Integrating regional development and planning into “spatial planning” in Finland: The untapped potential of the Kainuu experiment

Abstract

With Finland's accession to the European Union in 1995, a regional level of administration responsible for regulation-based land-use planning and incentive-driven regional development policy was introduced. The administration of both policies on the same spatial scale and within the same organisation suggests increased coordination of spatial impacts and a move towards an integrated conception of spatial planning. In practice, however, the relationship of these two fields remains ambiguous. In the Finnish case, one potential explanation for this detachment lies in the de facto weakness of the regional scale. In the Kainuu region in Northeastern Finland, ambitions to strengthen the regional scale resulted in a self-government experiment between 2005 and 2012. This article addresses the implementation of this experiment, its implications for integrated regional governance and the lessons to be learned for the upcoming regional reform in Finland.

Governing ‘places that don’t matter’: agonistic spatial planning practices in Finnish peripheral regions

“…This was probably the main reason why the municipalities in Kainuu agreed to participate in the experiment, which was initiated in a top-down manner by the central government. The experiment ended in 2012, but it undoubtedly still affects spatial planning practices in Kainuu today, as our interviews indicate (see also Purkarthofer & Mattila, 2018).…”

“…Their statutory responsibilities are regional land-use planning and regional development, including the coordination of the programmes associated with EU Cohesion and Regional Policy (e.g., Luukkonen, 2011, p. 259;Sjöblom, 2010). We consider all these responsibilities relevant for spatial planning, assuming that there is at least some level of integration between these activities, as coordination and cooperation are integral to the implementation of EU Cohesion and Regional Policy (Purkarthofer & Mattila, 2018).…”

“…Key planning and policy documents, especially regional development strategies, regional development programmes and regional land-use plans, were used to contextualize the interviews. The interviews in Kainuu and Lapland are part of a broader project exploring the governance arrangements and practices related to European spatial planning in Finland (reported in Purkarthofer, 2018;Purkarthofer & Mattila, 2018). This enables us to understand the findings from Kainuu and Lapland also in comparison with less peripheral Finnish regions.…”

“…For the central government, the purpose of this experiment was to obtain knowledge about the implications of an intended reform of the Finnish regional governance system, a project that still remains to be completed (Humer & Granqvist, 2020). For Kainuu, the goals of the experiment were related especially to the enhanced possibilities of service provision, but it also provided an opportunity to create more innovative and integrated modes of spatial planning and development (Purkarthofer & Mattila, 2018). The experiment was also purported to test regional democracy in the Finnish context, resulting in the first regional elections in continental Finland in 2004.…”

Understanding and Going Beyond the Regional Policy Paradox: Conceptual Contributions to Studying Socio-Spatial Polarisation in Europe

“…An important trend in this regard is the emergence of so-called 'soft spaces', which alongside the tactical use of 'fuzzy boundaries' is related to a policy impetus to break away from the shackles of pre-existing working patterns. EU policies have contributed intensively to a breakaway from current administrative structures and to the creation of these soft spaces; they are leading in 'soft planning' (Purkarthofer 2016;Purkarthofer and Mattila 2018;Telle, Špaček, and Crăciun in this volume).…”