Kaupunkiluonto

When new sites for residences and new cities were to be planned, there was a general need to establish recreational green areas, due to the industrial congestion of population into large existing cities. This notion was most notably brought about by the Garden Cities movement. It began to gather pace when Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), the notable professor of economics at Cambridge suggested in 1884 that in order to fight the industrial congestion of population in large towns, the country would benefit if a large number of Londoners would be removed into the countryside. (P. Hall 2002, 91.) In fact the early 20th rising application of Garden cities was not without precedents. Garden cities as known in Britain were to be found in some English colonies already on the earlier half of 19th century. The surveyor-general of South Australia since 1835, William Light, (1786-1839) received a letter of instructions by the Colonization Committee for South Australia, maintaining that "You will...

Tiistaina 20.4.2021 Kannanotto Helsingin kaupungin LuMo (luonnon monimuotoisuuden) ohjelmaan Kiitämme mahdollisuudesta lausua Helsingin luonnoksesta luonnon monimuotoisuuden turvaamisen toimintaohjelmaan. Yhdymme siihen kattavaan ja erinomaiseen lausuntoon, jonka Helsingin luonnonsuojeluyhdistys (Helsy ry) on jättänyt, muutamalla lisähuomiolla. 1. Tavoitteet -osion tavoite no 2 vahvistaa sini- ja viherverkostojen toimivuutta ei onnistu, jos jo ennestäänkin vihersormiksi kavennetut yhteydet kapenevat entisestään. Jos viheralue kapenee liiaksi, jo tämä itsessään heikentää monimuotoisuutta ilman sitä heikentäviä niin sanottuja hoitotoimiakin. Kati Vierikon et al. Östersundomin liitosalueesta tehdyn selvityksen mukaan viheralueen leveyden on oltava vähintään sata metriä voidakseen olla monimuotoisuuden kannalta ydinalue. Vierikon argumentit pätevät tietenkin muuallekin kuin Östersundomiin.  Jos kaupunki tavoittelee sini- ja viherverkostojen toimivuutta, tällöin sen tavoitteen kanssa ei...

During the second half of the 19th century, the rapid industrialisation brought about a rapid urbanisation. In the process, the urban environment went through a profound change, the over-population bringing about restlessness, poverty and crime. It soon became evident that the needs of city-habitants had to be met, those needs being not only vocational and residential. The cities had become “too big, too polluted, too built up, too crowded, too diseased, too polluted, too artificial, too commercial, too corrupting and too stressful” (Cranz 1982, 3). Horrified by these circumstances escalated in the growing cities, the protagonists of the City Beautiful movement stressed the needs to create the urban environment more pleasant by providing sufficiently open, green areas for the city dwellers. These areas were meant to regulate the morale of the city-habitants by refreshing them and providing them with beauties of nature. In 1870 Frederick Law Olmsted published an article "Public Par...

Some ancient observers found that the diversity of the agora – serving same king of functions as public, open urban spaces as the parks - disturbed their sense of political decorum and gravity. In the Politics, Aristotle wrote, "a city is composed of different kinds of men; similar people cannot bring a city into existence." (Sennett 1994, 56.) From the days of Plantagenet dynasty in the latter part of the 12th century, the public had already been allowed the privilege of walking on the royal hunting parks of London. The first documented case for the promoting of public interest of green areas was an act passed in the English Parliament in 1592, according to which "no person shall inclose or take in any part of the commons or waste grounds within three miles of the gates of the city of London, nor sever nor divide by any hedges, ditches, pales or otherwise any of the said fields lying within three miles etc., to the hindrance of the training or mustering of soldiers, or ...

The word "park" can refer to various things, but it always suggests a green open space of some kind, with turf and trees (Olmsted & Kimball 1928, 3). Medieval monastery gardens of the 9th and 10th century France can be called as predecessors of public parks, not only chronologically but also in their purpose as they were meant to provide a place for self-restoration and for moral improvement for the monks working there (Sennett 1994, 183-184), those also being the justification arguments of the later public parks. Cloister sanctuaries were tied symbolically and practically to the veneration of the Nature, specifically to creating and maintaining the garden contained within the cloister's walls. Christian meditation set in the cloister garden drew upon the imagery of the Garden of Eden, which set the scene for thinking about the human self-destructiveness that led to Adam and Eve's expulsion from the garden. For the monks who first dwelt in rural sanctuaries, tendi...

Empirical part: interviewing, whom? - “What does Central Park mean to you?” - What are doing there, when and with whom?” A city can be understood as a socially understood text or as a virtual object. The textualist interpretation stresses the city as an object for cultural consumption for tourists and for aesthetic apprehension, stressing both the spectacles and the picturesque elements of the city. (Lefevbre 1996, 149.) Is the Helsinki Central Park a park as it a forest? Places can be “produced”. For instance, as the Helsinki Central Park is essentially a forest, it is yet called a park. Helsinki Park is another more recent example of place producing of this kind; areas usually conceived as Eastern parts of the Central Park has recently been labelled officially as Helsinki Park, stretching down to the seashores of Helsinki. Yet this concept is not quite well known. An easy and readily available, obvious positive answer would be to be content in mere declaring that it is a park because...

Frederick Law Olmsted represents a turning point in understanding shifting interpretations of the American landscape and its relationship to nature. In his work, the natural become from an antidote to urban life to an essential ingredient of the city. (Mugenauer 1995, 103.) The Christian based tradition understanding nature interpreted the nature as an earthly paradise given by its holy creator and as a site for enhancing human moral. Olmsted contributed significantly to develop the scientific approach to environmental planning, where human well-being played a central role. (ibid., 92-93.) In the early 19th century, the idea of nature was of unspoiled kind, the human mind and spirit being uplifted, refreshed and enhanced by its encounter with the nature (Fabos et al 1968, 10). The Arcadian myth of idolising the simple, content pastoral people influenced greatly in the late 19th century American planners (Tobey 1973, 171). Olmsted was well steeped into Christian tradition of understandi...

A right to the city means right to the urban life. The urban life according to Lefebvre is dialectical, as the conflict between the claim to the nature and the claim to urbanity will alter the apprehension of urbanity. The driving forces behind this process are nostalgia and tourism, the need for urban dwellers to return to the nature. The right to the nature is essential for humans as the urbanity is of recent origin but it has only recently entered the urban social sphere. (Lefevbre 1996, 149.) Voids – empty spaces in the city – are spaces for the possible, not necessarily vacuums or left-overs, land reserves. In the context of urban planning, the nature in the city is often perceived as a void, something un-built, unplanned and non-profitable. Space is a function of the search, even struggle for scarce resources, which is often evident in the context of urban parks as the parks are often conceived as land reserves. (Lefevbre 1990, 349.) Urban space can be approached in a variety of ...

"Oslomarka" have many differing user groups, the needs of whom are different and often conflicting. Carl Christian Gustav Bruun wrote three books of his tours in the Marka between 1870 and 1890, classifying the users of the Marka into six categories: hunters, loggers, timbers, herds, tourists and students (Moland 2006, 60-61). In addition to those, there also were permanent residents in the Marka area. The stressing everyday life needs as its counterpart outdoors life; this notion has long since been recognised in Norway. Outdoors life has been supported by most people in Norway because it is not organised to the extent of the commercial sports with an aim to make profit. (Moland 2006, 118-120; a similar notion also supported by Cranz of American parks; Cranz 1982, 2). Mixing up commercial interests with public, open spaces is an unhappy marriage, as even Aristotle suggested in the Politics. He recommended that "The market square for buying and selling should be separate...