Growth in WEIRD Helsinki: Countering Dominant Urban Politics and its “Green” Pretentions

Abstract

Despite persistent concerns over sustainability, cities continue to be developed that serve capital more than citizens. Where urban politics prioritizes growth, "green" credentials easily turn out to be illusory. Helsinki, with its pro-environmental administration, is an example of combining "green" agendas with a culture of growth and depoliticizing debate. This essay presents two cases of this broadly ecomodernist approach. In one case this approach led to proposing the destruction of irreplaceable green space and in the other, to drawing residents into international circuits of finance and data. This problem does not just emerge from corporations and elites, however. Drawing on Harvey Molotch's idea of "the city as growth machine", we suggest that growth ideology reflects a culture that, following psychologists, we might call WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich and Democratic. Its claims are founded on a historically particular but widespread conception of global progress that is increasingly questioned.

Metsätalous ja tietotalous kaupungistuvassa Suomessa

“…Käsitykseni on, että suomalaisten yritysjohtajien ja poliittisen eliitin yhteiskunnalisen imaginaarin ja onnistumisen määritelmien takaa löytyy juuri tuon talouskilpailun kestoonnistujan eli "paikattoman" ja "aineettoman" digikulttuurin kehdon, Piilaakson, idea. Tämä näkyy suomalaisessa mediassa, elinkeinopolitiikassa ja jopa ministeritasolla kannettuna huolena globaaleista huipputason "osaajista", joiden hyvinvointia tukevia kansainvälisiä kouluja, ruokailutottumuksia ja kulttuuripalveluita pyritään tukemaan -ja se tuntuu intensiivisessä kaupunkirakentamisessa (Berglund & Julier 2020;Kellokumpu 2021), johon palaan tekstin lopussa.…”

Contested Urban Green Spaces and Environmental Justice in Northern Europe

“…Moreover, from an economic standpoint, green or smart growth strategies follow the promises of real-estate development, business creation and effective place marketing for tourists, residents and investors (Anguelovski et al 2020). Despite these benefits and the increasing self-portrayal of cities as sustainable and green (Berglund and Julier 2020;Davidson 2010;Lindholst et al 2016), urban green spaces are under threat. Green space provision and access is diminished by heavy densification in city centres as part of the wider sustainability narrative (Brantz 2016;Haaland and van den Bosch 2015), which often puts housing and green space provision in competition with one another (Benjamin 2020;Schmelzkopf 2002): urban sprawl occurs at the cost of surrounding green spaces (Sharma-Wallace 2016), and neoliberal urbanism fuels green space privatisation and commercialization (Smith 2018) as well as green gentrification (Checker 2011;Rigolon and Németh 2018;Wolch et al 2010).…”

“…Amongst these specifics are the unequal distribution of green space quality instead of quantity (Sechi et al 2022), challenges in terms of procedural justice (Pikner 2022;Sechi et al 2022) et al 2022). The three studies from the Nordic countries, however, shed light on critical cases of green space development and usability in countries that are regularly seen as forerunners of urban sustainability (Berglund and Julier 2020).…”