osa 4. Otava.
Lampinen, Seppo (2015). Liikennesuunnittelu ja yhdyskuntarakenteen hajautuminen. University of Tampere.
Land Use and Building Act (MRL 132/1999). https://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/alkup/1999/19990132.
Meri, Veijo (1982). Sanojen synty. Gummerus.
Nevala, Riku, Jarkko Niittymäki, Janne Rautio, Merja Penttinen & Pirkko Rämä (2003). Liikenteen palvelutason määritelmiä, tekijöitä ja mittareita. Esiselvitys. Tiehallinnon selvityksiä 42/2003. https://www.tieh.fi/julkaisut/pdf/3200829vliikpalvelutaso.pdf.
Nevanlinna, Arne (2001). Harharetkiä Helsingissä. WSOY.
Peponis, J.; Bafna, S.; Zhang, Z. (2008) “The connectivity of streets: reach and directional distance”. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 35(5) pp. 881-901.
Porta, S.; Crucitti, P.; Latora, V. (2006). “The Network Analysis of Urban Streets: A Primal Approach”. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, Volume 33, pp. 705-725.
Turner, A. (2000). “Angular analysis: a method for the quantication of space”. Working Paper 23, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL, London
Vaattovaara, M. K., Joutsiniemi, A., Airaksinen, J., & Wilenius, M. (2021). Kaupunki politiikassa: Yhteiskunta, ihminen ja ihana kaupunki. Vastapaino.
Vaattovaara, M., Joutsiniemi, A., & Jama, T. (2022). Pientalot kaupungissa – Asuntopolitiikan ja kaavoituksen käyttämätön resurssi. University of Helsinki.
Laura Ruotsalainen is a professor of computer science at the University of Helsinki and a member of the steering group of the Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence FCAI. Her research is focused on the development of AI methods to support the planning of sustainable mobility in cities in the future.
The current traffic arrangements in the urban environment pose challenges to achieving sustainability goals from the perspective of each of the three pillars of sustainability. From an ecological point of view, traffic causes significant harm to the environment, while social and economic sustainability are impaired by traffic accidents, poor air quality, the designation of urban space and the environment for car traffic, and the unequal distribution of the possibilities of using transport violate the sustainability goals. This text presents the sustainability challenges of traffic in more detail, as well as the opportunities provided by artificial intelligence to generate sufficiently comprehensive information for the implementation of new, more sustainable mobility and traffic arrangements.
Selected indicator: The mobility and traffic arrangements of the neighbourhood have been made using sufficiently comprehensive information to provide everyone with the most environmentally friendly, safe and equal means of mobility that meet their needs.
The sustainability goals set by the UN for the urban environment include providing access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems. Nevertheless, transport currently accounts for 25 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union. Most, or 70 per cent, of the emissions, originate from road traffic (European Environment Agency 2018). In Finland, traffic is the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, amounting to 21% of total emissions, of which road transport covered 94% in 2019 (Traficom 2023). As the majority of transport is concentrated in urban areas, cities are developing strategies to improve the efficiency and sustainability of their transport systems. For example, Helsinki and Espoo aim for carbon neutrality by 2035 and 2030. The status of traffic safety is also not very good. Globally, 1.2 million people die every year in road transport (World Health Organization 2023). More than 90% of these accidents are caused by a driver error, occurring largely as a result of driver distraction due to, for example, stimuli related to mobile phone use. Fortunately, the situation is constantly improving in Finland, especially in urban environments. Regardless of this development, in 2019, 205 people died in traffic accidents in Finland, and every death is too many (Yli-Seppälä 2021). While the risk of injury or death in traffic is one third lower in Helsinki compared to the whole country average, this can lead to the conclusion that traffic also remains unsafe in cities. The goals of the accessibility and affordability of transport are often also contradictory and thus prone to cause inequalities. Large cities currently have rather comprehensive public transport systems. Public transport is defined as accessible when the distance to the nearest stop is no more than 500 metres – however, this distance is too long for many groups of people.
The electrification of road transport is an important step towards achieving the CO2 reduction targets. At the current emission level of electricity production, electric cars have been found to be less environmentally friendly than those using fossil fuels. Despite this, electrification will hardly suffice to achieve the goals, as electricity production will not be carbon neutral in the near future. On the other hand, road transport is currently undergoing another major technological change, digitalisation, which is introducing automated vehicles that are connected to the transport system. Networked automated transport enables the proactive and systematic management of traffic flows, which contributes to the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and promotes the prevention of climate change. Traffic flow management significantly improves traffic safety when the parties to traffic know where others are located and can anticipate dangerous situations, such as intersection behaviour. Automated vehicles also use equipment for environmental observation and decision-making that are exclusively set for these tasks, which ensures that irrelevant stimuli will not distract attention from essential activities. From the point of view of accessibility, automated vehicles also allow making significant improvements to the situation, for example by managing the so-called last mile, or in this case, 500 metres, transport to public transport stops flexibly and with good implementation, at a significantly lower cost compared to the currently available approaches.
However, the overall impact of these changes, electrification and autonomy on the safety, smoothness and CO2 emissions of traffic is not well known. Possible significant cross-over effects may occur, such as an increase in kilometres driven due to e.g. visits of automatic vehicles to charging stations without driver and passengers. In addition, the transition from existing transport solutions to new ones does not occur in a flash; electric and internal combustion engines and automated and human-controlled vehicles will exist alongside each other in traffic. This is a challenge that has only been addressed by a few studies on automated vehicles.
The properties of the environment affect the physical activity of individuals (Appelqvist-Schmidlechner et al. 2023). People are more active in getting around by walking and cycling in cities compared to sparsely populated areas. For example, 30% of journeys in the Helsinki region are made by walking and 7% by bicycle (Traficom 2023). In 2021, sustainable mobility accounted for 64% of the modes of transport of those living in pedestrian zones, while amounting to 28% of the journeys of residents in car zones. In other words, urban planning has a major impact on not only the previously listed sustainability perspectives of transport, but also on people’s activity and, consequently, public health. At the individual level, the choices people make on their mobility are influenced by a multitude of factors whose detection and interpretation is a highly complex process.
The impact of automation on urban transport and therefore on urban planning remains extremely uncertain. The autonomous vehicle ownership models and practices that may emerge in the future will affect urban planning. The amount of space reserved for traffic will decrease as traffic becomes more flexible, there will be a need for introducing new traffic rules and arrangements, and the need for parking space will decrease if the total number of vehicles drops as a result of the right arrangements. This will free up space that can encourage people to engage in more active forms of mobility. A systemic change at the scale described above, which will transform both the transport system and mobility and significantly modify the urban environment, cannot be accomplished through trial and error. As a result, decisions must be increasingly clearly supported by research-based, anticipatory information.
The increasingly accelerating digitalisation has generated and continues to generate massive amounts of necessary as well as unnecessary data. Collecting essential data to support decision-making from diverse and fragmented sources is already a laborious process on its own, not to mention forming knowledge for solutions that often involve complex phenomena. Often, data is only partially useful; for example, the reasons that affect people's mobility choices based on self-reporting conflict with the consequences, and the actual factors are hidden in the vast mass of data.
Artificial intelligence, especially machine learning, enables forming an understanding of data in a way that is not possible for humans, at least not in a time frame that will benefit decision-making. The strengths of AI-based methods include their ability to process large amounts of data quickly and form an understanding of phenomena, including highly complex ones. For example, artificial intelligence can be used to convert data describing phenomena in larger regions to apply to the situation at a city block level without losing the relationship with the new scale. A good example of this is the transfer of the vehicle numbers of sparsely positioned traffic measurement points to make calculations that are as proportionally accurate as possible to a city block area without measurement points (Bochenina et al. 2023). Artificial intelligence can also be used to discover factors that actually affect the behaviour and choices of individuals in the data, including ones that are inconsistent with their self-reporting.
One of the use opportunities of artificial intelligence most relevant from a sustainable development perspective is the simulation of systems, including large ones, that allow testing major and numerous change alternatives without disturbing society or nature. Indeed, research has shown (Vinuesa et al. 2020) that artificial intelligence is one of the key enablers for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Surprisingly, its greatest positive impact has been demonstrated to concern the environmental sustainability foals. Reinforcement Learning (RL) and especially Deep Learning (Deep RL) are methods that can be used to implement complex optimisation models for simulations and, through these, produce information for urban and transport planning solutions, for instance. Many real-life problems require so-called multi-objective optimisation. This means that a system involves many, often contradictory, simultaneous objectives. From the perspective of the optimisation task, the fact that the parts of the system examined have different time horizons further complicates the challenge. An example of this is our research project (Demmeler et al. 2021), which aims to develop a simulation based on reinforcement learning to support the planning of the Vihdintie city boulevard to simultaneously optimise the smoothness of transport and mobility (private cars, public transport, walking and cycling), good air quality and the habitability of the urban area. The examination often leads to a problem with multi-objective optimisation, i.e. how to simultaneously achieve smooth traffic from the viewpoint of travellers, low emissions, i.e. good air quality, and sufficiently calm traffic but at the same time ensure good accessibility from the viewpoint of residents.
From the perspective of artificial intelligence development, the task described above is challenging. In addition to the need for a multi-objective optimisation method, three time horizons must be taken into account: decisions on mobility are made at the level of seconds (stopping, turning, moving forward, getting on a bus), changes in air quality are observed every ten minutes, and decisions on making changes to residential areas that lead to unfavourable residence from the perspective of individuals take years to take shape. For this reason, methods capable of modelling increasingly complex situations are also needed for artificial intelligence.
The used indicator, “The mobility and traffic arrangements of the neighbourhood have been made using sufficiently comprehensive information to provide everyone with the most environmentally friendly safe and equal means of mobility that meet their needs” poses challenges from three perspectives. Firstly, how can we determine when the information will be sufficiently comprehensive? From the perspective of artificial intelligence development, it is important to develop methods to serve alongside the optimisation methods that can be used to at least highlight the uncertainty related to the model results and improve the explainability of the results, i.e. why you ended up with the given solution. Secondly, the development of AI methods that optimise complex phenomena is only in its infancy and it may take years for them to produce the necessary comprehensive information. As it is always the case with AI development, there is a need to pay constant attention to the energy consumed by methodological development, i.e. the balance between the greenhouse gas emissions it causes and the sustainability benefits produced by the methods. Thirdly, not all the data needed for decision-making is available. For example, relatively little data is collected related to the mobility of individuals to maintain privacy protection and the difficult nature of the comprehensive use of sensors.
Figure 1. The above figure was made using the AI application Dall-E to demonstrate the simulation of sustainable transport and mobility. A written prompt was fed into the application, which it used to form an image. The prompt was: “Create an image with a computer screen showing a reinforcement learning based simulation about the traffic in a green smart city”. The first image did not meet our wishes, so it was modified by requesting the app to add pedestrians and cyclists as well as green spaces that people use for relaxation. We also had to request that the travellers displayed in the image remain inside the computer browser and comply with traffic rules. The latter request was too difficult and could not be achieved despite several attempts. Surprisingly, spelling the word “Reinforcement” correctly was also impossible for the application. Of course, we could have continued polishing the image, but new attempts often worsened the quality of the parts of the image that the application got right on previous attempts.
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Laura Kolbe is a history researcher, professor of European history at the University of Helsinki and a local councillor for the City of Helsinki. Kolbe has written about a wide range of topics related to history and cities, including Helsinki, urban planning and the history of universities.
Built cultural environments are important for the attractiveness of a city and the identity and well-being of city residents. There are numerous international agreements and declarations concerning the preservation of not only architectural monuments and memorials but also entire built environments. Their message is universal and nationally binding. The forces of change are affecting cities everywhere. Globally, cities are faced with challenges as they consider how to coalesce growth, higher efficiency and complementary building with the desire of city residents to foster the existing built cultural heritage. This article discusses how new construction and the built cultural environment can be combined. The latter is of great value when considering the attraction and retention factors of the city and the development of tourism. Sustainability thinking has become established in describing the ambitions for societal development. We need indicators that can be used to measure the value factors related to building and cultural heritage with sustainability indicators.
It was not until 2023 that the city of Helsinki adopted its first cultural environment programme. The programme aims to nurture, develop and utilise diverse tangible and intangible cultural heritage as an urban resource. The programme brings together information that provides explanations of the developmental history of our environment and the identity of the region. “Cultural environments are a key building block for the identity of the city and also its residents – it is the layered cultural environment built up in decades that makes Helsinki what it is”, says Sari Saresto, Project Manager of the cultural environment programme, continuing to reflect on the desire to make Helsinki a historically interesting city that values its cultural environments and implements changes sustainably: Cultural environments increase the attractiveness of the city and are the basis for the development of tourism.” (Cultural environment programme 2023–2028.)
Through the programme, Helsinki joined a long chain dating back to the time when urbanisation development was accelerating in the 19th and 20th centuries. As the urban growth began to be associated with the loss of the historical urban structure, there was a newfangled interest in tradition. As pointed out by Anja Kervanto Nevanlinna, researcher of art history, back in the 1700s, researchers in classical antiquity, architects and art history enthusiasts began documenting old buildings in Italy, France and England. These efforts paved the way for modern building conservation, i.e. introducing the conservation of valuable buildings as a task of the central government. Conservation began to be guided by laws, regulations and antiquarian institutions. This marked the start of systematic research and financial resources were allocated to building protection and the preservation of cultural heritage. The activities also had a historical political dimension. The inventory, preservation and repair of historic monuments set up space for new interpretations of the meanings of buildings. Old buildings and monuments as well as historical urban environments were given meanings that were used to produce and strengthen local and national identity (Nevanlinna 2019).
The built cultural environment still holds many meanings in the 2020s. There are numerous international declarations and conventions with a universal and locally binding message. The first international convention to protect building monuments was concluded in The Hague in 1907. It obliged the avoidance of the destruction of buildings dedicated to religion, art and science. Different countries began to prepare lists of their monuments. The destruction of war has often acted as a stimulus for building protection. The efforts to repair the damage caused by war were no longer confined to conservation but building memorials were also reconstructed. Since the Venice Charter of 1964, the concept of cultural heritage has expanded, from initially covering individual sites to larger entities covering entire areas and to the overall social value judgement of the environment. The main objective of the Venice Charter was to emphasise historical authenticity and to curb reconstructions as well as to take a critical approach to the use of modern construction materials and structures that had become more prevalent in restoration work. (Venice Charter, 1964)
A new phase began when the Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society was opened to signature to the Member States of the Council of Europe in October 2005 in Faro, Portugal. This led to the adoption of a document known as the Faro Convention, which has a clear basic message: tangible and intangible cultural heritage is part of our shared, highly valuable capital. The aim of the Convention was to ensure that culture and cultural heritage remain at the centre of sustainable development. The Convention was implemented in Finland as a result of extensive preparation by public officials and resulted in a valid definition of cultural heritage: “Cultural heritage refers to those resources inherited from the past, regardless of the owner, that, based on people’s conceptions, reflect their constantly changing values, beliefs, knowledge and traditions. This includes all parts of the environment built over time through the interactions between people and places.” (Kohti kestävää kulttuuriperintötyötä, 2015)
Tangible cultural heritage is complemented by discussions on the meanings of intangible cultural heritage. According to this, meanings and interpretations are attached to the environment that are integrated into cultural heritage. Interactions between humans and the environment form a complex entity that requires both knowledge and understanding of history as well as a humanist knowledge of human needs and wishes. It has led to an increasing need to perceive the urban space and the many historical sediments it contains as a factor that improves people’s quality of life. The challenge is to find joint indicators at a time when everything is moving and changing, either endogenously or as part of wider global currents of change.
Globally, cities are faced with a major challenge: how to coalesce growth, higher efficiency and complementary building with the desire of city residents to foster the values of their home region? The forces of change are felt by cities everywhere. Faced with this change, are we allowed to feel pain and grieve? May citizens have opinions that differ from those of decision-makers? While research on emotions and affects is popular, it is an unmentioned topic in urban planning. In public, the discourse on emotions appears subordinate to nostalgia and rational planning. People, regardless of their social class, are united by the desire to live in a valuable environment, according to their respective financial resources and preferences. A home, city block, and neighbourhood that feels like home, increases the attachment to the whole city. Our disappointment is palpable when our windows are blocked by massive new buildings, nearby rocks are blasted, and our local nature trail has to make way for a new road. Confrontations are avoidable. Experiences of fairness are related to the transparency of the decision-making process. People can accept even unsatisfactory solutions as long as their arguments are honest and convincing. A policy that ignores local inhabitants and benefits construction companies leaves a long and bitter aftertaste that spans decades.
When a city is developed, the efficiency and economic viability of construction are emphasised. But we also need other indicators. There is a need to focus on the economic and social quality criteria for sustainability, the creation of shared discussion platforms and open interactions. The best future will be built by opening up the values that guide planning to wider discussion. To avoid confrontations, there is a need for measurable, i.e. qualitative, indicators. At best, they can provide us with extensive and complex information in a simpler format. An indicator can also serve as a tool for setting and monitoring goals as well as for planning and decision-making.
As a concept, sustainability has become established in describing the ambitions for societal development. So far, it has been less frequently used in connection with building heritage sites. In their 2018 article, “Indicators for Assessing the Sustainability of Built Heritage Attractions: An Anglo-Chinese Study”, Wei Ren and Feng Han, city researchers from Shanghai, reflected on how to develop indicators for assessing built heritage by identifying the dimensions of sustainable development at sites. The results provide evidence of how indicators could be further developed into a comprehensive and measurable assessment method for assessing the sustainability of building heritage sites (Ren & Han, 2018).
Many building and cultural heritage sites around the world have opened up as tourist destinations in both rural and urban areas. The built cultural heritage as a tourist destination is one of the most important development trends in the tourism industry. Meanwhile, tourism means local economic growth, promotes job creation and enables the preservation of cultural heritage. Despite the coronavirus pandemic, tourism is increasing everywhere, and its negative effects are also known. These include environmental degradation, possible unbalanced distribution of economic benefits and global threats to local customs and culture. As Wei Ren and Feng Han show, cultural heritage tourism provokes strong opinions on what the real impacts of tourism entail. Commercialism is considered to hamper the preservation of cultural heritage sites, while on the other hand, tourism can contribute to the protection and preservation of the built environment for the next generations. In the best-case scenario, building heritage and tourism feed each other, bringing benefits to both parties.
Wei Ran and Feng Han have developed four measurable dimensions related to building and cultural heritage (economic, environmental, social, governance) each of which can produce 3–4 indicators. They are defined as follows and, where applicable, could also be used in Finland when considering the possibilities of building and cultural heritage:
1. Economic dimension
a. Impacts on local employment
b. Profitability of economic activities
c. External funding support for the built heritage attraction (other than tourism revenue)
2. Environmental dimension
a. Efficient equipment and devices (supported by green technology)
b. Littering and level of cleanliness
c. Energy consumption and carbon footprint
d. Building and cultural heritage conservation and preservation
3. Social dimension
a. Understanding of residents and the support of locals for the building heritage site
b. Involvement of locals in the protection and conservation of the site
c. Experiences of inclusion among the owners and residents
d. Perceived impacts of transport and mobility
4. Governance dimension
a. Experience of comprehensive involvement among key stakeholders
b. Connecting the sustainability perspective to the management of building heritage sites
c. Urban planning methods that support the preservation of building heritage and the development of tourism
d. Legal basis for building heritage protection
These indicators can be applied in different countries – including Finland – and at local sites to measure the concrete and indirect value produced by cultural and building heritage sites, in addition to the significant calculable value that tourism has to the national economy. Tourism creates new companies, infrastructure, work and livelihoods. Or, as suggested by the World Travel & Tourism Council in its 2022 report for Finland, “the country's tourism revenue equivalent to export was 5.3 billion in 2019. This is more than twice as high as health technology exports and greater than all of Finland's high-technology exports combined. The total impact of tourism on GDP is approximately 8 per cent. This total impact includes direct, indirect and ancillary impacts (consumption by persons employed directly or indirectly by the tourism sector). According to Statistics Finland, the share of tourism (tourism value added) in gross domestic product was 2.7% before the pandemic. (Matkailun merkitys kansantaloudelle)
Helsinki Cultural Environment Programme 2023–2028. Cultural environments as a resource for Helsinki residents. City of Helsinki / Urban Environment Division. Publications on the urban environment 2023:1. https://www.hel.fi/static/liitteet/kaupunkiymparisto/julkaisut/aineistot/aineistoja-01-23.pdf (Last accessed on 20 February 2024)
City of Helsinki News 20 June 2023, Helsinki received its own cultural environment programme. https://www.hel.fi/fi/uutiset/helsinki-sai-oman-kulttuuriymparistoohjelman (Last accessed 20 February 2024)
Nevanlinna, Anja Kervanto ”Rakennussuojelu Ranskan kansallisen identiteetin rakentajana”, Ennen ja nyt – historian tietosanomat, Vol. 19 Nro 1 (2019): Ranskan historia Suomessa 2000-luvulla.
Venice Charter (1964). https://icomos.fi/kansainvaelinen/julistukset-ja-suositukset/venetsian-julistus/ (Last accessed 20 February 2024)
Kohti kestävää kulttuuriperintötyötä. Taustaselvitys Faron yleissopimuksen voimaansaattamiseksi Suomessa. Ulla Salmela, Hannu Matikka, Pauliina Latvala and Petja Kauppi (eds). Finnish Heritage Agency 2015.
Ren, W.; Han, F. Indicators for Assessing the Sustainability of Built Heritage Attractions: An Anglo-Chinese Study. Sustainability 10.7 (2018): 2504. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072504.
Matkailun merkitys kansantaloudelle. https://www.mara.fi/toimiala/alan-merkitys-kansantaloudelle.html (Last accessed 26 February 2024)
Saija Toivonen works as an assistant professor of real estate economics at the Department of Built Environment at Aalto University. In her research, she applies the methods of futures research to the operating environment of the real estate market and examines different forces of change and preferences that affect the market dynamics as well as the futures orientation of the sector.
Real estate provides an important means for societies to build a sustainable and resilient future. This potential has not yet been fully exploited, and the decisions, processes and approaches of the operating environment of the real estate market are not sufficiently future-oriented. We do not have an indicator to define, assess, require and promote the futures resilience of real estate. This means that we do not know how well the current or future building stock will be able to respond to future changes and the challenges arising from them and how real estate could be used optimally in different future scenarios. This chapter discusses the role of futures resilience and its promotion in the real estate market operating environment. The chapter proposes what the futures resilience of real estate indicator can be and what benefits and challenges it entails.
The forces of change that prevail in society (such as urbanisation, climate change and globalisation) affect the preferences related to space use and real estate investment. Properties have a long life cycle and they are rigid and bound to their location, and their characteristics do not inherently support rapid changes in market dynamics, i.e. between supply and demand. When properties fail to meet the qualitative and quantitative demands for spaces and investment, the underutilisation of real estate increases, income from real estate decreases and their value does not develop as desired. On the other hand, the need for new construction may also increase, causing environmental impacts. Problems related to the real estate market are not only an internal challenge in the sector, but they are also reflected in the surrounding society and its environmental, social and economic sustainability and resilience in various ways.
The consequences of decisions made by stakeholders in the real estate market may be reflected in society through properties for decades. Despite the great responsibility of real estate, the operating environment of the real estate market is not sufficiently future-oriented, and the current processes and operating methods do not promote it comprehensively. Decision-making often relies on the trends of the past and unbalanced variables (Toivonen 2011). The future is outlined with a very short perspective in relation to the future impacts caused by real estate and no alternative futures analyses are performed. On the other hand, stakeholders may not possess the necessary competence and tools to take the future and the uncertainty it involves into account despite recognising its importance (Toivonen 2021). We also lack an indicator that would comprehensively determine the futures resilience of real estate and support their futures orientation. As a result, we do not have a sufficient understanding of how well the current real estate stock will be able to respond to future changes and the challenges arising from them. This is a major threat in today’s world marked by polycrises (Castaño-Rosa et al. 2022, Pelsmakers et al. 2021; Tähtinen et al. 2024), as we will primarily have to face many future changes with the building stock that we currently have (Toivonen 2024).
The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the role of futures resilience and its promotion in the real estate market operating environment. The chapter discusses what the futures resilience of real estate indicator can be and what benefits and challenges it entails.
The futures resilience of real estate cannot be built without - futures orientation. In the research literature, different concepts have been introduced to describe the futures orientation of individuals and organisations (e.g. futures literacy (Miller 2007), futures consciousness (Ahvenharju et al. 2018), organizational future orientation (Rohrbeck 2010), future preparedness (Rohrbeck & Kum 2018)). The ability of individuals and organisations to think about the future and harness this awareness as a part of decision-making has emerged as an essential factor. This also means the ability to recognise forces of change, imagine something that does not yet exist, place value on (desired/undesired) alternative futures and assess their probability (probable/improbable) and active steering of the future development and futures preparedness (Bell 2003; 2004, Jarva 2010, Lombardo 2007; 2016, Pouru & Wilenius 2018, Sharpe et al. 2016). Futures resilience also includes the ability to anticipate crises, cope with and learn from them and a capacity for renewal (Heinonen et al. 2023, Heinonen & Toivonen 2021, Toivonen 2023).
The futures resilience of real estate can be defined as follows:
The futures resilience of real estate refers to 1) how real estate (at the different levels) and the related processes and practices of stakeholders have anticipated the future, 2) prepared for future changes and 3) aimed at promoting desired futures and preventing undesirable futures, 4) have been able to respond to changes as they occurs, and 5) to recover, learn and develop as a consequence of the change.
Regarding the factors related to real estate and their processes and the practices s of stakeholders, the futures resilience of real estate indicator can assess factors such as:
Traditionally, spaces have been built to primarily suit a single purpose and based on a single image of the future, which is usually identical to the original plan. As the purposes of use change, the adaptability of the spaces becomes important (see Jyrki Tarpio’s article in the present publication). The property may have been originally designed to be suitable for several purposes at the same time or at different times, or it may be altered to suit another purpose if the situation so requires. In addition to different uses, spaces should also suit a wide range of users. When preparing for these factors, it is essential not only to focus on the current users of the space and purposes of using the space but rather what they could be in the long term, such as 30 years from now. Assumptions made regarding real estate, if they have been made at all, often remain narrow, short-term and ignored as they lack justifications.
In addition to changes in purposes of use and user groups, there is a need to prepare for different future circumstances. Some of these changing conditions may involve longer-term changes (e.g. changes in weather conditions) and some temporary (e.g. safety threats). At the moment, those starting a construction project must already prepare for changes in conditions related to the durability of construction materials or structures, for example, in relation to different weather conditions (e.g. snow load) or hazardous situations (e.g. fires). There are also separate requirements for energy efficiency and sound insulation (e.g. aircraft noise pollution zone). In large construction projects, it may be possible to consider carrying out the implementation in phases, paying attention to the prevailing market and financial situation. Although these existing requirements help to prepare for individual future changes, they do not fully exploit the potential of futures orientation and may not guarantee holistic future resilience. They also often rely on ideas based on the current situation or past developments.
There are different forces of change affecting real estate and their impacts on real estate also differ. For instance, the impacts can be divided into hard elements (such as impacts on physical structures, technical systems and materials) and soft elements (such as impacts on the institutions in the operating environment, know-how or different values) (Tähtinen et al. 2023). In addition to examining futures resilience through the real estate itself, we should also pay attention to the processes and practices of the operating environment of the real estate market. This is due to the fact that many of the current processes and stakeholders’ approaches do not support, require or, in some cases, even enable a futures orientation. For example, a person undertaking a construction or renovation project is not required to provide an account of which future forces of change they have prepared for and how this has been done for the given property. The building permit process could require presenting several different solutions on how the property relates to different futures, how the space can be altered, for example in terms of the used spatial solutions or use purposes, what kinds of risk factors can be identified and which preparations for them the plans include. Given the slow renewal rate of the building stock, it would be essential to make this assessment also apply to the existing building stock. In the case of the existing building stock, the parties interested in this information could include property owners, funding providers or insurance companies. In this case, it would probably be essential to demonstrate how futures resilience increases the usability of the property and the cashflow obtained from it, reduces costs or negative risks, or has an otherwise positive impact on its value. In the future, potential buyers of the property could also be interested in this information in the context of the sales of the property. Professional real estate investors could use this as a way to communicate their future responsibilities to their stakeholders.
Assessing futures resilience would provide transparency on which future situations and forces of change different stakeholders are preparing for, why and how this is done and what will it result in. The indicator would also promote future-oriented discussions and create better preconditions for dialogue on the future between different parties and for setting common goals and more comprehensive future cooperation, taking into account from whose perspective the future is examined, judged and created. The methods used and the data on which future conclusions and choices are based also play an essential role in promoting transparency.
The indicator would also provide better opportunities for a more comprehensive way to build futures resilience and manage related resources. The indicators could be used for individual buildings, but also at the city block and regional level to demonstrate interactions between larger entities, the availability of space resources in different situations as well as the vulnerability of the system. Examining visions of the future or future scenarios drawn up at the city block and regional level would enable seeing whether parties such as property owners are preparing for similar futures, what kind of variations could exist among real estate in the future, and how the properties located in the same area could function alone and together if different scenarios were realised. For example, a map template could be used to examine the development of the life cycles of different properties in the regions, ensure the availability of spaces needed for different purposes at different times (e.g. identifying the potential for adaptability), identify high-risk real estate and areas, and to assess the need for movable or temporary buildings.
The use of the indicator would also enable the public sector to steer the construction of resilience in the built environment of the future, for example by providing instructions for in which future situations should the operations of properties be examined in particular or to which forces of change there is a need to respond. For property owners, the indicator would also enable the examination of the futures resilience of properties in different circumstances while also enabling them to demonstrate the interdependence between properties or their dependence on the same forces of change. This information could be utilised in risk management and the development of comprehensive resilience at the properties. As the forces of change evolve over time, both the public sector and property owners could also more easily monitor the development of resilience in different properties and areas in the light of indicators and possibly try and prevent undesirable developments and, correspondingly, promote ones considered desirable. This could also reveal shortcomings and needs in the market, for example from the perspective of property development.
In addition to opportunities, the indicator naturally also involves challenges. The real estate market is divided into the property market and investment market, but also into markets for different types of spaces (e.g. the housing market and business premises market). As a result, the operating environment of the real estate market includes a variety of stakeholders, each of which has its own objectives related to properties, and this is further reflected in their futures thinking and aspects such as the scope of their future perspective. With such as fragmented perspective on the future, a shared motivation for thinking in the long run may not arise naturally, but its formation must rather be steered and supported separately. In addition to motivation, the stakeholders also have varying skills and opportunities related to future-oriented activities. Properties are also special in the sense that they stir a lot of emotions in people and the decision-making related to properties is not just a rational process. This means that perceiving the future can bring up personal beliefs, fears and wishes that people may find difficult to present.
The futures resilience of properties can be measured in different ways, including with qualitative, quantitative, written, visual, physical and virtual material. What really makes properties special, however, is their heterogeneity. Every property is an individual. This may make it more difficult to generalise the baseline assumptions of future indicators, methodological choices, the results of driving force analysis and the range of measures available for resilience capacity, which in turn makes the work on indicators a laborious process. The authentication of the assumptions on the future and the baseline data used for argumentation can also be considered challenging, and require the input of professionals. On the other hand, in a rapidly changing operating environment, the assumptions made regarding the future should also be updated during the life cycle of the property to ensure that the indicator produces an up-to-date picture of the situation.
The rigid nature of real estate emphasises the need for future orientation. Making decisions on real estate always involves decisions on the future. The futures resilience of real estate indicator could be used to promote the futures resilience of the operating environment of the real estate market by demonstrating what kinds of futures people have prepared for, and how and why this has been done. An indicator of futures resilience could assess the real estate itself (e.g. how well the given property will be able to adapt to different future conditions), but also processes connected to the real estate and the practices used by stakeholders (e.g., how futures thinking and different futures have been integrated into the processes).
Decision-making is based on people’s own perceptions of what the future may bring. As a result, the ideas the stakeholders in the real estate market have related to the future become self-fulfilling. We are building the future we expect to happen. It is particularly problematic if the future perspective is very short and narrow. The future orientation of the real estate sector has been inadequate, and its consequences are widely reflected in society. The question remains: who is responsible for promoting and ensuring future resilience in the built environment? Futures resilience is constructed of parts. Some measures may be voluntary, some smaller and others may form more complex entities. What is sure is that we all have work cut out for us.
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Jyrki Tarpio (Doctor of Science in Architecture, Architect SAFA) is a postdoctoral researcher in housing design at Tampere University with an interest in the spatial and morphological questions of housing design and construction. He has been engaged in long-term research in the adaptability of housing as well as the circular economy and life cycle properties of buildings, the expandability of typical blocks of flats in neighbourhood units and urban low-rise building types. Tarpio works in the ReCET and ASUTUT research groups.
This article proposes one way to steer construction and building design to produce features that support the circular economy and long life cycles of buildings. The tools presented for this purpose include a model based on four levels of adaptability and a requirement to plan and present change scenarios related preferably to several levels. When a building’s features respond to one adaptability level, it is classified as passable; if its features respond to two levels, the building is classified as good; when they respond to three or four, the building is classified as excellent.
Globally large amounts of energy and materials are consumed and significant carbon emissions produced in building construction. In the era of climate crisis and biodiversity loss, we can no longer afford to create buildings which are likely to be short-lived and soon disposable. Buildings must be designed and built to be adaptable to changing uses and situations.
Despite the fact that different authors use varying terminology, multifunctionality and transformability are concepts which are generally considered to form the basis for adaptability. The recent emphasis on the circular economy has highlighted the importance of design for disassembly, too. Earlier it was recognised as one vital part of transformable solutions, but recently when full demountability and reusability of all parts of the building are being striven for, it has gained new importance.
When pursuing circular economy in the built environment, the long life cycle of buildings and the long service life of building elements have emerged as key objectives (see e.g. Huttunen 2021; Hakaste et al. 2024). The perspective of circularity is therefore twofold. First, it usually makes sense to aim to construct buildings that can be used in the same place for a long time. However, a long usage in one place should not be a guiding design principle for all buildings. In Finland, agricultural and industrial buildings as well as warehouses have typically had a rather short service life (Huuhka & Lahdensivu 2016). It seems to make sense to design and implement them and some other buildings, such as some day-care centres located in new residential areas, for short-term use in their original site. The same principle may apply to the majority of construction in declining regions and localities. Therefore, instead of being designed and built to remain in the same location, some buildings should be designed demountable and reusable in another location either in their original form, modified, or as building elements.
Building design favourable for circular economy can be supported by a model based on four levels of adaptability. The levels labelled as multifunctionality, internal transformability, external transformability, and full demountability take into account the different dimensions of buildings’ adaptability and local situations described above. Multifunctionality refers to spaces which are suitable for various functions as such without a need to modify them, building's structure, or building services. Transformability means that the building or space is adapted to changing use by making modifications to space, building’s structure, building services, and/or equipment and furnishings. Internal transformability means that these modifications are implemented within the building and they have no impact on the size or the appearance of the building. As a contrast, external transformability requires modifying the volume and/or facades, i.e. the external appearance of the building. Full demountability refers to the ability to fully dismantle the building and reuse all its building parts. The model is presented graphically in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Four levels of adaptability.
Key factors affecting the adaptability of a building include geometry and dimensioning of the building and its load-bearing structure, locations of staircases and corridors, relationship between spaces and their opening to the outdoors, building services and their routing as well as fixtures and fittings. Adaptability, or the lack of it, is determined by the entity these different factors create jointly. This entity cannot be assessed based on numerical values alone.
To verify the adaptability of a building properly, visual or geometric representations of the building are required. Floor plans are often suitable for this purpose as most solutions and concepts which provide adaptability can be presented by and assessed using them. For example, spaces of a building can be adaptable to different uses as such, which can be demonstrated by showing different furnishing options in floor plans. In another case, the room distribution of a building may be designed as transformable and alternative room distributions can be shown presenting varying layouts. Moreover, a building may be expandable and the initial situation and some expansion options can be presented with floor plans.
In the context of this model, the preplanned opportunities for change are called change scenarios. The scenarios should be expressed by drawings and a brief written description accompanying them.
The indicator consists of buildings’ adaptability levels and change scenarios. A building design must include at least one but preferably several change scenarios which are related to at least one but preferably several adaptability levels.
To allow for location and building site specific discretion, the change scenarios and the levels of adaptability they relate to should be left for the building designer and owner to decide. The designer and the client of a new building must carefully consider what kinds of future prospects related to change there are for a building to be constructed in a certain location and what adaptability levels the building should respond to in this specific site. It is essential to take the characteristics of the site and location into account seriously: the changes imaginable to e.g. business premises are different if the building were located by the market square of a small municipality in a declining region than if it were built near the main railway station of a growth centre.
The minimum requirement for a building is to respond to one adaptability level, in which case it will be classified as passable. A building will be classified as good when adaptability strategies or concepts have been planned and implemented related to two levels. To be classified as excellent requires responding to three or four levels of adaptability.
The adaptability features are verified with drawings and short descriptions of the change scenarios. The descriptions must indicate the level of adaptability associated with the given scenario. Figure 2 shows one exemplary presentation of change scenarios.
Figure 2. One example of how change scenarios should be presented. In this case, the scenarios respond to two levels of adaptability, which means that the adaptability classification of the building in question is good. Drawing by the author, adapted from Lukander et al. 2023, p. 8.
The indicator helps to evaluate the extent to which a building contains features that may provide it with a long life cycle in one or more locations. The obligation to use such indicator would actively guide architects to produce adaptability features in buildings and make them communicate about the features to others in an understandable manner. This would be especially useful for the users of a building, as it would help them to understand its potential better.
It is important that designers are obligated to present adaptability features with drawings and a written explanation. Although some features are obvious to those familiar with the subject, designers often develop new ideas and spatial innovations that even experts may not perceive without them being explained.
The idea for this indicator emerged when conducting research on the circular economy of the built environment and housing architecture. The model based on four levels of adaptability has been suggested earlier to contain a hierarchy between the levels and with a vision that such a model would be particularly useful when designing reuse for existing buildings (Tarpio 2021). For that particular context, the principle is that 1) multifunctionality, 2) internal transformability, and 3) external transformability should be carefully considered before 4) making a decision of the full demolition of a building and its possible transfer to another location. In other words, full demountability should be seen as the last choice for the reuse of an existing building. However, at the context of the present article, i.e. new construction, the four-level model of adaptability does not require a pre-determined priority for any of the levels.
Adaptability can be introduced to buildings with various concepts and means which can be classified in several ways. The four-level classification of adaptability suggested in this article is relatively general. A more detailed classification based on seven levels of adaptability in four different scales is suggested in Lifecycle Performance in Promoting the Longevity of Buildings, a recent report by the Finnish Ministry of the Environment (Hakaste et al. 2024, see pp. 35–37).
One advantage of a model based on general classification is that it does not refer to predetermined adaptability solutions or concepts, which leaves plenty of room for innovation and ability to respond to different situations. On the other hand, a more accurate and precise classification with references to known solutions could be simpler and more reliable to use, as it is less open to interpretation.
Predicting the future is difficult. It is highly challenging to be able to choose the right adaptability features for buildings in different sites and urban situations. Despite good objectives and the best of intentions, it may be that the solutions considered in the design and construction phase and implemented later end up not meeting the actual needs for change that finally occurred at the site and that the building encountered later.
Hakaste, H. & Häkkinen, T. & Lahdensivu, J. & Saarimaa, S. 2024. Lifecycle Performance in Promoting the Longevity of Buildings. Durability, Adaptability and Reusability as Tools for a Circular Economy. Publications of the Ministry of the Environment 2024:23. Helsinki: Ministry of the Environment. https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-361-187-0.
Huttunen, E. (ed.) 2021. Kiertotalous rakennetussa ympäristössä. Helsinki: Rakennustieto. ISBN 978-952-267-386-2.
Huuhka, S. & Lahdensivu, J. 2016. A statistical and geographical study on demolished buildings. Building Research & Information. Vol. 44:1, pp. 73–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2014.980101.
Lukander, M. & Pylvänen, R. & Päivilä-Kari, T. & Ilonen, P. & Mäkimattila, J. & Lehtomäki, E. & Kalakoski, L. & Puolanne, P. 2023. Ryhmävuokrauskonsepti. Yhteisöllinen asuminen A-Kruunun kohtuuhintaisessa vuokra-asuntotuotannossa. Helsinki: Kehittyvä kerrostalo -hanke, loppuraportti. https://www.hel.fi/static/kanslia/Julkaisut/2023/ryhmavuokraus-loppuraportti.pdf.
Tarpio, J. 2021. Hierarkkiset joustavuustasot ja rakennusten kiertotalous. In E. Huttunen (ed.). Kiertotalous rakennetussa ympäristössä, pp. 62–72. Helsinki: Rakennustieto.
Anne Tervo is a senior university lecturer at Aalto University. Her research is focused on housing and the spatial quality of housing design.
The average size of dwellings in apartment buildings has decreased significantly in the 2000s. The spatial quality of a dwelling, i.e., its habitability, is put to the test when a two-bedroom apartment is designed within a space of a one-bedroom apartment. This trend towards increasingly efficient use of space has been justified by affordability and implemented based on two main principles: (1) at the building level, increasing floor area per staircase, and (2) at the dwelling level, combining functions (kitchen-dining-living room) and reducing the size of individual rooms. This article examines the spatial quality of recently constructed apartments from the perspective of furnishability. Furnishability is considered as a housing design tool that can be used as a basis for a sustainability indicator. The reflections are guided by Finnish studies on housing preferences and guidelines on housing design, particularly 'RT 103602 Toimiva talo, kerrostalokohteet' ['Functional house, Apartment buildings'] , published in autumn 2023. The guidelines in this document present methods for achieving functional and spatial quality beyond regulatory standards.
Furnishing floor plans is a method used for testing, justifying and visualising the spatial quality of a dwelling during the design phase (Meriläinen & Tervo 2022). Students at educational institutions, such as the Aalto University’s Department of Architecture, practice this method and carry these skills into their professional careers. A classic handbook on dwelling design, Asuntoarkkitehtuuri- ja suunnittelu (Kahri & Pyykönen 1984, 178), addresses the topic of furnishing as follows:
From the perspective of use, rooms that have dimensions resembling a square and are lit from their longer side are beneficial. In all cases, the room dimensions and the positioning of doors and window openings must be assessed based on the arrangement of functions and furnishing.
Furnishability also plays a key role in the recently published guidelines (RT 103602, 2023), which compile recommendations considered essential today from previously published guidelines. These include a reference to RT 93-10929 Asuntosuunnittelu. Ruoanvalmistus ja ruokailu [Housing design. Preparing meals and eating] (2008), which suggests that the dining area is dimensioned according to the dwelling’s size and the anticipated number of inhabitants, ensuring that the smallest possible dining area accommodates four people. When space is also reserved for use and movement around the furniture, in addition to the space occupied by furniture itself, the minimum requirement for the dining area is 2,000 x 2,400 mm. This example illustrates how furnishing based on ergonomics serves as a dimensioning tool (see Kahri & Pyykönen 2004, 178). Additionally, the guidelines, written in the form of a checklist, recommend placing the dining area close to the kitchen or cooking area and near a window.
Contemporary construction underscores the need for guideline: deep one-bedroom flats facing one direction and small two-bedroom apartments are dimly lit and difficult to furnish (Pelsmakers et al. 2021). In contrast, Finnish housing preference studies indicate that residents desire brighter apartments, better kitchens and dining spaces located nearby with views outside (Kuoppa et al. 2020; Saarimaa et al. 2023; Tervo & Lilius 2017).
Furnishability is also an invaluable method for assessing the multi-functionality of individual spaces. The guidelines (RT 103602 2023, 18) note the following about the topic:
A well-designed and dimensioned apartment is suitable for different ways of living, recreational activities and, when necessary, remote work, and enables various ways to use and furnish it. An important part of the design process involves examining the furnishing options for the rooms.
Similarly to furnishability, the multi-functionality of rooms is not a new topic. According to Esko Kahri and Hannu Pyykönen (1984, 177), a careful designer examines various placement options for different functions; there should be a few options for furnishing the bedroom and several for living areas. Jeremy Till and Tatjana Schneider (2007, 186) discuss a neutral 3,400 x 4,000 mm room that can be used flexibly both as a bedroom and a living room. The result is a room of approximately 14 m2. In other words, multi-functionality and a minimum bedroom size cannot be accommodated in the same space. On the other hand, additional space does not automatically imply multi-functionality.
Next, we will examine two newly constructed two-bedroom apartments. The furnished floor plans are used to illustrate why is necessary to discuss tables, beds and stools in Finland in the 2020s as part of the spatial quality of apartments. The apartments were selected from buildings that were granted a building permit in Helsinki in 2020. Our AN-SA-SI research group is currently investigating the spatial quality of one-bedroom apartments included in this data set. The analysis framework is derived from the national design guidelines (RT 103602). Notably, compared to other growth centres, Helsinki has a larger average floor area for new apartments and has constructed fewer small apartment types (Vaattovaara & Vuori 2023).
The first two-bedroom apartment measures 53 m2 (Figure 1). The larger bedroom accommodates a double bed comfortably. In the smaller bedroom, there is only enough space for a bed, as the narrow gap between the table and the bed does not allow for moving a chair. Therefore, the bed is the only place where inhabitants can spend time in this minimum-sized bedroom. Consequently, children either do not play in the room or they live somewhere else. If the apartment were expanded by half a metre, its usability would instantly improve. This change would also provide the added benefit of making the entrance hall more functional by allowing enough room for a stool.
Figure 1. A two-bedroom apartment in Helsinki, 53 m2
A dining table suitable for four people can be placed in the main living space of the two-bedroom flat. A similar dining arrangement is recommended for apartments with 1–2 inhabitants to enable small households to spend time with other people (RT 103602; RT 93-10929). This recommendation relates to the discussion of the social dimension and social sustainability of housing, referring to living environments, including individual dwellings, that are perceived as structures which support the well-being of residents by meeting their needs at a given time.
The two-bedroom dwelling shown above can be a pleasant home for households of one or two people, considering the classification of apartment types based on the number of rooms. People currently living in cramped conditions might find this commend offensive, and those defending inadequately sized apartments might point to reductions in homelessness or sustainability rhetoric. However, must affordability, reducing homelessness, or sustainable housing production really be tied to characteristics that decrease the liveability of these products?
Continuing with the kitchen, the dwelling features a popular open-plan kitchen, although many people still favour separate kitchens (Tervo & Hirvonen 2020). However, separate kitchens have largely disappeared from new housing production (Vainio et al. 2021). The room for interpretation in kitchen types is illustrated by the fact that the open-plan kitchen is associated with desirable characteristics such as a feeling of spaciousness and opportunities for social interaction, whereas no one seems to wish for an open-plan kitchen located in the rear confines of the dwelling (Saarimaa et al. 2023).
An analysis of the spatial arrangements yields the following observations. The more spacious bedroom is presumably located in a well-lit corner of the dwelling for two reasons: (1) to avoid a dark corridor and (2) because the cooking area may be placed in the darkest part of the dwelling. A deep space that opens in one direction, with the rear kitchen area, is created in the centre of the dwelling. A more suitable place for the bathroom would have been where the smaller bedroom is currently situated, allowing its door to open into the hallway rather than the kitchen. After all, these spaces are nearly identical in size. However, this arrangement might not have been feasible, as it would result in a windowless bedroom adjacent to the more spacious one, although such a configuration has recently been possible to construct.
Figure 2. A two-bedroom apartment in Helsinki, approximately 75 m2
The size of the second two-bedroom apartment is approximately 75 m2, which is slightly over 20 square metres larger than the previously examined apartment (Figure 2). This unit features a well-lit entrance hall that extends through the apartment. The dining area, situated by the window, is designed to accommodate six people, in line with the recommendations for a two-bedroom apartment intended for 2–4 inhabitants. Although the dining and living areas are not physically separated, their distinct placement within the space allows for various simultaneous activities in the main living area.
The dotted line between the kitchen and the living room indicates where the main living space can be divided into separate rooms. This feature is very rare in new housing production. A similar adaptation option is presented in the design guidelines (RT 103602) as a new way of improving the spatial quality of an apartment. A separate kitchen and living room are design solutions that support the multi-functionality of the dwelling, especially in an era when we are used to working and studying remotely. Ideally, a two-bedroom apartment of this size should have a smaller toilet in addition to the bathroom, as there could potentially be four residents needing to be at work, school or daycare by eight in the morning. There might have been space for a small toilet where the walk-in wardrobe is currently located.
The spatial quality of an apartment can be assessed through its furnishability. When basic pieces of furniture find their place within the dwelling, a good foundational level is achieved, which sustains the building’s technical life span. This is not always the case in new construction. Spatial quality that is higher than this basic level is produced through multi-functionality, a feature less commonly attained in new housing production.
The analyses at the core of the indicator become compatible when appropriately sized furniture is used and the space required for their use in taken into account. This is not the same thing as the right of every person to furnish their home according to their wishes. If, for instance, a table for four persons (800 x 1200 mm) seems too large for an individual consumer, or if we want to discuss urbanites who can afford to dine out, there are products on the market suitable for this consumer group. The furnishability indicator ensures that one can live comfortably in an apartment without a need to innovate housing.
Kahri, Esko & Pyykönen, Hannu. 1984. Asuntoarkkitehtuuri ja -suunnittelu. Helsinki: Rakennuskirja Oy.
Kuoppa, Jenni & Saarimaa, Sini & Ruoppila, Sampo & Laine, Markus & Nieminen, Niina & Haverinen, Risto. 2020. Houkuttelevan asumisen ainekset. Yhdyskuntasuunnittelu, vol. 58:2. pp. 10–32.
Meriläinen, Sanna & Tervo, Anne. 2022. Asuntoarkkitehtuurin käsikirja. Helsinki: Rakennustieto Oy.
RT 103602 Toimiva talo, kerrostalokohteet [Functional house, Apartment buildings]. 2023. Helsinki: Rakennustieto Oy.
RT 93-10929 Asuntosuunnittelu. Ruoanvalmistus ja ruokailu [Housing design. Preparing meals and eating]. 2008. Helsinki: Rakennustieto Oy.
Saarimaa, Sini & Turku, Veera & Kuoppa, Jenni & Tervo, Anne & Laine, Markus. 2023. Asukastoiveiden mukainen kerrostalo? Menetelmä asukastiedon keräämiseen ja suuntaviivojen suunnitteluun. Yhdyskuntasuunnittelu, vol. 61:3, 77–103.
Pelsmakers, Sofie & Saarimaa, Sini & Vaattovaara, Mari. 2021. Avoiding macro mistakes: Analysis of micro-homes in Finland today. Nordic Journal of Architectural Research, vol. 33:3, 92–127.
Tervo, Anne & Hirvonen, Jukka. 2020. Solo dwellers and domestic spatial needs in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Finland. Housing Studies, vol. 35:7, 1194–1213.
Tervo, Anne & Lilius, Johanna. 2017. Urbaanien yksinasujien asuintilatoiveita. Yhdyskuntasuunnittelu, vol. 55:1, 11–32.
Till, Jeremy & Schneider, Tatjana. 2007. Flexible Housing. London: Routledge.
Vaattovaara, Mari & Vuori, Pekka. 2023. Asuntorakentamisen muutokset pääkaupunkiseudulla ja Tampereella vuosina 2015–2021, Tutkimuskatsauksia 2023: 2. Helsingin kaupunginkanslia. https://kaupunkitieto.hel.fi/sites/default/files/23_06_01_Tutkimuskatsauksia_2_0.pdf. Last accessed on 14 March 2024.
Vainio, Terttu & Ala-Kotila, Paula & Vesanen, Teemu & Kuismanen, Kimmo. 2021. Quality Changes in Housing Production 2005–2020. Higher, Denser, More Energy-Efficient, Publications of the Ministry of the Environment 2021:29. https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/163421/YM_2021_29.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. Last accessed on 14 March 2024.
Hanna Vikberg is a doctoral researcher at Tallinn University of Technology at the Academy of Architecture and Urban Studies. Her research is focused on the questions of daylight, especially in housing and the significance of daylight for the spatial experience. She primarily works as an architect in urban and construction planning projects at the architectural firm Tengbom Oy and leads the agency’s sustainable development group.
Daylight has significant impacts on our well-being, efficiency and perception of space. However, the regulation and analysis of daylight in Finland is rather limited compared to our neighbouring countries, although there is also no international consensus yet for analysing daylight at the city level. What is clear, however, is that an increasingly dense city structure will lead to situations with insufficient daylight provision unless attention is paid to this topic already in the urban planning phase. In this article, I will discuss the importance of daylight for residents, employees and students, as well as potential indicators for urban planners. I will also reflect on the importance of indicators in creating an intact and beautiful city.
It is late February and I’m starting to notice how slowly, but surely, my mind is moving from darkness to a more positive direction each day. It is less difficult to get things done and I’m starting to notice little signs of colours around me after all the greyness. Others have also noticed this, and the topic is addressed in nearly all chats: light.
But are these not just the ramblings of a simple person that cannot be taken into account in the real world? I spot no difference on my bank account, my carbon footprint, and the sales of the premises I have designed. Sick people will not get better and students’ Pisa scores will not increase once they are hit by the first rays of sun in the spring.
Actually, there is a lot of research evidence on the significance of daylight related to all these aspects. For example, the Swedish public health agency Folkhälsomyndigheten (2017) has compiled a summary of the studies showing a link between light and health. Considering the amount, spectrum, distribution, duration and timing of light, daylight is probably the best way to control the circadian rhythm, which is relevant to health (Brainard, 2001; Guido, et al., 2010; Acosta, et al., 2017). Providing sufficient daylight on the premises has been found to lead to shorter hospitalisations and the alleviation of patients’ symptoms (Beauchemin & Hays, 1996; Benedetti, et al., 2001; Walch, et al., 2005; Park, et al., 2018). Kyle Konis (2018) has pointed out that providing dementia patients with regular access to spaces lit by daylight has enabled maintaining a healthy daily rhythm for patients. As people get older, they need higher amounts of light for performing visual tasks. Their opportunities for spending time outdoors are often also reduced at the same time, which is why daylight should be provided indoors (CIE, 2011). As the population ages, this means that more attention should be paid to the availability of light in buildings.
In children, sufficient daylight at school not only lowers cortisol levels, but several studies have revealed a positive association between daylight and learning (Neberich, et al., 2022; Heschong, et al., 2002). Working in daylight has been found to be more popular, reduce fatigue and self-rated stress and increase the efficiency of employees compared to working in artificial light (Galasiu & Veitch, 2006; Borisuit, et al., 2015; Heydarian, et al., 2016; Antal, 2014; Knoop, et al., 2020).
Natural light and brightness have been found to be highly valued characteristics in Finnish homes (Saarimaa, et al., 2023). The significance of brightness in dwellings is expected to increase as we spend more time in our homes due to remote work (Awada, et al., 2021). At the same time, daylight is the most popular light source for building users (Knoop, et al., 2020).
Urbanisation and sustainable urban development often result in more densely built cities (UN-Habitat, 2015; Prime Minister’s Office, 2020; City of Helsinki, 2023). The denser urban structures and higher buildings prevent daylight from reaching building façades, which means that even fully glass-covered buildings may not receive adequate indoor lighting (Iversen, 2013; Saratsis, et al., 2017). Dense cities and high buildings lead to daylight becoming a privilege for the rich, while the lowest floors suffer from a shortage of daylight at the same time as housing prices climb the higher the dwellings are located in a building (Saratsis, et al., 2017). The effect is particularly significant in the north, where the sun shines low and luminance is lower (Sundborg, et al., 2019).
Indicators are used to provide a meaningful description of the state of an environment or area. A high-quality indicator has usually been described as measurable and accurate (Reinikainen, et al., 2022). In this article, I will focus on daylight as a sustainability indicator for neighbourhoods from the perspective of urban planners and present suitable measurable attributes. However, in recent times, more qualitative objectives, such as the beautiful city, have been finally increasingly integrated into urban sustainability thinking (New European Bauhaus, 2020; Helsinki, 2021). Daylight has been found to be one of the most significant factors in creating experiential and aesthetic spaces, and having a better understanding of these mechanisms may enable us to discover indicators that are completely different from those justified with calculations (Vikberg, et al., 2022; Knoop, et al., 2020).
When planning neighbourhoods, the lighting of outdoor areas may intuitively emerge first. However, we spend 90% of our time indoors (Schweizer, et al., 2007), which means that examining indoor spaces is the most relevant to at least our well-being and efficiency but also possibly our comfort. As a result, daylight provision in indoor spaces should be set as a neighbourhood sustainability indicator related to daylight.
Daylight also contains various areas relevant to our welfare. Typically, the amount of daylight is studied and many countries have set regulations on the minimum amount of direct sunlight, while glare has also been studied very much. We also know that health is also affected by the timing of light and its changing spectrum (Webb, 2006; CIE, 2015). In fact, there are shortcomings in studies concerning the most significant area of light in terms of both well-being and experience (Vikberg, et al., 2022). However, according to current research and international regulatory practices, daylight is primarily assessed based on its amount (Shafavi, et al., 2020; EN 17037:2018).
In urban planning in Finland, daylight is usually only taken into account by means of simple shadow analyses. Due to our cloudy climate, diffuse light from the sky is nonetheless our most important source of daylighting (Finnish Meteorological Institute, 2019). In cloudy conditions, diffuse skylight comes from all directions, even from the north, unlike direct sunlight. Obstacles also affect diffuse light, whose determining factor at a given point is the view of the sky. Thus, an obstacle located to the north can also significantly reduce the amount of diffuse light entering a room. Shadow analyses, which only take direct sunlight into account, are therefore insufficient to analyse the effect that the urban structure has on light. The daylighting of individual indoor spaces is a much-studied topic, but considerably fewer studies have concerned the amount of daylighting on the city scale (Saratsis, et al., 2017). There are several different means to analyse indoor daylighting, and the diversity of these methods is one of the reasons why it seems so difficult to decide how to regulate daylight (Mardaljevic, 2021; Vikberg, et al., 2022).
The oldest methods of analysis include the daylight factor, which measures the percentage of the light from the outside that reaches a certain point in the interior space. The daylight factor is calculated using the CIE standard overcast sky model, and as a result, it ignores the opening direction and geographical location of the space. The use of this unrealistic sky model has resulted in an inability to validate the values at the realised sites (Mardaljevic, 2021). The advantage of the analysis method is that it is very easy to calculate and the average daylight factor in the space can also be calculated manually.
Climate-based daylight modelling assesses the absolute amount of light using real solar and sky conditions based on standardised climate databases. The analyses are based on hourly calculations for the entire year (Nabil & Mardaljevic, 2006; Reinhart, et al., 2006; Saratsis, et al., 2017). Indeed, it has been possible to validate estimates based on actual conditions at the realised sites. The use of climate-based analysis methods has been restricted by the expertise and resources required by the calculation. However, calculation software is constantly evolving, making analysis easier than before (Saratsis, et al., 2017). The European standard EN17037 Daylight in buildings, which entered into force in 2018, is based on absolute levels of light and climate-based modelling. While the standard also allows for the use of the daylight factor, the recommended limit values change according to the geographical location, based on absolute illuminance values (Mardaljevic, 2021). According to the authors of the standard, the use of the daylight factor has only been made possible to facilitate the adoption of the standard in countries where the daylight factor has already been included in national regulations (Mardaljevic & Christoffersen, 2017).
The daylight factor and climate-based daylight modelling are intended for analysing individual indoor spaces. However, daylight cannot be added to a place where it does not exist in the first place. The Urban Daylight sDA, a climate-based modelling and analysis method suitable for urban planning, has also been developed (Dogan, et al., 2012). The use of this method would enable a continuum from urban planning to building design, providing both with an indicator that uses the same variables. However, it is difficult to calculate the sDA at the city level using the currently available software and the calculation requires special expertise (Saratsis, et al., 2017). Considering the abundance of options and changes involved in the urban planning process, there is a need for a method that can be easily implemented at different stages of the planning process, preferably by planners themselves.
The impact of an obstacle can also be explored using simpler calculation methods. The vertical sky component (VSC) developed in Great Britain reflects the amount of skylight that hits the vertical façade divided by the horizontal unobstructed amount of skylight. In other words, VSC reflects how much of the sky is “visible” from the façade. An even simpler method involves examining the angle of the obstacle directly in front of a window, but this leads to inaccuracy, as enough light may enter the room from around an even high point-like object (e.g. a tower). The calculation of VSC used to be a burdensome process (Littlefair, 2011; Littlefair, 2012). These days, VSC can be calculated very easily using different software (e.g. Forma) that can also be used to perform other analyses related to urban planning. VSC has been found to do well in predicting outcomes, which have been obtained using climate-based calculation methods in accordance with EN17037. The link is even clearer when it is accompanied by the requirements for window surface area in relation to the floor surface area (Bournas, 2020). It can therefore be assumed that VSC could be used as an indicator on the scale of urban planning. While the surface area of the windows is still unknown in the urban planning phase, the actual VSC can be used to derive recommended values for them.
VSC modelled for a city in Finland
Whenever I am asked which demands there should be for daylight in Finland, I find myself struggling with various approaches. Considering the currently prevailing situation, the fact that we are even discussing a need to analyse daylight in the context of planning is valuable in itself. The lack of tradition and expertise in calculating daylight in Finland is both a disadvantage and an advantage. The disadvantage is caused by the fact that we are willing to accept even considerably low levels of daylight to approve the requirements for daylight analysis in the first place and therefore increase competence in this area. I was personally involved in proposing a 1% requirement for the daylight factor for the RT Toimiva talo card. This is likely to lead to an assumption that a dwelling is actually well-lit if its average daylight factor is 1%. However, this does not correspond to scientific sources on the matter (DeKay, 2010; EN 17037:2018). On the other hand, a lack of tradition could be an advantage if it allowed us to set ambitious targets and move directly to climate-based calculation methods. Having no one managing or using outdated calculation methods, such as the daylight factor, could enable us to totally skip this development phase. However, this would require ambition from both decision-makers and planners, as climate-based analysis methods are more demanding. On the other hand, without a demand, the existing calculation tools will not evolve due to inadequate commercialisation and will not become more user-friendly.
When listing planning indicators, it must first be noted that urban planning has highly limited resources and, unfortunately, an increase in requirements does not automatically mean additional resources for planning. As a result, attention should be paid to the application of indicators in actual planning work. Is the intention to draw up a plan first and subsequently modify it based on the indicators? If this is done, will anything be left of the original plan? Meanwhile, if the indicators are used to set out the premises, will this result in identical neighbourhoods? Many indicators may conflict with each other: how do we place value on them in different projects? Daylight is a good example of how one indicator leads to a requirement for another indicator. The requirements for limiting the overheating of buildings create a need for a daylight indicator, which may, in turn, result in the need for an indicator for glare, etc. When can we be sure that we have access to all the necessary indicators and can we really take all of them into account in practical design work? I am not at all certain that the quality of a city can be defined based on its parts. In my opinion, the way we experience a city is not unlike how we experience art, in the words of architectural theorist Juhani Pallasmaa (2014): “When experiencing a work of art, the whole gives meaning to the parts, not the other way round”. What sustainability indicator could measure the feeling of well-being we experience on a spring morning, after a well-slept night, as we look at a beautiful city from our bright dwelling?
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