Michael Perukankaan tutkimusblogi

"No, se on jotenki niin kaukainen asia tai sillee". Työpajatoiminta, nuoret ja osallisuus.

2011-01-11T01:37:00.000-08:00

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EU and peripheral cultural (musical) politices and policies

2009-11-18T12:31:00.000-08:00

EU and peripheral cultural (musical) politices and policies A proposal for a doctoral thesis (draft b, spring 2004)
 Basis for international referee article/articles, some of the following themes would be discussed:

Special characteristics of the cultural politics in Lapland (as a case of peripheral/local but internationally acclaimed cultural institutions)
 centralised but de-centralising
 what is the political motive of localised cultural politics? Education?
 why does the Chamber Orchestra of Lapland play in primary school halls?
 compare with the cultural politics in Sweden, Norway

EU and periphery politics
 e.g. the Eurovision song contest: new countries (or peripheries), like Latvia, have been shown some cultural/political sympathy
 new member countries in the EU; some of them are traditional musical centres, but politically/economically quite peripheral in the European context
Theories of peripheries
 orchestras/other musical institutions in other peripheral European areas
 traditional centres with a national tradition and symphonic composers of their own: Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Prague Philharmonic, the London Orchestras
 have been challenged with progressive programming choices lately
 centres with no strong orchestral tradition: Paris, Italy (opera instead)
 semi-peripheries (or peripheries of the centres): Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Schleswig-Holstein, local BBC orchestras (Scottish orchestra plays lots of local music)
 new musical centres, or new semi-peripheries with a tradition of their own: Toulouse
 peripheries: Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg, Oslo, Iceland
 traditional peripheries: Barcelona, Oulu, Jyväskylä
 peri-peripheries: Lohja, Kuhmo, other local orchestras in Finland, Umeå, Bergen
 peri-peripheries: local orchestras with a profile of their own: Vantaa, Rovaniemi. Do they have a special local mission or are they nationally/internationally orientated?
 new peripheries: Petroskoi, Archangel
 new peripheries/old centres: Prague, Budapest, Warsaw

Why is it advantageous to show up as a patron of culture (or sports)?
 Ilkka Kanerva, Tanja Karpela, Matti Ahde, Suvi Lindén, Silvio Berlusconi comp. with Lennart Meri, Vaclav Havel

Music sociology: the traditions from musicology or sociology. Musicological tradition has as its starting point the institutions of music making, sociology is mostly concentrated in audience research.
 Sociology of music: is here established

Programming policies
 theories of postmodernism; crossover
 choice of what is being performed; decided by whom, which are the motives?

Political will:
 why is music considered to be of central importance in Finland (not other arts); the national myth of “Sauna, sisu, Sibelius”
 since 1960s music institutions, conservatories have expanded in Finland but also elsewhere
 the general professional level and quantity of musicians has expanded
 new generation of conservatory-raised musicians have occupied the local orchestras
 the musical standard of local orchestras has improved considerably
 little later: more local orchestras have been founded

Local, National and International Interpretations of the Importance of a Local Cultural Institute and Reception of Challenging Programming

2009-11-18T12:24:00.000-08:00

Research Proposal for a Doctoral Thesis -
Local, National and International Interpretations of the Importance of a Local Cultural Institute and Reception of Challenging Programming - Case the Chamber Orchestra of Lapland

Spring, 2004

Music is a commodity of a special kind. It is immaterial by nature, although it can be obtained by buying material objects like recordings. In this study, I will try to sort out the logic how people do consume music as a cultural and a service product. What is special in this case, how do music critics worldwide, nationally and locally react to the Chamber Orchestra of Lapland, as it is a local institute having become famous for its attempts to cross over the traditional definitions of musical genres. As a starting point, I try to solve out if the audience’ choice is conservative or tolerant of challenging concert programs, and whether this same approach to culture also applies to music critics. I will also develop the theoretical concepts of symbolic consumption and imaginary groups. The original idea of this study is accepted at the University of Helsinki; also some contacts with Sibelius Academy have been taken.

Culture can be seen as a service product (by Kolb 2000, pages 136-141): it is a convenience product, a comparison product and a speciality product.

There are external factors influencing consumer choice (Kolb 2000, pages 123-130); according to Kolb such as education, ethnic culture, reference groups, family and social class. Then there are motivators that might be called as “internal” reasons for attendance, mentioned by Kolb (pages 107-110) e.g. leisure and entertainment, social ritual and self-improvement, or likeas divided in a survey conducted in France internal factors influencing cultural choices can be divided into three main groups: educational motives: cultural “meat”, learning from the performance, intellectual stimulation: personal development, an intellectual challenge and pleasure: social, interaction, communication (Bouder-Pailler 1999)

This division of external and internal motivators stresses out the notion that consumer choice of musical products is deeply a social venture practiced, determined, renewed, constructed and produced by individual consumer choices. It goes both ways; of course also the choice and the possibility the choose is determined by the available cultural products.

The quantitative aspect of the cultural consuming and participation can be tackled through different cultural statistics. Some comparative studies based on this data are already being made; in the study I use here included were Ireland, Scotland and Finland because of the comparable population scale, Northern Ireland, Wales, England because of similarity in language, norms, administration and France because it is a model country in cultural activity and expenditure. Following indicators were then used: aggregate attendance in arts events, patterns of attendance at selected arts events, ownership of items of consumer electronics, use of home-based technology as a means of accessing the arts for selected artforms, participation in amateur activities and attitudes to the arts (Clancy 1999, 223-244; in the book edited by Fitzgibbon&Kelly).

My aim is to have a picture of the logic and evaluation process of social appreciations and cultural classifications that define the consumer’s social position in the field of collecting music and to try to define the factors influencing cultural choices, both individually and socially. In my master’s thesis I claimed that so-called crossover is not easy to apprehend and locate by the music journalists, as they usually are specialists, specialised in one musical genre.

My method will consist of getting familiar with all the relevant cultural statistics and audience research, and then perhaps test by preliminary hypothesis by interviewing attendants of musical events and musical directors. I will also try to have a picture of the musical product as a species of industrially produced and marketed mass entertainment but also as a individual lifestyle-orientated but popularly marketed package of experience. I also have to find all the possible material written about the Chamber Orchestra of Lapland; also articles helping the conseptualisation of the concept crossover.

BACKGROUND LITERATURE for this paper:

From Maestro to Manager. Critical Issues in Arts&Culture Management. Oak Tree Press, Dublin in association with Graduate School of Business&University College Dublin. 1997; Reprinted in 1999. Edited by Anne Fitzgibbon & Anne Kelly

KOLB, Bonita M. (2000): Marketing Cultural Organisations. New Strategies for Attracting Audiences to Classical Music, Dance, Museums, Theatre and Opera. Oak Tree Press, Dublin 2000.

PERUKANGAS, Michael (1998): Musiikkiarvostelut - politiikkaa vai tiedettä. A master’s thesis in sociology, University of Helsinki.

Right to the city

2009-09-23T02:26:00.000-07:00

In the context of this work, right to the city is about reclaiming the commons. Rights to urban commons have been under threat and enclosures have occurred due to land speculation and due to commons becoming subjected to market forces. Different proposals for relationships between ownership and usage rights of urbanity are discussed in the paper; furthermore, I will postulate the right to urban recreation areas. I will conclude that usage rights of the commons have to be recognized as a primary measure of value of urban, public space.

Right to the city is both a political program declaration and a research concept. I will have a closer look on definitions of urban rights, both in academic papers and in NGO driven declarations. Those proposed in the NGO driven declarations are the more detailed but they are aimed as recommendations for practical implementation; on the other hand, those by scholars are presented as ideals. Here, a proposal for a Lefebvrian transduction from ideals to implementation is needed and attempted; for this purpose, I will present a how-to-read for his conception.

I will maintain that Right to the City is:
- an urban application of citizenship rights
- an urban human rights programme
- a definition of relationships and processes

A wide notion of commons, including social and cultural commons, is at the core of the Right to the City. Essential about commons is not ownership but usage rights. Commons are an antithesis to the ubiquitous commercialization of urbanity. I will discuss some proposals to maintain, manage, reclaim or enclose the commons. Furthermore, I will present a few examples to illustrate these proposals.

I will postulate that the cry for reclaiming the urban commons is about the Lefebvrian rights to the city, including rights to the centrality, right to social life, right to access to and definition of production of space, right to environs (habitat and to inhabit), right to full usage of moments and places and right to appropriation (usage rights, as opposite to private property).

As David Harvey calls for re-birth of urban commons, and to him, this requires mobilization for recognizing derivative rights, they perhaps have to be placed ahead of the previously recognized basic rights. This has implications to what includes to the Right to the City declaration, to define commoning as the most general and fundamental of urban rights.

Gir markaloven Marka til folket?

2009-05-03T22:56:00.000-07:00

Ifølge miljøvernminister Erik Solheim er det ingen motsetninger mellom den reviderte markaloven og økt fremkommelighet og bruk av Marka.

Selvsagt representerer Marka mangfold i naturen, men der er nærheten til Oslo som gjør den helt unik. Det er antakelig ingen annen byskog i en slik kaliber i hele verden; man kan faktisk snakke om Oslo som en blågrønn by. Hva som gjør bynaturen unik er at den betyr noe for byfolket. Dets bruk er dets betydning, og flerbruk betyr at det finnes flere forskjellige fortellinger om Marka og flere forskjellige grunn for Oslomarka å eksistere. Alle disse brukene har friluftsinteresser til felles.

Natur og kultur betraktes ofte som motsetninger. Det er ikke slik. De fleste måten man bruker naturen er tilknyttet til særtradisjoner og særpraksiser. Og valget av den selve måten, hvordan man bruker naturen, er også kulturelt motivert.

Den store amerikanske nabolags- og parkforskeren Jane Jacobs hevde att parker tilbyr et sted for det sosiale livet man har i nabolaget. Hvis det ikke finnes en park i nabolaget må man reise videre, for eksempel til Oslomarka. Marka er ingen substitutt for nabolagssosialitet, men den er mer enn en substitutt for nabolagsparker, som er mangelvare her i Oslo. Man kan si at Marka er en nabolagspark for alle! Men, hvem er alle? Hvilke interesser har disse "alle"?

I den ideale verden har Solheim rett. De aktiviteter man pleier å knytte til Marka trenger skognaturen rundt seg. Det er ikke lurt å skyte elg eller mulig å leie en skistue i Frognerparken eller St. Hanshaugen. Men det er naiv å negligere de motsetninger som i praktikken utgjørs av flerbruket med forskjellige interesser. Spørsmålet er, hvilken særinteresse har de sterkeste lobbyen og beste argumentene.

Hvis Oslomarka er et ekstrem av bynaturen, er selve byparker det andre ekstremet. Begge brukes til friluftsliv. Planleggeren av New York Central Park, Frederic Law Olmsted legitimerte byparkene som alminnelige og demokratiske rettigheter for byfolket. Selv om marken som er utnyttbar for bygninger av forskjellige slag og trafikkfunksjon er mangelvare i store byer, er det utenkbar at bruke marken i Central Park til noe annet enn alminnelige friluftsinteresser. Det er nettopp disse interesser man vil verne med en særlov. Hvis en riktig stor by som New York kan garantere friluftsområdene sine, kan det ikke være umulig for en minimetropolis som Oslo, med eller uten en særlov.

Michael Perukangas

parkforsker

“From Spinning Jenny via George Best and Joy Division: David Beckham and beyond. The New Order of Manchester”

2009-04-29T14:35:00.000-07:00

What is Manchester?
Manchester was probably the first town in the world to become known as an industrial town. By the mid-19th century it was known as the cottonopolis; now it is known as a foremost center of and trend setter in popular culture. Band Joy Division is perhaps better known for its influence than its music; the same can be said about its reincarnation, the New Order and the Smiths.
Football players David Beckham, and George Best already in the late 1960s were pop stars in their own rights. Indeed the fame of George Best in the late 60s was reminiscent of that of the Beatles (Best 2003, 175; 269), with whom Best socialized himself. Now perhaps the best known Mancunian is Cristiano Ronaldo, a Portuguese football player.
The transition of Manchester from a rusty industrial town into a postindustrial pop-city will be studied by using the definitions of postmodernity and postindustrialism by Mike Featherstone, Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard. Also the importance of culture to the city branding will be studied.
As the Fordism and post-Fordism not only refer to production regimes but also to consumption patterns, cultural forms, individual and collective identities, and patterns of social and political regulation, this should result in a greater understanding of Manchester’s specificity (Mole 1996, 19-20). As Manchester is trying to seek pastures new after the collapse of the textile industries, the possible answer as the new main source of income is to be found in entertainment, investment, tourism and service industries (Haslam 1999, xi). As the industrial Manchester was defined by the daytime labor, and hooked on pleasure, now only the pleasure remains. Manchester now lives of consuming, not of producing (ibid., xiv-xvi). A Mancunian, Noel Gallagher of the band Oasis recalls his youth:
“When my generation left school, they had only three choices offered them: football, music or the dole. That’s why there are so many big rock groups from the North” (ibid., xxvii).

The dawn of the industrial town: Manchester the cottonopolis
Manchester didn’t rise from the ashes by the dawn of the industrialism. It existed already in the Roman era, but since the mid-16th century it gained in importance by the introduction of textile manufacturing, and its mechanization since the 1770s, furthermore contributed to setting up new manufactures in the Lancashire region. The seminal invention in this process was the steam engine by James Watt, first used in textile factories in 1783 (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SCwatt.htm). Manchester was the centre of the Lancashire region that was involved in the development. (Goodman & Chant 1999, 31-32.)
The networking of raw materials into Manchester and finished products into surroundings was made possible by then exceptionally developed transportation systems; the other towns of the region – such as Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, Oldham, Blackburn and Preston - were connected to Manchester by canals. A railroad in 1830 – one of first in the world -provided another connection for the Lancashire towns to Manchester and thus contributing greatly to birth of an industrial region. (ibid., 32-33; 43.)
However, the label of cottonopolis doesn’t do full justice to the industrial Manchester. It had a burgeoning engine industry, although largely fuelled by the needs of machinery in the textile industry. Although Manchester expanded during the heyday of textile manufacturing (from 70 000 in 1801 to 505 000 in 1891), still it employed less than one fourth of the men. (ibid., 34-35.)
The manufacturing process applied by the Manchester’s cotton industry might have had pre-Fordist features, as its textile manufactures concentrated each only in one stage of the spinning process (Mole 1996, 21). However, in scale it can’t be called as properly Fordist as it would have implied the domination of a few large, vertically integrated firms. The cotton industry in Lancashire was occupied by numerous small family companies.
By the 1920s the Lancashire cotton industry became forced out by American and continental producers, providing new products produced by using new technologies, in competitive price and quality. Even on the protected domestic markets it faced the rising, low-cost competition from India, Egypt and China, so indeed the decay of the Manchester’s cotton industry was due to Fordist mass production (Mole 1996, 22-23).
What about the cityscape of Manchester, then? Even the factories were overshadowed by warehouses in its urban space. The city was of extremes of poverty and wealth. Its centre was conceived as “dead” as it was filled with smoke. (Goodman & Chant 1999, 40.)
“Manchester is an agglomeration, the most extraordinary, the most interesting, and in some respects, the most monstrous, which the progress of society has presented. The first impression is far from favourable. Its position is devoid of picturesque relief, and the horizon of clearness. Amid the fogs which exhale from this marshy district, and the clouds of smoke vomited forth from the numberless chimneys, Labour presents a mysterious activity, somewhat akin to the subterraneous action of a volcano… All the houses, all the streets, resemble each other; and yet this uniformity is in the midst of confusion… The waters of the Irk, black and fetid as they are, supply numerous tanneries and dye-works…From this apparently indifferent combination, there results a great economy both of time and wealth in production. There is perhaps good reason for complaint that too little attention has been paid to the health and convenience of the inhabitants; of the want of public squares, fountains, trees, promenades, and well-ventilated buildings; but it is certain that it would be difficult task to devise a plan by which the various products of Industry could be more concentrated, or by which the manufactories should be brought nearer to the fuel which feeds them, or more accessible to facilities for disposing of the goods when manufactured… During the greater part of the day, the town is silent and appears almost deserted… You hear nothing but the breathing of the vast machines, sending forth fire and smoke through their tall chimneys, and offering up to the heavens, as it were in token of homage, the sighs of that Labour which God has imposed upon man. At certain hours of the day the town appears suddenly animated. The operatives going to, or returning from their work, fill the streets by thousands…but even at those times when the inhabitants relax from their arduous duties and give free course to their feelings, they lose nothing of that serious and angular stiffness, which a too exclusive occupation in industrial pursuits communicates to them… ” (Goodman & Chant 1999, 68-70; originally Faucher, L (1844): Manchester in 1844: its present condition and future prospects, London, Simpkin, Marshall, and Manchester, Abel Heywood, pp. 16-19, 90-93.)

Manchester for Europe – never mind London
The idea of Europeanness and cosmopolitanism and the aim of being number one in Europe or in the whole world is a way of by-passing the London’s cultural dominance. The Mancunian rock bands and football clubs are a source of pride for local people. Manchester United is not only the number one in England, but it aims continuously to be that in Europe and in the whole world. Manchester United is perhaps the best known football brand – or sports brand in the world, for that matter.

As London is by nature and history as the earlier capital of the British Empire essentially a cosmopolitan city, Manchester claims also cosmopolitan rights in a backward and rough Northern style. Yet it desperately imitates London or at least, relates itself to London and refers to London (Savage et al 2005, 132-133). The seminal influence of the rising rock culture in Manchester in the latter part of the 70s was Sex Pistols, a London band (Milestone 1996, 97-98). As Bernard Sumner of Joy Division recalls:
“I saw the Sex Pistols. They were terrible. I thought they were great. I wanted to get up and be terrible too.” (ibid.)
Manchester the popmodern city: a conscious strategy or did it just happen?
Does the transformation of Manchester result from conscious decisions or did it just happen? The fortunes of postindustrial or postmodern cities increasingly rest on culture and creativity in their image building, this assumed to have economical trade-offs. Culture as a “soft” industry (as a contrast to the traditional industry) is a major raw material for postindustrial societies (http://www.charleslandry.com/). The postmodern city reconfigures the metropolitan areas around selective connections of strategically located activities (Castells 1998, 144).
`where a bustling office and retail economy combines with a thriving and diverse cultural, entertainment, and visitor economy to provide a prosperity shared by the whole community' (City of Portland, 1991: 4).
This idea of diversity as presented in marketing of Portland is also applied in Manchester in order to attract lifestyle consumers. Cities compete and distinguish themselves by making themselves sites of consumption in which to satisfy demands for commercialized leisure, recreation and seeking for new experiences. (Lees 2003, 614.) Diversity promises a harmonious, win-win picture of future urban development that could attract a heterogeneous coalition of small business owners, corporate interests, arts and educational institutions, municipal officials and residents. (ibid., 622)
The strategic players essential to the forming of Manchester’s new identity are the labour-controlled local authority, the private sector, the Urban Development Corporation and the cultural intermediaries or the pop bohemians (Milestone 1996, 94). Much of Manchester’s recent inner-city activity has been fuelled by the urban development corporations and run by public-private sector partnerships, Task Forces and City Challenges.
The UK urban regeneration was imported into Britain in the early 1980s from the United States by the second Thatcher government. The targeted inner city areas in mostly Northern industrial cities were mainly held by the Labour party, and urban regeneration was to be seen as a response to post-war failure of socialist policies of the 1960s and 1970s. The Thatcher government wanted to encourage free enterprising for ideological reasons, this unfortunately being done at a time of a massive de-industrialisation. This urban regeneration was despised by the Left as a symbol of Thatcherism, hardly supported let alone implemented by the local governments for this reason. Later urban regeneration from the early 1980s was based on a conscious and explicit shift of the economic base from manufacturing to service industries (Mole 1996, 16-18). The Northern Urban Agenda aimed at upgrading the ailing industrial towns of Northern England since the mid-1990s (P. Hall 2002, 417-418). Manchester’s recreation as a cultural city was deeply involved with de-industrialisation and the re-imaging process associated with competition for inward investment (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 71).
A new order?
How has the new cultural turn succeeded? In a study by Young and Lever (1997) it was found that rather few companies relocated to Manchester due to the Northern Urban Agenda, which used culture to promote the image of Manchester. However, Manchester has been quite successfully marketed to customers, referring to tourists. (T. Hall 2006, 94.)
Perhaps the main manifestation of urban renaissance is gentrification. Urban revitalization strategies aim to attract the middle-class back as residents and taxpayers, but also as consumers. Gentrification of the centre implies the shift from production to consumption, and such entrepreneurs as restaurants and (exclusive) shops are crucial to this. It happens within global economic shifts, including the increasing abstraction of the market, the internationalization of capital and the centrality of consumption to the structuration of the economic system. (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 51-52)
The fordist spinning factories in Manchester have been replaced by post-Fordist ”pop” designers with flexible and specialist production methods (Purvis 1996, 118). The pop fashion designers are durably successful because they are embedded in their cultural scenes, with their consumers and with other cultural sectors, which, in turn are networked with intelligentsia (Magatti 1993, 35-36; O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 9; Milestone 1996, 102). Gentrification is not just about the redevelopment of the inner city areas, but it also provides a higher profile for groups within the new middle class not only as consumers but as well as producers and carriers of alternative and minority lifestyles by attracting them deliberately (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 77). In Manchester, the new middle class should be replaced with bohemians (Milestone 1996, 105).

Factory for sale - “Hang out with rock stars”The plan by The Central Manchester Development Corporation (CMDC) to present the image of the new city to developers, private entrepreneurs and the people of Manchester, ear-marked the area between Castlefield and the centre of a large area of disused land and parking lots for a “cultural quarter”. Also a large Victorian goods warehouse was to be developed into a “Festival shopping centre”. The CDMC became a cultural intermediary by justifying cultural value to have economic trade-offs (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 67).
Previously a working class area of Oldham street was neglected in the 60s and 70s as many workplaces closed and residents left. Later Manchester’s “youth cultural” scene has developed the area with shops, bars and clubs. Afflecks Palace, previously disused three story building, has been converted into low rental units for producers and consumers of the “pop” culture. And what has now become a gay village had previously been a neglected area. (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 73-74.) An old warehouse can be converted into a hotel, advertising itself with the rock stars that had been sleeping there (Haslam 1999, xix).
In 1978, the fortunes of a run-down inner-city area of Factory club’s changed suddenly to the better by the launching of its Friday Nights; later on, one of the founders of the Factory set up a record company with the same name, exporting Joy Division. According to Bernard Sumner of Joy Division, the spatial and social dislocation in Manchester played a role in the formation of the sinister music of Joy Division. (ibid., xxiii-xxiv).
“The place I used to live, where I had my happiest memories, all that had gone. All that was left was a chemical factory. I realized then that I could never go back to that happiness. So there’s this void. For me Joy Division was about the death of my community and my childhood.”
If factories can be sold, traditions, values and societies are not for sale. The identity forming in the global information flow era takes forms of reactionarism, defensiveneness, fundamentalism, nationalism, territorialism and anti-commercialism. (Castells 1997, 65-66.) Re-emphasizing the locality as a source of meanings and identity is a counter-reaction to the globalization (Featherstone 1995, 95-96).
While football clubs represent societies, as transnational corporations they can be sold. When the American tycoon Malcolm Glazer bought the major share in Manchester United, the loyalist and localist supporters founded a new club, The United of Manchester. It can be seen as a reaction to the global capitalism, as an example of new rise of territorialism and anti-commercialism (http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=1961184755).

Manchester – a victim for a belated and deliberate Fordism
Due to booming economy – based on declining industries - of the post-WW II Great Britain, the underlying societal problems were neglected. “Cynics might compare the postmodern spectacle of Manchester’s canal, Whitworth Street and Piccadilly Village with the Potemkin villages along the river Niva, built to impress the Tsar and obscure the squalor and deprivation behind them”. Favouring of private over public consumption has lead to widening inequalities in income, wealth and life chances (Mole 1996, 40-43.)
The stalling of the continuous economic growth in the 1970s was perhaps nowhere as evident as in the UK towns. The labour government of 1964-1970 belatedly forged a Fordist mass scale system into Manchester when the Fordism was beginning to disintegrate. Local labour markets collapsed, whole areas declined and became dependent on declining subsidies from the state, student occupancy and underground economic activity (ibid., 23-27). Greater Manchester’s economy, its labor market and industrial structure, is still suffering from the consequences of a failed national political strategy. Its consequences are:
- continuous and massive loss of manufacturing employment
- service industry employment increases but not sufficiently to compensate for the decline in manufacturing employment, itself suffering job loss in the recession of the late 80s and early 90s
- the proliferation of poorly-paid and part-time work, especially suffered by women
- high aggregate levels of unemployment approaching 50% in some wards of the city, for some age groups and ethnic minorities. (Mole 1996, 31.)
Besides the non-desirable social and economic consequences, the disintegration of Fordism also has lead to great cultural disruption, especially in the Northern towns, where identity has largely been based on manual and industrial labor. In his comparative analysis of responses to industrial competition in Italy’s Ticino Olana and Lancashire, Magatti found out that in Lancashire, “industrial transformation destroyed not only the traditional specialization in cotton but also local industrial identity” (Magatti 1993, 216-217)

Is Manchester a postmodern city or just postindustrial?
According to O’Connor and Wynne, there have been three interwoven main themes in the postmodern urbanity discussions in the 1980s and 90s:
1. A process of restructuring in which many of those activities deemed peripheral to the activity of the “productive” or “Fordist” city have now moved centre stage and become a major concern for cities; culture, consumption and image
2. A gentrification, whereby a reversal of the movement out of the city centre by the affluent classes results in a “re-centralisation” of previously “marginal” areas of the city centre
3. The process whereby previously “marginal” groups and their activities have been made central to the city and/or have made the city centre central to themselves – not just residentially, but also by their uses of the centre, and by such usage being promoted, by themselves or others, as a primary sign of the “centrality” of that centre. (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 4.)

The new entrepreneurship meets the following challenges in a postmodern Manchester:
- do they (new cultural enterprises) represent a different logic of the city’s economy or are they marginal and superficial?
- is their potential scope and significance greater that is indicated in the statistics?
- are they anything more than the lifestyle choice of an unrepresentative, urban middle class? (Magatti 1993, 38-39.)
If Manchester is a postindustrial city, is it postmodern? In a Featherstonian sense it might well be. Firstly, if consumption has a growing importance in forming Manchester and its economy, as postmodern cities are characterized by the expansion of the cultural sphere and leisure consumption, spaces of play and entertainment (Featherstone 1991, 96-101). Not only the use value of products is consumed but also mediated cultural activities and signifying practices, signs and images. (Featherstone 1995, 75.)
An empirical research by Wynne (1992), emerging from a consultancy document by the regional arts board in conjuction with the local city economic regeneration agency, The Economic Importance of the Arts Cultural Industries in Greater Manchester (CER, 1989) examined new forms of cultural consumption and the construction of lifestyle in the contemporary Manchester. These forms were associated with the following trends:
1. the dramatic increase in the production and consumption of symbolic goods
2. the shift of consumption from use value to sign value
3. the destabilization of established symbolic hierarchies through the articulation of alternative tastes and styles
4. the rise of popular and commercial cultures as alternative forms challenging established “high culture”
5. the emergence of new urban spaces creating “play spaces” for new forms of sociability, leading to;
6. new forms of display and social mixing representing a movement away from rational goal directed activity, permitting a more playful, carnivalesque exploration of emotions – a preoccupation with the esthetization and “stylization of life” as opposed to more fixed lifestyles (Mole 1996, 4.)
Three significant results from this research suggest that:
1. the emergence of a “mix and match” lifestyle amongst the 18-35 age group who are the most prominent in the use of the cultural and leisure facilities of the city centre, usually associated with artistic, bohemian or counter-cultural milieus
2. the extension of the notion of “cultural intermediaries” from the new middle class to a much wider range of the population, through the increased involvement of popular culture in the creation of the new city centre sites of consumption
3. these new and extended forms of cultural consumption, characterized by rapid turnover and complex distinctions, were feeding directly into involvement in cultural production to supply these new markets (Mole 1996, 5.)

Secondly, we have to assume the everyday life in Manchester to be estetized, a typical condition in postmodernity, especially in large towns (Featherstone 1991, 23.) These towns are places for flaneurism, artistic and intellectual counter-cultures, bohemians and artistic avant-garde, being the essential intermediaries of meanings and experiences of places. (Featherstone 2001, 80-87). Nevertheless, gathering of bohemians, avant-garde and counter-cultures in big cities is nothing new. They were already found in big cities in the mid-19th century.
The displacement of the industries in the many industrial towns in 70s and 80s Britain suggests that if modernism is to be treated synonymously with industrialism, cities like Manchester are now certainly living a post-industrial era. However, Manchester will be unable to develop a sustainable post-Fordist economy without fundamental changes in policy and social institutions and support from local governments. If Jameson is right, it is not postmodern. If postmodernity is deemed to be a reaction for modernity, a proper postmodernity is an alternative to modernity, requiring a radical break of it. It is not a revised edition of modernity, modernity 2.0 or mature modernity. (Jameson 2002, 215.) Jameson uses the term of postmodernism as there is no better alternative available at the moment, neither for Jameson or for Manchester.
As for Jameson this break primarily is an aesthetic one rather than a break from social or societal conditions of modernity, he has no answer for the challenges of postindustrialism. In a Baudrillardian view, the current era is of a simulation, where social reproduction replaces industrial production as the organizing principle of the society. Labor is not primarily productive but a sign of one’s social position and way of life. (Kellner 1994, 7-9.)
It would indeed be out-of-place to claim that the collapse in industrial production and the erosion of industrial work based identities would represent anything else than a void in social relations, emptied meanings in everyday life and indeed in the deprived livelihoods of the many of the Manchester’s working class. There is nothing ironic in their fates. It would be absurb to claim that their everyday life world would be fittingly called as esthetisized, or that they would have become all of a sudden from consumers to producers of the public urban space. Besides, consumption is not just a matter of wants, desires, attitudes, culture etc.; but of money too! (Mole 1996, 42).
The entertainment industries that mark Manchester – football and music – employ by spin-offs in advertising, marketing and designing, as networking is typical of this branch (Haslam 1999, xv). Nevertheless, the scale importance of these spin-offs is exaggerated. Magatti suspects that post-Fordist economy would ever employ significantly in Manchester, the “celebrated cultural industries employing less than 1% of the workforce” (in 1992). And stamping of cultural industries or fashion as postindustrial is by no means unproblematic as they produce in their own rights as well (Magatti 2003, 31-34).
If the new centre of Manchester has gentrified into cosmopolitan and diverse, this is in a contrast with the largely unchanged livelihoods of its suburbs, with concentrated poverty, unemployment and intolerant tendencies (O’Connor & Wynne 1996, 71-72.)
From the effects Magatti refers to are excluded the impacts on Mancunians’ self-perception of their city as lifted up by the celebrated Prides of Manchester. The best known “palace” of the entertainment industries in Manchester, the football stadium of Old Trafford is a theatre of dreams indeed! (Moore 2003, 199).
SOURCES:
Best, George (2003): Scoring at Half-Time. Random House
Castells, Manuel (1997): The Power of Identity. Blackwell Publishers,Oxford
Castells, Manuel (1998): End of millennium. Blackwell Publishers,Oxford
Featherstone, Mike (2001): Postmodernisme og estetisering av hverdagslivet. In ”Magiske systemer” (2001). Edited by Skorstad, Atle and Nyre, Lars. Spartacus, Oslo.
Featherstone, Mike (1995): Undoing culture. Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity. Sage, London.
Featherstone, Mike (1991): Consumer culture and postmodernism. Sage, London.
Goodman, David and Chant, Colin (eds.) (1999): European Cities & Technology. Industrial to post-industrial cityThe Open University, published by Routledge
Haslam, Dave (1999): Manchester, England, The story of the pop cult city. Fourth estate, London
Holt, Nick, Lloyd, Guy: Total football (2005). Flame Tree Publishing.
Jameson, Fredric (2002): A Singular Modernity. Essay on the Ontology of the Present. Verso, London.
Kellner, Douglas (1994): Introduction: Jean Baudrillard in the Fin-de-Millennium. In Baudrillard. A critical reader. Blackwell, Oxford
Lees, Loretta (2003): The Ambivalence of Diversity and the Politics of Urban Renaissance: The Case of Youth in Downtown Portland, Maine. In IJURR, vol. 27 no. 3,pp. 613-634)
Luke, Timothy W. (1995): New World Order or Neo-world orders: Power, Politics and Ideology in Informationalizing Glocalities. In Global Modernities, edited by Featherstone, Mike, Lash, Scott, Robertson, Roland. Sage, London
Magatti, Mauro (1993): The Market and Social Forces: a Comparative Analysis of Industrial Change. In IJURR vol. 17 no 2, pp. 213-231
Mole, Phil (1996): Fordism, post-Fordism and the contemporary city. In From the Margins to the Centre. Cultural production and consumption in the post-industrial city. Edited by
Moore, Glenn (ed.) (2005): The Concise Encyclopedia of World Football. Parragon.
O’Connor, Justin and Wynne, Derek. Aldershot.
O’Connor, Justin, Wynne, Derek (1996). Left loafing: city cultures and new urban economies of hedonism. In From the Margins to the Centre. Cultural production and consumption in the post-industrial city. Edited by O’Connor, Justin and Wynne, Derek. Aldershot.
Purvis, Sarah (1996): The interchangeable roles of the producer, consumer and cultural intermediary. The new “pop” fashion designer. In From the Margins to the Centre. Cultural production and consumption in the post-industrial city. Edited by O’Connor, Justin and Wynne, Derek. Aldershot.
Savage, Michael, Bagnall, Gaynor, Longhurst, Brian (2003): Suburbia and the aura of place. In Globalization and Belonging, Sage.
The Concise Encyclopedia of World Football. Parragon.
http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=1961184755. Downloaded in 16th April, 2009.
http://www.charleslandry.com/ . Downloaded in 16th April, 2009.
http://www.fc-utd.co.uk/index.php. Downloaded in 16th April, 2009.l
http://www.manchester.com/. Downloaded in 16th April, 2009.
http://www.manchester2002-uk.com/. Downloaded in 16th April, 2009.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/m/man_utd/4541093.stm. Downloaded in 16th April, 2009.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SCwatt.htm. Downloaded in 15th April, 2009.
LITERATURE:
Landry, Charles: The Creative City (2000). Earthscan
Wynne, Derek (1992): The Culture Industry.

Blom, Svein: økt bokonsentrasjon blant (ikke-vestlige) innvandare i Oslo – er toppen snart nådd?

2009-03-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

Ifølge Svein Blom, fra 1988 til 1998 har antallet ikke-vestlige innvandrare doblet seg i Oslo (fra 30 000 til 65 000), mens antallet vestlige innvandrare har vokset fra 18 000 til 21 000. Også andelen ikke-vestlige innvandrare har doblet fra 6,5% til 13%.

I 1998 var 35% av innvandrerne i Norge bosatta i Oslo. Mer spesifikk, andelen er 23% nå det gjelder innvandrare fra øst-Europa, mens den var 41% blant ikke-vestlige innvandrere. Det betyr at de ikke-vestlige innvandrarna er litt over gjennomsnitt konsentrert seg i Oslo.

Att innvandrare fra Norden og andre vestlige land er mindre konsentrert til hovedstaden, kan skyldes at de har hatt en mer spredt arbeidsmarked, parforhold med en nordmann og at deres innfallsport til landet sjeldnere har gått via hovedstaden. I tilllegg troligvis kan nettverking inom en etnisk grupp bidra positivt til arealvis konsentrasjon av innvandrare an en viss etnisitet.

Det finns forskjeller mellom innvandrare av olika drivkrefter bak flyttingen. Flyktinger er lokalisert mer spredt, mens arbeidsinnvandrare er konsentrert til Oslo.

Oslo er dock ikke noen homogenisk by; det finns betydelige forskjell mellom de ulike bydelerna og –parterna. Mens halvparten av ikke-vestlige innvandrare bor i indre øst eller i de nye drabantbyene, halvparten av vestlige innvandrare er bosatt i indre eller ytre vest. Blom fortsatt påpeker at fordelingen av øst-europeanare sammenlikner fordelingen av ikke-vestlige innvandrare.

En interessant kontribusjon i Bloms artikkel var introduksjonen av dissimilaritetsindeksen. Det målar andelen hvor stor del av befolkningen måtte flytte til en annen bydel for at de skal vaere likt fordelt (når referansegruppen er nordmenn) mellom bydelene.

For eksempel: hvis vi tar en simplifisert eksempel, hvor Oslo vær tudelt mellom jevnstore deler - den østliga og den vestliga delen - og hele befolkningen skilt mellom norske og ikke-norske og det finnes 500 000 norske og 50 000 ikke-norske i byen, og av de norske bodde 270 000 tusen mennesker i vest og 230 000 i øst, det betyr at det måtte være bosatta kun 5 000 innvandrare i vest og 45 000 i øst. At prosentandelingen mellom vest og øst et for norske 54-46 og for ikke-norske 10-90, leder til at dissimilaritetsindeksen av ikke-norske er 44 (54-10 eller 90-46).

Hvis dissimilaritetsindeksen brukes som indikator for segregering, hva leder det til? Ifølge en svensk undersøkning av Andersson-Brolin, kulturell avstand til det (svenske) samfunnet er avgjørende i segregering. I tillegg er økonomiske forhold viktige. Gjennomsnittlig går D-indeksen ned på 3 poeng når inntekten øker med 10 000 kroner for ikke-vestlige innvandrare. For vestlige og øst-europeiske går den ned kun på 1 poeng. For meg var uklart, hvilken period Blom brukte her for å måle inntektsforskjellene; kanskje et år?

En absolutt integrasjon betyr en komplett usegregasjon. Ifølge Blom, botid fungerer som en indikator på økonomisk og kulturell integrasjon. Lengst botid og lavest D-indeks har de nordiske landene, Tyskland, Polen og Ungarn, mens I motsatt hjørne finnes Somalia og Irak med kort botid og Sri Lanka og Vietnam med lengre botid.

Att ikke segregasjonen sinker raskere ved økt inntekt og formue, tyder på f.eks. vennskaps betydning i boligmarkeden, lokal tilgang til religiøse og etniske tjenester, diskriminering i boligmarkeden og lokale myndigheters beslutninger og rutiner.

Nabolagsindikatorer er avgjørende for integrasjon. Blom bruker indikatorer på språkbeherskelse som integrasjonsindikatorer. Disse er følgende:
- andelen som snakker norsk mest hjemme
- andelen som aldrig har lest en norsk avis de siste 12 månedene
Likevel er den andre indikatoren ukomplett. Hvis man ikke slett kan lese, leser man ikke norske aviser.

En annen gruppe integreringsindikatorer Blom brukte var indikatorer på sosial kontakt med nordmenn. Disse var følgende:
- om innvandreren har en god norsk venn
- om barna har venner med samma språk- eller innvandrerbakgrunn
Den første indikatoren er vanskelig å definiere. Hva er en nordmenn? Ifølge denne fortolkningen, definieres det etter språket man bruker mest; hvis man snakker noen norsk språk som hovedmål, er man norsk. Men, hvilket språk man bruker, varierer i ulike kontekster.

Sosiale kontakter er i hverfall avgjørende i integrering og også i språkbruk. Jo større innvandrergruppen er, desto därligere kan de norsk, konkluderer Blom.

Kvinnornas stad

2009-03-18T14:20:00.001-07:00

Den feministiska stadsforskningen har intresserat sig för stadsstrukturens könsdelning samt dess inverkan på könsrollerna och upplevandet av stadsrummet.
Många stadsforskare menar att den nutida stadens egenart betecknas av konsumerism. Det existerar få konsumtionsfria utrymmen i städerna och sådana planeras inte heller i något större omfång. Den dominerande inriktningen i vår samhällsplanering tar sin utgångspunkt i en funktionell indelning av stadsstrukturen. Mellan klockan åtta och klockan fyra antas invånarna vistas antingen hemma i bostadsförorterna eller på arbetsplatserna i kontors- eller industriområdena och kvällar och veckoslut befolkar de köpcentren. Köpcentren uppförs antingen i stadskärnan eller på en bilresas avstånd i stadens periferi och däremellan bildar bostadsorterna sociala vakuum.

Den feministiska stadsforskningen hjälper oss förstå hur olika aktörer inom stadsplaneringen har olika intressen och brukar olika makt. Barnen lider brist på lekplatser, eftersom man speciellt i stadens centrum hellre använder rummet till mer ekonomiskt eller imagemässigt gynnsamma ändamål. Barnens lott som “den Andra” i staden understryks också bland annat i stadens proportioner, vilka är planerade för vuxna, samt i ett trafiksystem som centrerar kring bilism och utgör en direkt fara för barn som rör sig oförutsebart och är svåra att få syn på från en bil. De rörelsehindrade kämpar fortsatt för sin rätt till en hinderfri stadsmiljö, även om förbättringar åstadkommits bland annat genom att Kalle Könkkölä har vetorätt i Helsingfors byggnadsnämnd.

Kvinnans roll som “den Andra” tar sig uttryck främst i förverkligandet av en stadsstruktur som bygger på bilism. Speciellt i amerikanska bilstäder där invånarna bor i spridda egnahemsområden isoleras kvinnorna i hemmen. Om det inte finns fungerande offentliga transportmedel och mannen kanske kör familjens enda bil, begränsas kvinnans domän oundvikligt till hemmet och gårdsplanen. En sådan stadsplanering stöder ett rolltänkande där kvinnans uppgifter begränsas till hemmets skötsel och fortplantning och isolerar kvinnan från näringslivet och hela samhällslivet. I Finland är det visserligen vanligare än i USA att kvinnorna aktivt deltar i arbetslivet, men problemet är nog förståeligt ändå: Om arbetsplatserna och hemmen hålls isär, blir speciellt kvinnorna marginaliserade. Detta strider mot den ursprungliga trädgårdsstadens sociala ideal om att vara självförsörjande gällande arbetsplatser, vilket betydligt skulle underlätta speciellt kvinnornas möjligheter i arbetslivet.

I Finland tävlar städerna öppet om de stora kärnfamiljerna genom att prioritera planerandet och byggandet av stora familjebostäder. Detta syns även i Helsingfors stadsplanering och bostadspolitik. Denna tävlan om barnen, framtidens skattebetalare, förs helt öppet och legitimt.

Vem är stadsbo och vilka rättigheter har stadsbon? Den feministiska stadsforskningen har nytolkat begreppet medverkan och de roller som vanligtvis förknippas med medverkan och deltagande. Vanligtvis indelas stadsplaneringens huvudsakliga aktörer i stadsplaneringstjänstemän, förtroendevalda politiker och invånare. I bakgrunden verkar dock vanligtvis också näringslivets intressen, även om man ofta väljer att maskera, dölja eller tiga om dessa, för att inte riskera att stadsplaneringspolitikerna och tjänstemännen känner sig kränkta eller misstänkliggjorda. Det borde trots allt stå klart för alla att till exempel stora köpcenter aldrig planeras enbart med syftet att höja den kommunala arbetskrafts- och servicekapaciteten generellt. Pengar finns alltid med någonstans i bilden och påverkar till exempel vilken grynder som får köpa stadens mark och genomföra
projektet och vilken affärskedja står bakom det nyuppförda köpcentret.

“Rädslans geografi” handlar om erfarenheter av och speciellt undvikande av sådana platser som anses farliga och som särskilt kvinnor inte vågar röra sig ensamma på i fruktan för fysisk kränkning (trots att faktum är att män råkar ut för mer anonymt våld i städerna än kvinnor). I Helsingfors är t.ex. Kajsaniemi-parken ett exempel på ett stadsrum som ofta upplevs skrämmande. Samma gäller andra liknande platser med “skuggområden” och skumma buskage, där nästan ingen rör sig under den mörka tiden av dygnet. Om en plats får ett farligt rykte fungerar detta som en
självförverkligande profetia: då folk inte rör sig på en plats, så anses detta vara en farlig plats, varvid man i ännu högre grad undviker att roar sig där. Detta har använts som ett argument för att hålla stadsparkerna snygga, välskötta och välbelysta. I Finland har rädslans geografi forskats speciellt av Hille Koskela. Själva termen är lanserad av Anja Snellman, vars bok med samma namn
också filmatiserats av Kaisa Rastimo.

Platser betecknar inte enbart lägen, knytpunkter i ett nätverk av longitud och latitud. Platser konstrueras även genom sociala processer, där platserna tillknyts olika betydelser och tolkningar till exempel: är denna plats ägnad för handel, vistelse, eller enbart betraktande?) Platsers betydelse och natur samt maktkampen mellan olika aktörer som vill härska över en plats kan också förändras över tid. Ett exempel är stadsdelen Berghäll i Helsingfors, som från att närmast ha fungerat som förvaringsplats för fattiga arbetare med tiden ändrat karaktär och image och blivit en internationell smältdegel för trendmedvetet cityfolk.

Olika aktörer har olika möjligheter och makt att definiera stadsrummets betydelse och användning. I stadsplaneringen märks detta genom att svagare grupper, såsom barn, mänskor med nedsatt rörelseförmåga eller kvinnor beaktas i ringa grad. Mer om detta har forskats och skrivits av bl.a. Doreen Massey.

The Right to Urban Parks

2009-03-08T23:30:00.000-07:00

The version of spring 2008 of the research proposal for my doctoral thesis

What is a park? What is an urban park? What is its function, definition and for what it is being used? Why urban parks? For which purposes have they been created, by whom and for whom? In order to understand the function of urban parks and the relationship between nature and urbanity, work of the founder of the landscape architecture and park planner, Frederick Law Olmsted is studied.

I will study definitions of various forms of parks in the urban context and the history of parks. As there hardly is a one all-embracing definition of their onthology and function, the existence, definition and parks has been a cause for struggle.

Who “owns” the parks? Are they a public good or a luxury? Who use them, for what, when and with whom? Where do the park users live? Are the parks there to be admired, aesthetic objects or do they serve functions for the city?

My central focus will be on the Helsinki Central park as it transgresses the two extreme definitions of urban parks – artificial, deliberately created neighbourhood or “pocket” parks inside the habitation and natural leftovers of rurality between or outside the habited areas. The definitions of parks are in fact different manifestations of the relationship between nature and urbanity. This problematic history will be quite thoroughly studied.

As I am studying different definitions of parks, their use, function and very definition, the question of park politics and power struggles is central in order to understand the essence of parks as urban “goods”. Threaths to the park - past and present are studied. What has come of the past threaths, have the plans been realised? Who has been the initiator in these threats?

An extensive section of history of and conflicts at the Oslo city forest, Oslomarka is included here as it is paradigmatic case of the relationship between nature and city.

The need for/function of urban parks

By being out in the open air, a citizen, the president Thomas Jefferson said, breathes free: he applied this metaphor to the countryside, which he loved (Sennett 1994, 270).

From cities´ point of view, the function of parks is integrative. Parks are – according to Cranz – historically, politically and aesthetically integrative (Cranz 1982, 248-249).

According to Lefebvre (1996, 147), the citizens of cities have several social needs in respect to cities. These needs are conceptualised in dialectic form, and they include:
- need for security/opening
- need for certainty/adventure
- need for the predictable and the unpredictable
- need of similarity/difference
- need of isolation/encounter
- need of independence (solitude)/communication
- need of immediate/long-term prospects
- need for creative activity; the need for information, symbolism, the imaginery and plan
o play, sexuality, physical activities (e.g.sport), creative activity, art, knowledge

These urban needs can not be reduced into exchange value, commerce and profit. These needs – creating time-spaces for social actions and apprehension - can not be directly met by planners, although they can contribute to development of inhabiting and creating time-spaces, yet it requires time (Lefevbre 1996, 149).

According to Lefebvre, the classical humanist notion of urban spaces treats them as finite and monolithic objects, neglecting the aspect of urban planning. The two contrasting approaches to planning are those of a Nietzschean superhumanity, a finished product of planning rationality and the urban society as an oeuvre. (ibid., 149.)

A Lefebvrian experimental utopia is based on the following questions it tries to answer:
- What are and would be the most successful places?
- How can they be discovered?
- According to which criteria?
- What are the times and rhythms of daily life which are inscribed and prescribed in these successful spaces favourable to happiness? (ibid., 151.)

As urban planning can encourage social inclusion (as well as exclusion) and participation in making of urbanity, it requires deliberate, even revolutionary actions to defeat currently dominating planning interests, ideologies and discourse and to take over in defining urbanity. This is only when the city can become an oeuvre as it is the people who essentially make the city. (ibid., 149.) If parks can work as instruments for social control, they also contain a sociality of their own independently of any deliberate planning (Cranz 1982, 240-242).

Richard Sennett maintains that public parks serve same kind of functions that restaurants, pubs and cafeterias used to do as settings for casual encounters, places where people would meet and chat, even make speeches. At restaurants and subsequently at parks, part of the enjoyment is observing people without being too pushy. The difference between those places and public parks is that parks are primarily places for silence, not for making speeches and if one is talking to a stranger in a park, the park provides settings for encounters between strangers even from different social classes. (Sennett 1994, 80-85.) And by doing so, parks do - at least the early city parks - potentially serve a democratic function in towns in the manner Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) had as his ideal when planning his conception of New York Central Park as a public open space.

The creation of the Regent's Park in London, initiated by the future King George IV, planned by John Nash, was based on the analogy of the urban lungs of the city. In connection to the park planning, all traffic was to be excluded from the park. (Sennett 1994, 325-328.) However, the notion that parks function as public open spaces in the cities is a contrafunctional one, according to Jane Jacobs. If the parks are conceived as open spaces, they might in fact promote air pollution . As the Central Park of Helsinki may be an "open space" as it is open to everyone, but it is essentially a forest, not a park in a Jacobsian sense, it can nevertheless operate as the green lungs of the city, providing oxygene and absorbing some of the pollution mainly caused by city traffic. As Jacobs maintains that city parks in their purest form are neighbourhood parks and that the parks' functioning as the green lungs of the city is nonsense (Jacobs 1961, 91), from this notion one wonders whether the Helsinki Central Park is a park at all.

Urban neighbourhood parks are - according to Jacobs - the most generalized form of city parks, representing a "generalised public-yard use" (Jacobs 1961, 91). As Olmsted and many other park protagonists of the 19th century thought that parks would have an uplifting and morally boosting effect on cities, Jacobs thinks that the essence of parks stem from the way the immediate neighbourhood uses and appreciates them (ibid., 95.) A successful park needs to be used by different kinds of people for different purposes at different times, it is not a vacuum between the built masses but it instead adds up to its surroundings an appreciated and a functional element (ibid.).

Parks are not parks if they are not used by people. In order to function properly as successful city parks, they do have to function as a demand good, providing settings for something that is already inherent rather than forging an unnatural element of sociability into locality. As Jacobs concluded, "it is useless to "bring" parks where the people are, if the very reasons for parks' existence is substituted by a park.” (ibid., 101.)"

If a park is unpopular, it may become used by "unwelcome" users, frightening away the other possible users (Jacobs 1961), as the case is with the Kaisaniemi park in Helsinki. The 1930s economical recession had indeed brought about a new “leisure” class, spending much of their time in parks (Cranz 1982, 105). As the more affluent middle class could afford a refuge to the suburbs with more rural pleasures, the parks became domains of the poor. The “non-use” or misuse of parks, referring to the undesirable users of parks is often connected to criminality, causing avoidance of parks. (Cranz 1982, 137; 186; 220.)

However, a neighbourhood parks suffers if it is "too" popular, according to Jacobs (ibid., 102), perhaps maintaing that the very popularity is contradictory to the calming effects of a park. As Olmsted had an educational idea about his parks, meaning that parks would educate people from different social classes to tolerance and co-operation, Jacobs thinks that this aimed diversity represents a problem (Jacobs 1961, ). However, in Finland the class divide is not that evident.

As a park may act as an important identity factor for its surroundings, this again stems from the notion of them being appreciated and used. For instance, Harlem has a wealthy amount of parks compared to most parts of New York, but still the parks of Harlem hardly function as centers of its social life or essential identity factors (ibid.). Olmsted maintained that parks could serve as the essential signature features, the prides of any major city; he with his assistant Calvert Vaux always saw parks as an integral element of the towns rather than isolated entities, this being most tellingly described here:

"We regard Brooklyn as an integral part of what today is the metropolis of the nation, and in the future will be the center of exchanges in the world, and the park in Brooklyn, as part of a system of grounds, of which the Central Park is a single feature, designed for the recreration of the whole people of the metropolis and their customers and guests from all parts of the world for centuries to come" (L. Hall 1995, 155-156).

As the essence of the parks is to be used by the public, Jacobs mentions the Gravery Park in New York as an example of a park to be observed, not used. As the park is locked and can only be entered with a key, it becomes justified by its beauty. Jacobs maintains that parks that are to be used mainly to please the eye, are best small and intensive in their layout, not
perfunctory and spread. (Jacobs 1961, 107.)

If a park is not popularly "enough" used as a multiple use neighbourhood park, Jacobs suggests that diversity of using purposes must be deliberately brought to the parks by introducing such activities into them that are otherwise crowded out of cities, such as bike mending, fishing or kite flying. Providing various kind of park activities as demand goods could contribute to the parks’ functioning as essential parts of the city, as a service provided by the municipality. When Olmsted thought that magnificent landscapes and vistas are demand goods in themselves, Jacobs maintains that not many enough people appreciate these as they need activities. If converting life of city people into park does not succeed, the park should be converted into a special theme “sub” park. (ibid., 108-110.)

What constitutes a park?

What is a park? What are the necessary minimum conditions for a park? Which kind of functions it is about to serve?

According to a simplification by Cranz, there are three basic visions of parks, their functions and their onthology. A naive vision of park implies that they are mere plots of (unused) and thus preserved land, being manifestations of democracy as they are free for anyone. Parks can be considered works of art, aesthetic objects. Then, parks can be containers of moral and social (reformist) ideals, as the case was with the idealist ideology behind the Olmsted Central Park in New York. (Cranz 1982, 253.)

According to Jacobs, the four elements essential to successful public parks are those of intricacy, centering, sun and enclosure. By intricacy Jacobs means the principle of multiple use: parks should be used by different persons, for different purposes and at different times. Even the same user might use the park for different purposes at different times. By centering Jacobs means that there usually is a focus of actions and encounters in parks, perhaps a
crossroads, a pausing point, a climax. In neighbourhood parks these centres may be stage settings for activities for and encounters of people, according to Jacobs. While the sunlight is essential for parks if conceived as public open spaces, then a city forest, such as the Central Park of Helsinki provides the shade, although the altering of sun and shade are frequent elements in any park. Finally, the parks represent an open space between the buildings, but
without any buildings they would be indefinite. The buildings enclose the park, if they are not too high and provide too much shade, attaching the park to the city both functionally and locationally. (Jacobs 1961, 103-106.)

City forests: defined by Oslomarka

Definition of a large forest (or a city forest) (according to Oraug et al 1974, 111-112):
1) It consists of oaks, spruces and deciduous trees in-between
2) It has thousands of trees
3) It is so large in area that people can go around in there (kan gå seg vill der)
4) It is natural
5) It has a mental importance
6) It is the home of animals

In general, it is a natural, non-regulated, closed space, wild and harmonious. The Oslomarka forest is unique in the way it brings nature to a city, being a paradigmatic example of city forests.

Oslomarka (or just Marka) is the common name for the surrounding forestal areas of greater habited Oslo ”de sammenhengende skogområdene som omgir tettbebyggelsen i Oslo-regionen”. Oslomarka consists of Vestmarka, Bærumsmarka, Krokskogen, Nordmarka, Lillomarka, Romeriksåsene, østmarka or Sørmarka. Also Sørkedalen and Maridalen are counted as Marka. (ibid., 11.)

The concept of Nordmarka was first used in 1760 in a map produced by the lieutenant Morten Krogh (Moland 2006, 5). The notable feature of Nordmarka is the presence of water. The forests, lakes and rivers were earlier owned by the private landowners. (ibid., 49.)

The "marka" has become a part of the city's soul and a main source of its pride. As Hans Amundsen said, "vi betrakter Oslomarka som vårt felleseie. Og deltakerne i den store utfarten opptrer stort sett forstandig. Enkelte utskeielser kan forekomme og må bekjempes. Vi skal verne skogen og bevare den, ikke vandalisere den, ikke herje og skjemme ut. Frilufstlivets oppdragende betydning skal vise seg i måten vi farer fram på. Vi skader oss selv ved å skade skogen. Den skal gå over til etterslekten akkurat så skjønn og rik som den nå er. Skogen for folket".

One striking and essential feature of the forest landscape is that is perceived as stable, not-changing. The aspects associated with Marka in a 1938 survey were: original, stable, wild, desolate, lonesome, personal attachment, manyfold. (ibid., 68-70.) Other aspects attached to Marka are such as depth, harmonic, organic, full of shadows, closed space, peaceful, fairytale-like, widespread, untouched, common.

To find out, which elements (e.g. trees, water, scent, paths, benches, noises) of the forest/park do satisfy people's expectations, following questions are to be asked:
1) Which of these elements are changing rapidly?
2) What do these changes mean to the people?
3) How do the people appreciate the contrasting/conflicting elements? (e.g.
trees/roads)? (ibid., 23)

The history, use and conflicts in Oslomarka.

"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 from the public square and at a distance from it." (Sennett 1994, 56.)

A research in 2004 showed that 50% prosents of the Oslo dwellers had been using Nordmarka during the last year. Since the late 80s the introduction of off-road bikes had increased the use of Marka even more. (Moland 2006, 174-175.)

Historically the main source of conflicts concerning the ownership and use of Marka has been between landowner-driven forestry and outdoors purposes. In Helsinki the main source of conflict is drastically different.

To fulfil the increasing infrastructural needs of the growing city, in the 1890s, a railway was being planned to go through Nordmarka. There were opinions that the railway would diminish the nature values of the Marka, although a better access to Marka for the Oslodwellers was also valued highly. The railway was constructed through Maridalen to Nittedal and Hakadal so that the central parts of the Nordmarka were left untouched. It was not only used for travelling between the city and Marka but also for transportation of timber from the Marka. Also roads were built in the area during that time (ibid., 84-99).

A water craft installation and water supplies were also in need in order to respond to the need of water of the growing Oslo. But also roads were built in the area during that time. The local landowners thought that they had the power over the water supply of their own area and that the city of Oslo were robbing them of their water. The solution was that Oslo municipality built tunnels to distribute water from the eastern part of the Marka to Maridalsvannet which become the water supply for the inhabitants of Oslo. In addition to this, some dams were also built. The tunnel construction was a long process, taking 16 years. (ibid., 84-99.)

During the infrastructure construction process, some new inhabitants moved to the Nordmarka, most of whom being the construction and water craft workers (Moland 2006, 90). In the beginning of the 20th century, some 250 inhabitants were permanently resided in Marka. The dwellers of Marka often provided accommodation for the tourists from the city (ibid., 119). By then most of the houses in Marka were reachable by horses (ibid., 104).

What the proponents of outdoors life have felt that they have lacked in power to define the use of Marka, they have gained in political influence. The first important outdoors organisation defending Marka have been the Norwegian Tourist Association (Den Norske Turistforening), initiated in 1868 by a businessman Thomas Heftye. Since then, there has been an increasing public interest for using the Nordmarka for leisure. Since the 1880s the cross-country skiers have discovered Nordmarka and first skiing tours were arranged by the first skiing club in Oslo - the Christiania Skiklub - which was founded in 1877. The skiing clubs also built skiing cottages in the Marka.

Firstly the use of Marka was a venture of upper-class citizens, mostly men, hunters and fishermen (Moland 2006, 58-60). The industrialisation has brought about urbanisation also in Oslo, and the Oslomarka has subsequently become the main source for outdoors recreation for urban workers in Oslo. This notion was supported by the Kristiania arbeidersamfunn (Kristiania Workers Association) which proposed to the municipality of Kristiania (Oslo by that time) that it should acquire forests for public use, as the construction of private villas had diminished the surrounding forest areal for public use. The municipality of Christiania received Frognerseterforests in 1899 as a heritage from Heftye, acknowledging that the need of such public space has grown recently. (ibid., 68-69.)

According to Bjørn Tagseth, "arbeidslivet kan gjerne være hardt, for det er i fritiden man lever og tilfredsstiller sine behov" (Oraug et al 1974, 6; original source: Fritid, NIBR, Oslo 1969). Furthermore, Tagseth maintains, clearly inspired by a Marxist thinking that due to lacking influence to production process, the leisure time is for the worker something to be relished and stressed (ibid., 6). In contrast to work, at leisure time an individual has the ultimate control over his social and physical environment.

The first documented case when the workers in the city were arranged weekend recreational tours to Marka dates from 1891, organised by the tourist club Gutenberg with the motto "Fresh air brings riches within" (Frisk luft bringer rikdom). These trips clearly had a political motivation and areas between Maridalen and Nittedal were dominated by organisations with connections to workers movement perhaps because those areas were the most logical destinations for people who lived in working class areas of Sagene, Torshov and Grünerløkka, the upper class areas around Voksenåsen and Vettakollen being in turn dominated by the skiing associations with upper-middle class connections. (Moland 2006, 117-120).

Oslo and Aker municipalities started to buy significant amounts of forests since the late 19th century. The biggest private landowner in Marka, Carl Otto Løvenskiold was forced to some land use restrictions by the municipality. Grefsenkollen was bought by the two municipalities in 1912-1913, and in the early 1920s they acquired some parts of Vettakollen. Later in the 1920s Oslo municipality bought the Ullevaal forest and Vinderen forest from the junior Løvenskiold. During the 1910s and 1920s more cottages were built in the outer parts of Nordmarka by the sports associations but also by the city (Moland 2006, 123-124). In 1928 the Friluftsklubben (Outdoors Club) and Turistforeningen were handed funding from the city in order to make paths in Marka.

Public transportation routes made access to Nordmarka easier. A buss connection was established to Maridalen in 1921 and a tram was constructed to Sogn in 1934. (ibid., 120.) The road construction plans met criticism, counter-criticism replying that the Nordmarka was so extensive that roads couldn't disturbe it and that is was necessary to promote access to the area.

In the 1930s, there were again plans to construct roads through Nordmarka that
were earmarked in the master plan of Oslo in 1934. In order to organise protests against roads construction, the Oslo Outdoors Council (Oslo Friluftsråd) was founded in 1935. It had as its goal to have a master plan for green areas (forests) surrounding Oslo. In addition to this, individuals protested by writing in the papers. (ibid., 132-134).

The 1934 master plan of Oslo divided areas into two main categories: buildable and non-buildable areas. The non-buildable areas were parks, sports areas and nature conservation areas. The main forest areas north of the city were called nature parks of Holmenkollen, Nordmarken and Vettakollen. The committee that was set for preparing the master plan proposed that the municipality should acquire these areas or some special arrangements with the landowners should be made.

In 1941 the book by Nils Houge "Oslomarka som naturpark. Et forslag til fredning
av Stor-Oslos og omliggende distrikters friluftsområder " (Oslomarka forests as
a nature park. A proposal to preservation of outdoors areas of Oslo area and its surroundings), preservation was seen as a means to protect the outdoor areas.

"Skal friluftslivet kunne opprettholdes og videre utvikles blant storbyens befolkning, er det en absolutt betingelse at nødvendige grunnarealer holdes av till dette formål. En fredning av naerliggende og tilstrekkelig store arealer synes her å vaere den eneste løsning."

28th November 1946 there was a lengthy demonstration queue of 30 000 people outside City Hall (Rådhuset) against a power line in Hol. All the main outdoors sports, skiing, fishing, hunting and orienteering organisations were contacted to participate. Local youth associations of the most political parties (Hoyre, KrF, Venstre and Communists) did sign up a petition to support the demonstrants, the only that was missing was Arbeiderpartiet. It was initiated by a commercial director Odd Myre and organised by Outdoors Council of Oslo, establishing a committee in a few days to launch the demonstration even if the power line was to be constructed so that the masts were as a symbolic gesture of benevolence to be made of wood.

The issue of power line went to the city council, which set up a committee to further develop the construction of infrastructure. In addition to state and city politicians and constructing parties also the Friluftsrådet was represented in this committee. According to the committee, the roads would "helt ut vil berøve området omkring veiene den karakter av uberørt natur, som nettopp er det karakteristiske or tiltrekkende ved Nordmarka", the only member that was opposing this was the main roads engineer or Akershus who thought that a road would support the access to the Marka. Furthermore, the committee demanded that Oslo should acquire more recreational areas and to restrict any future construction plans. (Moland 2006, 137-141.)

An article published in the Aftenposten newspaper 1950 declared that "London har Themsens bredder, Paris - Bois de Boulogne, Madrid - Guadarramafjellene, København - Dyrehaven, men ingen hovedstad i verden har maken til naturpark som Nordmarka. Meddelsen om at store deler av den er nu sikret for Oslos innbyggere i all fremtid, vil vekke glede hos alle norske. Betydningen for følkehelsen skjønner enhver. (...) Det er først og fremst ved sin utstrekning Nordmarka virker så berusende i sinnet. Å kunne gå milevidt i helt fri natur. Å vaere skånt for larmen og lukten fra biler, slippe å krysse skinner. (...) Det gledelige som er skjett er at alle Nordmarkstilhengerne nu har fått brev på at naturparken skal få bli liggende uberørt. De er sikret mot overraskelser i fremtiden. Det har vaert et hell for Oslos befolkning at Nordmarka har vaert på én hånd så lenge. I dette tilfelle har den private eiendomsrett vaert til gagn for alle. Hvis ikke familien Løvenskiold hadde vernet Nordmarka og holdt den samlet gjennom generasjoner, ville den antakelig for lenge siden ha vaert forvandlet til et lappeteppe av små or store eiendommer, uten noen mulighet for fri ferdsel. (...) Nordmarkas sikring er den beste gaven Oslos innbyggere har fått i (450th) jubileumsåret. (ibid., 143.)

In the early 1950s, the outdoors life was generally considered to be one of the essentials for the welfare of the city, which made all attempts of forestry all the more difficult. However, everything changed. In 1953 Jørgen von Ubisch was appointed to be responsible for forestry in Nordmarka, and he wanted to modernise the forestry, being supported by the majority of forest owners. To make this happen, new tractor roads were being built. He was opposed by the professor Ola Børset from Norges landbrukshøgskole (land use university), stating that forestry has to take more into account the needs of outdoors life. (ibid., 144.)

Due to growing consumption of water, there was another plan in 1962 to construct a dam in Nordmarka. It would have meant considerable water rise in some of the lakes of Marka. As there were fears that even "half of the Marka would be covered by water" (as written in Dagbladet paper), there was strong protesting against these plans, and the city council was forced to abandon them. (ibid., 146.)

1961 a committee was established by the majors of Nittedal, Lunner, Jevnaker, Brandu and Gran - municipalities north of the Oslo - in order propose to construct a 4-lane motorway from Maridalen in 1965. At this time, a cooperative building company OBOS was also established to build about thousand apartments around Harestua. It has as its chairman Ivar Mathisen, secretary of the Oslo worker's party and second major in Oslo. According to the report of the major's committee, the new road would provide an easier access to the outdoors and recreational areas without significantly diminishing the green areas "ny og lettere adkomst til frilufts- og rekreasjonsområder uten nevneverdig beskjaering av friarealene", this view also supported by the leaders of Oslo skiing organisation. In addition to the growing private car traffic, there was a proposal to launch a new bus route from Maridalen via Kikutstua to Sørkedalen to diminish the car traffic. The bus route was to be established in co-operation between Løvenskiold, Skiing organisation and the municipality of Oslo. (ibid., 147)

The Oslo skiing organisation published in 1962 their advantage paragraph (formålsparagraf), according to which the outdoor areas should be secured. They gave a statement to the prime minister Einar Gerhardsen, himself being an eager user of Marka. The organisation went on with their lobbing of the Norwegian government, being given an influential helping hand in the director of the Norwegian bank, Erik Brofoss. A letter to the "Royal Norwegian Government" was sent in April 1965 by the skiing organisation, outlining the threats to Marka: building of cottages, plans to construct railway and motorways, constructing of new water supplies and power lines. However, the state outdoors council (Friluftsrådet) was the
only statutal organ that participated in the fight for Marka in the 1960s. (ibid., 147-148.)

The Oslo and Surrounding Areas Outdoors Council (Oslo og Omlands Friluftsråd) had a description of the threats of the similar kind than that of the Oslo skiing organisation. Its secretary Erik Sture Larre wrote in Arbeiderbladet that "Det viktigste og det helt avgjørende for Oslo og de omkringliggende kommuner er at man får fredet et friluftsområde, fritt for bebyggelse, jernbaner, bilveier og kraftlinjetraseer", finishing with the notion that "Om Oslo kommune tar initiativet til å samordne de partielle og motstridende interessene i Oslomarkasaken, ville det vaere saken til gagn og byen til heder". They aimed to mark a borderline around Marka area respected by the surrounding municipalities, based on the sketches by Nils Houge in 1940. In 1965 - initiated by Larre - the map of Marka was published, with proposals to all the respective municipalities. Larre also discussed the matter with the surrounding municipalities, aided by the new building legislation that had come into force that very year. (ibid., 148.)

Larre proposed at a annual meeting of the Outdoors Council in 1965 the kind of activities that should be freely allowed and those that should be regulated inside the Marka borders. New power lines should not be constructed, no railway ought to be built and only necessary forest roads "skogsbilveier" should be allowed. Building of cottages should only be allowed in limited areas at the outer zones of Marka. He also proposed that no private driving should be allowed at weekends between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. (ibid., 148-149).

The treasury minister and later minister of commerce, Erik Brofoss was a central figure in saving of the Marka at that time. He was the chief of the Norwegian Bank from 1954 and a member of the Workers' Part Central Committee, and one of the central strategists of his party in the big construction projects after WW II. In his article in Arbeiderbladet newspaper in 1962 he attacked to the Forestry Division of the Oslo municipality for its building and forest road plans. "Ut fra driftsøkonomiske og forstmessige synspunkter kan disse veier og hogstmetodene vaere vel begrunnet. Men det må vaere tillatt å stille det spørsmål om hovedformålet med skogsforvaltningen i Oslo kommune er å få størst mulig privatøkonomisk utbytte. Oslo kommunes primaere oppgave som skogeier mä vaere å verne om naturen i Oslo-marka. Den er Oslo-samfunnets store fellesaktivum. Dens verdi for trivselen kan ikke vurderes i kroner og ører." This letter initiated Odd Myre - the leader of the 1946 demonstrations - to send a letter to Skiing organisation proposing a council under the leadership of Brofoss. (ibid., 149.)

Initiated by the letter, the Skiing organisation proposed to launch a committee in autumn 1964 to secure the Marka. The influential committee, "Puttis-gjengen" was assembled of Brofoss, health director Karl Evang, major general Wilhelm Hansteen, professor Ola Børset, disponent Kai Christophersen, journalist Allan Aarflot and advocate Tor Erling Staff (ibid., 150).

In december 1964 Evang published a chronicle in Arbeiderbladet with the headline “Oslomarka må naturvernes". In 1968 the Puttis-gjengen wrote a 11-page document about the Oslo Forestry division to the City Council of Oslo. The main idea of the letter was to highlight the notion that the forestry principles at the Oslomarka should be different from those at the more distant forests. "Kommunen kan ikke på den ene side hevde at den går inn for å sikre og bevare disse naturområder og samtidig på den annen side fortsette med bruken av dynamitt, bulldozere og gravemaskiner til formål som generelt sett er i strid med frilufts- og naturinteressene". They also referred in the document to the hygienists, psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, criminologists e.g. who had described the damages for physical and mental health caused by living in a big town. They also stated that it would be unwise to value the forests only from economical points of view, and that the value of forest for outdoors live and recreation couldn't be valued too highly. They also demanded the city
council to outline the general principles for the municipal forests. (ibid., 150)

Even different actors within the Oslo municipality had conflicting interests: those of the forestry and water supplies and those of the city planning. The city planning division were securing the green corridor from the new suburbs to the forest areas. In 1966 the leader of the municipal forests, Bjarne Maaland got an idea at his trip the US of the so called principle of
multiple use, flerbruk in Norwegian. (ibid., 150).

Despite opposition against road construction and growing traffic at the Marka, in 1966 a road connection from Sørkedalen to Fyllingen, Kikutstua and Bonna was established. In the same year the first public bus line was opened from Oslo to Marka, the timetables being planned for schoolchildren and housewives. The improving connections also made it easier to get together and establish new organisations. (ibid., 151.)

Løvenskiold junior took over the management over the telephone lines and roads in Marka, the municipality paying him for using the roads. Since the 1950s the number of accommodating visitors at the Marka houses had diminished due to increase of private cars and due to building up new private cottages for the Oslo dwellers. The log floating and horse riding were practically vanished by the early 1960 as also the need of the forest guards and other forestry personnel. Alongside this development, most of the timbers were forced to move to Oslo as the Løvenskiold did not allow them to acquire the land for themselves. (ibid., 153-158.)

The quest for Oslomarka, triggered by the belief in the city growth of the 50s and 60s was replaced by rise of environmentalism. Around 1970 - the European Year of Nature Conservation - two new significant actors entered the Marka scene, both of which stemming from the University of Oslo. One of them was Carl August Fleischer from the law faculty, the other consisting of a group of students from the institute of philosophy with a project of nature conservation as a part of their education. Also the municipality departments activated at the same time: the land use department was working on a new forest law while the nature conservation department was working on the multiple use plan and a legislation for Oslomarka (ibid., 150-159.)

In the early 70s, the newspaper coverage in Oslo area papers of the Marka issue increased. Especially the Dagbladet journalist Nils Rømming wrote a number of articles, such as "Ny bred vei gjennom Nordmarka, Løvenskiold blåser i opinionen", "Nemnder og råd snubler i beina på hverandre, kaos i arbeidet for Oslos friluftsinteresser", "Ungdomsopprør i Skiforeningen, rabaldermøte ventes mandag", "Nordmarka er lappeteppe, departementet har kapitulert for Løvenskiold", "Løvenskiold-avtalen er ulovlig og må oppheves”. (ibid., 159-168.)

Many of those who participated in newspaper debates had relationships to the Outdoors Council, Skiing organisation or Tourist organisation; also workers of the Løvenskiold-companies participated. Forest guard Arne Fossneset defended the modern forestry as there also were people getting their income from the forest:

"Hva skjer med Oslomarka? Er politikerne i ferd med å ødelegge alt?" asked Jan Eggesvik, Ketil Heyerdahl and Bjørn Hersoug who thought that Oslo politicians and technical division of the municipality were well on their way to earmark Oslomarka as an outdoors area. In Aftenposten Sverre Martens asked whether the forestry and the outdoors people shared the same interests. All these young men were philosophy students from the Oslo university. (ibid., 159.)

In 1969 at the institute of philosophy the first meetings of the co-operation group SNM for nature and environment were held. This group did not only aim to write columns but also to attack non-violently the construction machinery. They were inspired by the principles Gandhi, introduced by the professor of philosophy Arne Naess. In 1970 it was about the time for their first intervention, aiming to stop the construction of Mardøla waters. About 30-40 activists set up tents on the road leading to the area. Soon they were joined by some 500 others, awaking interest in the media. After one month this demonstration was dissolved by the police, removing Naess. This happened after counteraction of local inhabitants who were afraid of losing their jobs. (ibid., 160).

In the spring 1970 the group established a sub group specialised in Oslomarka. They sent a letter in October 1970 to the city council in order to stop the building of dam in Sandungen, meaning that it would destroy the nature. They also aimed to preserve seven areas in Nordmarka, Baerumsmarka and Krokskogen. (ibid., 160).

The professor Carl August Fleischer contributed to the Oslo regional plan committee in 1967, writing especially about Krokskogen forest. He went through all the relevant legislation: construction law, outdoors law, nature conservation law and pollution law. Fleischer concluded that the Stortinget (the Parliament) should have a special legislation for the whole Marka. The legislation was taken to the city council in the autumn of 1970. Brynjolf Bull from the Arbeiderpartiet proposed Fleisher to do a thorough report on the economical and legal aspects of the Marka, and Erik Mår from Høyre proposed the Norwegian government to secure the Marka by legal means. (ibid., 160-161.)

In spring 1971 Fleischer proposed to stop all construction of roads temporarily in Marka relying on the construction law. March 1973 the department replied to the municipality that construction of roads can not be stopped. (ibid., 161.)

In October 1970 the municipality of Baerum sent a letter to the Kommunal- og
arbeidsdepartmentet (KAD) in order to judge the need of conserving the nature and outdoors areas used by city dwellers in cities and suburbs. Shortly after this, KAD proposed seven areas at the Marka to be conserved, almost identical to those proposed by SNM. Løvenskiold and the forest owners protested to this proposal, maintaining that it would mean the end of the forest industry in Marka. Due to this, KAD was forced to abandon its proposal. (ibid., 161).

The KAD did embark on a multiple use plan of the Marka. That it was a government department embarking on this, was natural as the Marka area was extended to 17 municipalities and 4 provinces (fylker). An agreement between Løvenskiold and KAD was finally reached in 8th October. The most controversial detail in this agreement was a road from Lenseløken via Katnoselva and Spålselva to Spålselva and Finvassdalen, going through the proposed conservation areas. (ibid., 161-162.)

In October 1971 Løvenskiold started with constructing the new road connection. 14th November about 100 activists came by bus to Stubdal, sleeping in tents. The demonstration was cut short by a heart attack of one activist, Harald Grøterud. Another bunch of activists came again in June 1972 when Løvenskiold started with a new road, again with Grøterud as their type writer. This time tv-cameras and also the police were around. When 160 forestry workers threatened to remove the demonstrants, they withdrew. In a TV programme "Dagsrevyen" the matter was debated, the interests of the forestry represented by Jens Venner, the Oslomarka group represented by Bjørn Faafeng and Ketil Heyerdal opposing the road construction and the police stressing the importance of keeping order. (ibid., 162-164.)

The actions had united Løvenskiold and his workers, now having an enemy in form of university students. In October 1973 the Katnosa/Spålen area was temporarily preserved, by then some of the roads to Spålen constructed, nevertheless not to Spålselva. After this the Oslomarka group was less visible. (ibid., 164.)

In January 1972 Fleischer wrote a 273 page letter which was soon afterwards revised to a book, published by the name "Makt og rett - om sikring av Oslomarka" (Power and justice - upon securing the Oslomarka" to Oslo municipality "Betenkning om sikring av Oslomarka". The first publisher withdrew after receiving a letter from the attorney of Løvenskiold that the publication of the book would be a personal insult. Although a professor of law, it was not
a juridical document but rather a pamphlet where Fleischer maintained that the general Norwegian interest "allmenningsretten" was being sacrificed to private interests and to a private property of a Danish patron Løvenskiold. He furthermore maintained that the Løvenskiold controlled areas should be taken over by the authorities. (ibid., 165-166.)

While the municipality of Oslo was preparing its multiple use plan for Marka, it declared that it would take the Fleischer paper "into account". In the process of preparing the multiple use plan, a consultative work group was assembled with representation from interest organisations. Three major research institutes were also involved: Norsk institutt for by- og regionforskning (NIBR, Norwegian Institute of city and regional research), Norges Landbrukshøgskole (NLH, Norwegian University of Land Use) and University of Oslo (UiO). NIBR produced reports of the history of outdoors life in Marka, the use of Marka and the expectations towards Marka. The forestry in Marka was examined in the reports by NLH, the economical points of view taken into account. (ibid., 166.)

The aim of the "flerbruksplan" was that the Marka could be used to various justifiable purposes simultaneously and to intermediate various interests by making visible the different interests to use and to protect the Marka. Simultaneously the department of environment was preparing a legislation for Marka, aiming especially to regulate the forestry around Oslo. At the same time, the Land Use department prepared a revision of the Forest Law. Oslo og Omland Friluftsråd prepared a plan for outdoor areas, while the forest owners prepared their own multiple use plans. (ibid., 166-167).

In 1976 the new legislation was presented, and in that year the newspapers were also most involved with the Marka case. In May the revised forest law was handled in the Parliament, still having the greatest emphasis on the interests of the forest industry. Still, the new law made it possible to recognise the special landscape or nature values of the forest areas. (ibid., 167.)

The multiple use plan for Oslomarka was presented in June 1976. It was sent to outdoors and forestry organisations for comments, the outdoors organisations being largely and forestry organisations a little disappointed. Oslo and Nittedal municipalities supported the plan while the Lunner municipality was negative to it, meaning that the interests of the forestry were also in the best interests of the outdoor activities. In a government conference in May 1977 a working group was established to work out a revised multiple use plan for Oslomarka. Its proposal was presented in December 1979, and in April 1981 the government had its proposal for a special law for Oslomarka but it was not accepted by the Høyre lead new government. In the 1970s, the government was lead by the Workers Party, largely neglecting the issue so that the process was extended to a period of another 10 years. (ibid., 167.)

The clear result of the revised legislation was that in general the forestry were winners and the environmental authorities were the losers. While the outdoors and environmental organisations were supported by the Department of Environment, the forest owners and forest organisations were supported by the Land Use department. The most decisive was that the forest workers were allied by their employers, having good political connections, the workers in Workers Party and the forest owners in the Høyre and Center Party. Still, the nature conservation had its share of victories; apartment building in Sørkedalen and Maridalen came
to nothing and extension of the water establishments in Nordmarka were frozen. Constructing new car roads in the forest stopped during the 1970s, the last battle being around Langliveien in 1978. After the turbulent 1970s, the 1980s were considerably more tranquil in the Marka and since the 1980s, Oslomarka has been referred as the Marka with a big essential.

Aasmund Arnesen, a teacher in Marka skola wrote in Aftenposten in 1973 that those who lived in Marka were largely neglected from decision making about the future of Marka. In 1975 an inhabitants' council (bosettingsulvalget) was established, and in 1984 1500 people lived in Marka permanently, the last school in Marka being closed in the previous year. Being a part of Oslo town since 1972, the Oslo part of the Marka was prepared a local plan by the municipality of Oslo in 1989. (ibid., 169-172.)

The department of environment wanted to define the borderlines of Marka, giving a new proposal in 1981. Some municipalities around Oslo were against it as they felt it was against their own autonomy to decide how the land would be used. In 1985 the municipality of Lunder wanted the borderline to be identical to that of the district borderline, meaning that Marka wouldn't be extended in Lunder area. As a compromise, some areas of Lunder would be included in Marka while areas north of Mylla were to be left outside as the Mylla municipality were to construct cottages in that area.

In Oslo the Marka borderline is symbolically very strong, and when Løvenskiold wanted to construct a conference centre in Bonna gård, it had to be withdrawn due to negative input by Outdoors Council and Aftenposten. In 1990 did the department of environment nominate Kjell Hauge as the newly established post as the inspector of the Marka, his task being to intermediate between authorities, especially environmental, the public and those working in Marka. When he retired in 2003, his post was abolished. (ibid., 172.)

In 1980s, the NLH began to support the conserving parties of interest, and this led to the conserving 10% of the Marka area and that the forestry was cut significantly. In the 1990s the methods of forestry were critically scrutinised especially by the Naturvernforbundets lokalavdeling i Oslo og Akershus (Nature Conservation League local organisations in Oslo and Akershus). Since 1977 the conditions of the forestry in Marka have been revised several times, the authority regulating the forestry in Marka being the Fylkeslandsbrukskontor (District Land Use Office). The private forest owners have had to make plans for their road construction and forestry and forestry had become more bureaucratic and difficult. The Nature Conservation League had focused especially on forests around Spålen, the first conservation plans taking place already in the 1970s. In 1995, a royal resolution of the Marka was declared. Since 1998 the forestry have been applying the Living Forest (levende skog) -standards. (ibid., 173.)

Park as a place: refuge to the nature or tamed pastoralism?

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 ways. Space can be conceived as a physical context, describing the mere areal settings, restrictions and limitations of a given space. Space is also a social product, produced by subjects with varying power and aims. It is also a product of social translation, transformation and experience. (Soja 1990, 79-80, 120.)

The distinction between space and place is a basic one in the development of urbanity. While Christian time and place drew on the body's powers of compassion, economic time and space drew on its powers of aggression. These contraries of space and place, of opportunity and fixity, of compassion and aggression, occurred within every bourgeois trying both to believe and to profit in the city. (Sennett 1994, 188.)

Edward Soja has had the Lefebvrian dichotomy as his starting point but he maintained it to explain insufficiently the nature of spatiality. According to Soja, Lefevbre treats “Nature” rather naively as something pure, unaltered and original. In context of urban parks, the concept of “Second nature” is often more valid, as the city parks are politically and ideologically re-shaped “products” of nature. Central Park is not a natural but a lived space, and in that sence it can be labelled as “real” and “authentic”. (Soja 1990, 79-80)

Places are not only onthological entities. As they are produced by human actions, they are also epistemological entities (Cresswell 2007, 110). As the Sojan Firstspace is about the physical and empirical space and Secondspace characterises the conceived, experienced and even imagined notion of space, the Thirdspace is about living the space. Thirdspace describes the ways in the space is used and lived. (ibid., 38.) In other words, Firstspace could be characterised as the physical space, Secondspace as the mental space and Thirdspace as the social space (Soja 1990, 120).

Yet, Lefevbre admits the possibility of socially produced space, albeit he stresses the power relatedness of its definition and creation (Lefevbre 1990, 26). There are indeed often conflicts concerning the definition of places; a notion reminded by Massey (Cresswell 2007, 70). When something is called a park, this directs the actions towards it and interpretations of it. This representation implies abstraction of a physically understood space, and this process is always power related (Lefevbre 1990, 370).

Representational space refers to the directly lived space by bodily practices, “space of inhabitants and users”, the concept being comparable with the Sojan Thirdspace. Green areas activists often stress the “cultural ecology” of places, emphasizing the uniqueness of biological resources at one given place (Cresswell 2007, 84). The processes of producing and using of spaces, spatial practices include space politics and the daily spatial routines, routes and networks linking up places for different spheres of work, “private” life and leisure (Lefevbre 1990, 38-39; 235-236)

The need for urban nature protests against noise, pollution and fatigue caused and/or escalated by the rotting or exploding of cities brought about with the urban congestion of population. In cities, naturality is destroyed by or sacrificed for commercialised, industrialised and institutionally organised leisure pursuits. City misery needs to be complemented by satisfaction and self-realisation.
“Nature” or what passes for it, and survives of it, becomes the ghetto of leisure pursuits, the separate place of pleasure and the retreat of “creativity” (Lefevbre 1996, 149).

Yet, as Lefebvre claims that urbanity is still perceived as a residual of rural and itside its scheme, he claims that the urban dwellers can not be totally charmed by the rural countryside. Man is yet to be a urban creature; we are still reflecting on our rural society, this also being reflected in the apprehension of rural, natural and pastoral being perceived as the natural state of being. Instead man needs urban parks to be apprehended and for recreation and Central Park provides with it an appropriate amount of pastoralism for urban dwellers. (ibid.)

The treating of space provided by urban parks as public, providing the people fresh air and fastening moral standards by providing attachments to the society for the people, the city parks do are in fact embodiments of the idealised rural standards of life (Lacour & Puissant 2007, 738).

Olmsted the protagonist of picturesque pastoralism

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 understanding nature by being
acquaintained to the doctrines but also to a book called "City Plans" by the reverend Horace Bushnell (1802-1876), who wrote that the welfare of the city and its inhabitants "depends to a considerable degree on the right arrangement and due multiplication of vacant spaces" and "the providing and right location of a sufficient park, or parks" which would provide the inhabitants of a city "breathing places" (Mugenauer 1995, 96-98). Still, even if Olmsted was
largely influenced by the writings of Bushnell, he was perhaps the first to attempt a break-away from Christian way of interpreting nature as a human environment but nevertheless he believed that the experience of contemplating the nature was somewhat akin to religious experience (L. Hall 1995, 243).

In his quote of Lord Bacon, Frederick Law Olmsted stated that

"God Almighty first planted a garden, and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures; it is the greatest of refreshments to the spirits of man, without which buildings and palaces are but gross handiworks: and a man shall ever see that when ages grow to civility and elegance, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely - as if gardening were the greater perfection... Such a garden is the scene of the promised paradise and thus the site for our mandated moral work". (Mugenauer 1994, 94.)

My Central Park: subjective readings of Central Park, its meaning and use

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 it is called such. A more elaborate and functionalist way of answering would be to find out, what it is used for and whether it serves the park functions. If a negative answer is accepted, then what is it if not a park? It surely looks like a forest, albeit not an untouched wilderness for sure. So, it is obviously a forest, a stretch of the nature in a city. Having this as the starting point, then relationship between nature and man-made environment– changed over time and different in different places - needs to be studied.

Does Central Park respond to the need of public space? Is it a public space at all or is it private/privately conceived/experienced public space?

According to Cresswell, issues connected with places are those of boundaries and rootedness (Cresswell 2004, 79). Central Park the physical environment, the space characterising it becomes a place when humans attach meaning and use it. Yi-Fu Tuan describes the process when places become emotionally important by the term “topophilia” According to Edward Relph, spaces can provide settings for human actions, but it is only these actions that make the spaces places. (ibid., 19-21.) The insiders have an authentic relationship to places, marking their authenticity (ibid., 44).

There are different interpretations of a place. Human geographers emphasize power relations in constructing and defining places. Marxist geographer David Harvey stresses that places are scenes for struggles for identity, where different actors have differing means and extent of power. (ibid 2007, 26). Those in power – according to de Certeau - tend to pre-define the desired use of space, attaching “prescriptions” to it. On the other hand, humans tend to re-interpret physical environment and attach new modes of use and meanings to physical environment (ibid., 36-39).

The constructivist interpretations maintains that there are no “authentic” places but instead all places, even the material conditions of places are all socially constructed, this also affecting to the use of the places. Nigel Thrift maintains that all places are constructed by “doing” subjects and that places always change, they are never finite. (ibid., 37.) Furthermore, they can be characterised by mobility: places can serve as transitional spaces, spaces for routes leading to one place to another.

According to David Seamon, most human geographers tend to exaggerate the interpreting subject. He reminds that also bodily practices – time-space routines form places, for example use of a certain physical setting defines the nature of a space significantly. These time-space routines include the practices how people move around and use physical space. (ibid., 33-34).

As an example, in the Moland history of Oslomarka are mentioned different “stories” of Marka.
"Den lyse fortellingen" - the happy folks of Oslo using Oslomarka for their recreation. "Den mørke fortellingen" - the nomadic nature of the habitation of those who work in Marka. "Fortellinger innenfra" - how it has been to work and to live in Nordmarka. "Den nye fortellingen" - opposing the growth of city, at the expense of its extension to Marka. (Moland 2006, 176-178)

The short pre-history of parks

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, tending a garden was meant to be a restorative act, a Christian's restitution of Adam and Eve's exile. Nicolas of Clairvaux "divided all creation into five regions: the world, purgatory, hell, heaven, and the paradisus claustralis." The last of the five, the cloister garden, aimed to be paradise regained on earth. To labor here was to regain one's dignity.

The paradisus claustralis of the monastery contrasted in this to the Islamic "paradise gardens", as described in the Koran, and planted in cities like Cordoba. The Islamic gardens sought to provide relief from labor; when William of Malmesbury wrote about the gardens of Thorney Abbey, by contrast, he declared that "not a particle of the soil is left to lie fallow... in this
place cultivation rivals nature; what the latter has forgotten the former brings forth."

The labor of the monks was focused on the garden. Christian monastic reformers thought that the work in the garden not only restored the worker to the original garden, but also created spiritual discipline; the harder the work, the greater its moral value. The monk's labors
in the garden came to be silent labor, as observed in the garden by Fransiscans and the Cistercians, as well as many Benedictines. The elements of garden design were thought in the medieval era to create a place that encouraged introspection. If the urban Christian garden of medieval Paris meant to renew humanity in its state of grace before the Fall, those who worked outside the sanctuary seemed to wander in an urban wilderness. (Sennett 1994, 179-185.)

The ascent of urban parks

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 of walking for recreaction, comfort and health of her Majesty's people". The formulation was liberal in its time, but it had very little practical effect. (Olmsted & Kimball 1928, 4-5.)

In 1649 did the English Parliament passed an act to the city of London, presenting the Richmond Great Park, formerly being a possession of King Charles. Next year the parliament passed another resolution of the park, maintaining "that it was the intention of Parliament in passing the Act for settling the new Park at Richmond on the Mayor and Commonalty of the City of London, that the same should be preserved as a park still, without destruction, and to remain as an ornament to the City, and a Mark of Favour from the Parliament unto the said City", being a large open space belonging to the municipality, being opened to the public use by the royal owners to whom the park was soon given back after the restoration. By that time hunting had already become less popular and the common interest of parks' use for common recreation had grown. By the latter part of the 18th century London, this privilege had become practically a public right. (ibid., 5.)

Around the mid-17th century, Paris and London were the two largest metropoles of the world. Alongside with the population growth of the cities, more social networks and more accidental encounters of strangers occurred. The streets had become too narrow and hectic for encounters and places specially reserved for encounters had to be launched, and this need was the greatest in the largest towns, so it again was no coincidence that the first towns to adopt large public city parks were London and Paris at that time. (Sennett 1992, 17.)

By the mid-18th century, Tuileries in Paris and St. James's Park in London had become an integral element of daily town life of the inhabitants of their respective towns, reflecting the wide variety of sociality and representing various social classes gathered in towns. Albeit trying to adopt the forms of sociability of high classes, even the working class was tolerated in the parks. As the encounters at parks were of accidental and mostly casual nature, the parks in fact served an important function in educating the people into the mentality of townspeople.

The Regent's Park was earmarked in 1812 from a royal land by the future king George IV as a non-built resort or a reservoir, meant as the "lungs of the city", in the centre of the lands meant for building. The park was planned by John Nash in conjunction of the Regent's Street, meant to exclude all traffic from the park. (Sennett 1994, 325-328.) In Liverpool, the Prince's Park was laid out by a private enterprise as a land speculation including a possibility to construct "villas for the wealth and promenades for the poor". (Olmsted & Kimball 1928, 6.)

England appointed in 1833 a select committee "to consider the best means of securing open spaces in the vicinity of populous towns, as Public Walks and Places of Exercise, calculated to promote the Health and Comfort of the Inhabitants". The Committee pointed out that the great increase in the population in large towns, simultaneously increasing value of property and growing extent of building, many enclosures of open spaces had occurred and in turn, little or no provision for public walks or open spaces for providing means for the greater public had been made. It furthermore maintained that "any provision of public walks and open places would much conduce to the comfort, health and content of the classes (middle and humbler in question). (ibid., 6-7.)

Alongside London, the Committee mentioned Liverpool, Bristol, Norwich, Nottingham and Shrewsbury as the only other English towns to have "some open space in their immediate vicinity yet preserved as a public walk". At Manchester there even was a society for the preservation of public foot paths, and in Liverpool the St. James's Walk formed by the corporation of Liverpool, had been damaged by smoke and become useless for recreation purposes. (ibid., 7.)

In England the continental influences and examples were recognised by the committee, citing that Paris, Lyon and Florence were superior to London when it came to the public walks (ibid., 8.) In France the gardens of Versailles (Hazlehurst 1980, 4) were designed as geometric entities around the Versailles castle by André Le Nostre (1613-1700). Le Nostre was also called onto designing private gardens for the houses of the French nobility. When Versailles, located outside the city, accentuated power, the Place Louis XV as planned by Pierre L'Enfant (1755-1825), was meant to provide the citizens of Paris a free space, the lung of the city (Sennett 1994, 268-269).

In L'Enfant plan of Paris in the mid 18th century, movement through the urban lung was still to be a sociable experience. In 1765, the authorities of Paris sought out various schemes to make Place Louis XV more accessible to the people of the city, a lung through which the Parisians could stream and refresh themselves. These streets and footpaths marked a great break with the older fabric of the city; no commerce would be allowed on them, or rather, only commerce with the air and the leaves, and one another. Curiously, the plan L'Enfant made for Washington is not quite so at ease with nature in the city as was the Place Louis XV. L'Enfant explained to president Washington that he wished to "afford a great variety of pleasant seats and prospects" and to "connect each part of the city". Open spaces freely available to all citizens would serve both these ends. (ibid. 268-270)

The Place Louis XV contravened the power relations which shaped open space in a royal garden outside the city. Another kind of open space appeared in the influential English landscaping of the early 18th century, "the boundless garden", lacking an obvious beginning or end, seizing the imagination in irregular space full of surprises as the eye wandered or the
body moved, a place of lush and free growth. (Sennett 1994, 268.)

The movement of municipal parks in Germany dates to the early 19th century. In 1815 the Stadtbaumeister Harte of Magdeburg wrote a letter to the city council, calling attention to the destruct of public gardens around the city occurred during the Napoleonic wars. He pointed out that the town would be a sad place for those who loved rural pleasures, and that it was an obligation for the general good on the part of the authorities to do something about it. By that time, an old city property called Herrenkrug was already used as a recreational space, and in 1818 the Oberburgermeister Franke declared the need of a park provided by the municipality, as the Herrenkrug park was only to be finished in 1845. In 1824 Franke undertook the Friedrich-Wilhelmsgarten, which was probably the first public park in Germany. The park design was supervised by Peter Joseph Lenné. (Olmsted & Kimball 1928, 10-11.)

The parks movement gathered more pace alongside the spread of industrialism. The Friedrichshafen in Berlin was set off by the municipality as a public park in 1840, being followed by parks in Munich, Frankfurt, Dresden and Leipzig, just before the introduction of the New York Central Park.

The parks in cities: ailments for sicknesses of urbanity

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 Parks and the Enlargement of Towns" in the journal of Social Science, published by the American Social Science Association (L. Hall 1995, 25, 149.) As the City Beautiful movement was influenced by the architecture of the European metropoles, the representatives of the movement also noticed that the problems of the growing late 19th century cities were of similar nature, both in US and Europe.

The City Beautiful movement proposed a three-step program (in order to integrate the poor immigrants to the society): firstly to provide them with a good example through settlements, secondly, through moral coercion and even segregation and thirdly, by systematic upgrading of the urban environment. This was meant to be done by providing the city-dwellers playgrounds, parks and later on, park systems. (P. Hall 2002, 37-47.)

The Franklin Park, being one part of the Boston Park network system was characterised by its designer Olmsted himself as

"the entire property has been bought by the city because of its special advantages for one purpose. That purpose is to provide opportunity for a form of recreation to be obtained only through the influence of pleasing natural scenery upon the sensibilities of those quickly contemplating it... The plan proposes, therefore, that nothing shall be built, nothing set up, nothing planted as a decorative feature... to sustain the designed character of the country park, the urban elegance generally designed in a small public or private pleasure ground is to be methodically guarded against" (Fabos et al 1968, 68).

Trips to England by Frederick Law Olmsted and Andrew Jackson Downing were instrumental in introducing the English and continental European influence in American park ideals. The establishing of parks in London - St. James's Park, Green Park, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens - made a great influence in the American parks movement. (Tobey 1973, 154; Olmsted & Kimball 1928, 3-4.) Downing referred to the Germany as the most instructive country to Americans when it came to park planning, as in Germany many examples of public gardens were already evident. These German parks were acknowledged by Downing as something distinctly new and different from public gardens of elder generation, such as the Prater in Vienna, the Alameda in Madrid, the Chiaga at Naples and the promenade at Berne.

Deliberate modelling from Europe was nevertheless denied by Olmsted. He maintained that at the time of his plan for the New York's Central Park there were scarcely any notable public parks in Germany, Italy or Belgium and that the public park of Bois de Boulogne in Paris was a contemporary with his Central Park, being given its final form only in 1855. Olmsted maintained that the parks movement occurred simultaneously in Europe and in the US, that mid 19th century movement was an expression of the civilisation process of man, taking place simultaneously and independently. (Olmsted & Kimball 1928, 13-14.)

New York Central Park is largely based on the English tradition, intended to offer the urban people rural landscape, representing a modern view and a regulated form of pastoralism, providing a sudden refuge from the urban city (L. Hall 1995, 61; Wilson 1992, 95). It "exercise(s) a distinctly harmonizing and refining influence upon (even) the most unfortunate and most lawless classes of the city", according to Olmsted himself. (L. Hall 1995, 66.) From sir Richard Mayne, commander of the London Police, Olmsted inherited his idea for recruiting, training and managing a special police force for keeping order in Central Park and for instructing the park visitors in using the park for recreation without destroying it. (L. Hall 1995, 66.)

Olmsted was essentially an urbanist by thinking that the future laid in cities and the countryside was doomed to fail and believed that the growth of the cities was unavoidable. He was convinced that the living conditions at his contemporary town environments were far from favourable and even unhealthy. If Olmsted admired European city parks, the anti-urbanist undercurrent of idolising the nature was at least as strong an influence, albeit not knowingly (Cranz 1982, 3-5). In his own words,

"(it is) certain that if (townspeople) fail to secure fresh air in abundance, pleasant natural scenery, trees, flowers, birds, and, in short, all the essential advantages of a rural residence, they will possess but a meagre share if the reward which providence offers in this world to the exercise of prudence, economy and wise forecast" (Mugenauer 1995, 95).

Olmsted was largely impressed by the decision of the municipality of Birkenhead as they acquired land for a park, being opened as the People's Park in 1845. Birkenhead park was designed by Joseph Paxton (1801-1865), interlinking agricultural interests of him and humanitarian social vision of John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843). (Rogers 2001, 322-325.)
Olmsted described his visit to Birkenhead as follows:

"Five minutes of admiration and a few more spent in studying the manner in which art had been employed to obtain from nature so much beauty and I was ready to admit that in democratic America there was nothing to be thought of as comparable with this people's garden" (Fabos et al 1968, 23).

At Birkenhead he first realised that parks could benefit civility, regardless of social class and to encourage communicativeness (L. Hall 1995, 35). Nevertheless, it is fair to say that communicativeness, civilisation and domesticity were not mere ideals of the community to Olmsted but features of those privileged and that appropriate outdoors recreation was essential especially to the curriculum of the advantaged citizens (ibid., 133-137). In the all-embracing democratic philosophy of early urban parks of the 19th century, “parks would equalize up, not down” (Cranz 1982, 183).

Olmsted thought that the human being could be changed by his surroundings; a spiritually uplifting habitat could enhance the moral standard, further democracy and aesthetical sense of its inhabitants (L. Hall 1995, 164). Parks and other urban open spaces were designed to promote social well-being: health, decency, vigor, civil morality, sensibility to the beautiful, trade and prosperity (Mugenauer 1995, 101). Parks were to bring together people from different social classes and interests, and for promoting this he planned areas at his parks meant for activities of different kinds. Olmsted's main principles guiding his designing of public parks were those of scenery, suitability, sanitation, subordination, separation and spaciousness (McClelland 1998, 36). These principles were realised in his major works in the form of city parks, state and natural parks meant for public use and whole systems of city parks for various American cities.

Parks were to be antidotes to the stress and artificiality of urban everyday life. (Cooper
Marcus et al. 1999, 242.)

"The influences (of any rural park in an urban setting) most desirable to exerted in the mind are the reverse of those from which the much confined, stimulated and overworked inhabitants of large towns are habitually suffering, and from the wearing and disorganising effects of which they need to find conditions favorable to recreation" (L. Hall 1995, 156).

The early American city parks of the late 19th century were grounds for “unstructured pleasures”, stretches of rural nature in the city, the ideal activities being such as riding, picnicking, skating, just spending time there. Since 1890, athletic activities have been promoted in a larger extent. (Cranz 1982, 5-13.)

Violating against park use considered out-of-place has caused protesting. For instance, planning of a speedway in the New York Central Park was met with vehement protesting. Parks were considered to “transcend, not to reflect the evils of urbanity” and in American parks no public meetings were generally allowed. (Cranz 1982, 21-23.) The resistance to traffic remained strong, despite the fact that often the parks were created in distant wastelands, when traffic connections promoted the access to the parks (ibid., 29-32; 96).

Cities in parks; Garden cities movement

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 make the streets of ample width and arrange them with reference to the convenience of the inhabitants and the beauty and salubrity of the town; and you will make the necessary reserves for squares, public walks and quays". This first town was to be named Adelaide, and the "Park Lands" are still a prominent feature of the city. Adelaide was thus one of the first examples of those later to be described as garden cities. In 1839 in New Zealand, the first town sooner to be named Wellington, the directors of the New Zealand land Company proved themselves another precursors of the Garden City movement in their reservation of open spaces in their first city plan. (Olmsted & Kimball 1928, 9-10.)

City beautification and purification through parks; Daniel Burnham

Daniel Burnham, a man of no small plans, made the plan of the whole Chicago in 1909 (P. Hall 2002, 190). His starting point was the L´Enfant plan dating from 1791, including a great park, later mainly destroyed by roads and commercial land use. As seeking inspiration for the work, a three-man committee led by Burnham went to Europe to study the great European cities. One of the main principles of the plan was to provide parks to all the inhabitants of Chicago within walking distance, wanting Chicago to be the "Paris of the Prairie", idolising the Hausmann plan of Paris. Burnham recommended studying great European cities as examples of civic design and park planning (Scott 1971, 51).

In many cases, park advocates argued that parks could –and should – replace morally dubious activities, such as pubs and amusement parks (Cranz 1982, 29). In Cleveland Burnham had a bold attempt in transforming the city from a rugged industrial town when appointed as the head of commission in 1902. For Cleveland he recommended a civic centre, where the public buildings would be placed in a system of interlinked public parks on a lakeshore. Realisation of the plan meant that - as in Chicago - whole slums had to be swept aside; here the critics of the City Beautiful movements claiming that the whole movement was in fact a segregator from an upper-middle class perspective would have had their field day. (P. Hall 2002, 192.)

In his plan for San Francisco in 1906, Burnham proposed amongst other things a continuous park strip starting from the western part of city, leading to the Golden Gate Park. This plan, which contained grand boulevards, was realised only in some fragments. (ibid., 192.)

From City Beautiful to City Practical: reform parks

The City beautiful planning thread as perfected or perverted in the embodiment of Daniel Burnham containing civic centres, large parks and large boulevards was modified into City practical planning by such planners as Charles Mulford Robinson (1869-1917), John Nolen (1869-1937) and Frederick Law Olmsted junior (1870-1957) with more concern to sanitary, social and health issues, housing conditions and traffic (Krueckeberg 1983, 280). Nolen, influenced by the Garden City ideals, maintained that the City beautification methods applied by his contemporaries were fatal. Instead he stressed social problems which were overlooked by the City Beautiful movement, suggesting that an adequate amount of open spaces to guarantee daily exercise was essential, and not only large city parks were sufficient for this but an easy enough access for everyone to local recreation areas had to be secured, thinking with Olmsted junior cities as complexes of interrelated neighbourhood parks (ibid., 72-98).

In the 1907 City plan for St. Louis the Committee on Civic Centers of the St. Louis League suggested purchasing and developing public parks. (ibid., 73-74.) Benjamin C. Marsh, Secretary of the Congestion of Population Commission, concerned about congestion of population in large cities, suggesting e.g. adequate provision of parks, playgrounds and open spaces (ibid. 84-90).

The early 20th century “reform parks” were to organize activities, since the masses were considered incapable of undertaking their own recreation. Users of reform parks were mainly children and men from working class. The early reform parks were often called as playgrounds as they were considered to be safer environments for children as streets. The launch of these parks was sometimes thought to solve neighbourhood problems, often established at unused land resorts given as donations. (Cranz 1982., 61-81.) When earlier parks were promoted as places of tranquillity, these parks were often lively and rather noisy places (ibid., 98-99).

The economical imperative: essential parks

Since the economic recession of the 1930s, social reformism was removed from American park programming. Park officials claimed that parks needed not to be justified any more as they had become from luxuries to essential, fundamental and basic. This led in practice to the collapse of public spending into parks as now they had to justified. Financiation of American city parks relied more on private philanthropy. (Cranz 1982, 101-103; 176-178.)

The multiple use recreational parks

Since the 50s, the park planning was dominated by the recreativism, stressing the public health effects of parks. This philosophy is characterised by “multiplication of offerings, justification by demand and defensiveness of orientation”. This led in practice to the decrease of open space available for recreation. (ibid., 133-135.)

“If the pleasure ground had been a pious patriarch, the reform park a social worker, and the recreation park facility a waitress or a car mechanic, the new park was something of a performance artist” (Cranz 1982, 138).

REFERENCES:

COOPER MARCUS, Clare, BARNES, Marni (eds.) (1999): Healing gardens. Therapeutic
Benefits and Design Recommendations. John Wiley & Sons Inc

CRANZ, Galen (1982): The Politics of Park Design. A History of Urban Parks in America. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England

CRESSWELL, Tim (2007): Place – a short introduction. Blackwell Publishing

FABOS, Julius Gy., MILDE, Gordon T., WENMAYR, Michael (1968): Frederick Law
Olmsted, Sr. Founder of Landscape Architecture in America. The University of Massachusetts Press.

HALL, Lee (1995): Olmsted's America. An "Unpractical" Man and His Vision of
Civilization. A Bulfinch Press Book, Little, Brown and Company.

HALL, Peter (2002): Cities of Tomorrow. Third edition. Blackwell Publishing

HAZLEHURST, F. Hamilton (1980): Gardens of Illusion. The Genius of André Le Nostre. Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, Tennessee

JACOBS, Jane (1961): The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random House.

KRUECKEBERG, Donald A. (1983): The American Planner. Biographies and
Recollections. Methuen New York and London

LACOUR, Claude, PUISSANT, Sylvette (2007): Re-urbanity: urbanising the rural and ruralising the urban. Environment and Planning vol. 39, no 3, pp. 728-748

LEFEBVRE, Henri (1991): The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson. Blackwell Oxford UK & Cambridge USA.

LEFEBVRE, Henri (1996): The Right to the City. An article in Writings on Cities. Selected, translated and introduced by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas. Blackwell.

MCCLELLAND, Linda Flint (1998): Building the national parks. Historic Landscape Design and Construction. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London

MOLAND, Tallak (2006): Historien om Nordmarka gjennom de siste 200 år. Christiania forlag, Oslo.

MUGENAUER, Robert (1995): Interpreting Environments Tradition, Deconstruction
and Hermeneutics. The University of Texas Press

OLMSTED, Frederick Law, KIMBALL, Theodora (eds.) (1928) Forty Years of Landscape Architecture. Being the professional papers of Frederick Law Olmsted, senior. Frederick Law Olmsted. Landscape Architect 1822-1903. Central Park as a Work of Art and As a Great Municipal Enterprise 1853-1895. G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London, the Knickerbocker Press

ORAUG, Johs., øSTENSEN, Erik, LIND, Terje, ROSENFELD, Inger Skjervold (1974): Forventningar til rekreasjonsmiljøet i Oslomarka. Analyse av fotografier, tegninger og litteratur med motiver fra skog generelt og Oslomarka spesielt. Norges Teknisk-Naturvitenskaplige Forskningsråd, Norsk institutt for by- og regionforskning. Oslo 1974. Delrapport fra prosjektet: Friluftsliv i skog.

ROGERS, Elizabeth Barlow (2001): Landscape Design. A cultural and architectural history. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers

SCOTT, Mel (1971): American City Planning since 1890. A history commemorating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the American Institute of Planners. University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London

SENNETT, Richard (1992): The Fall of Public Man. W.W. Norton & Company, New York and London

SENNETT, Richard (1994): Flesh and Stone. The Body and the City in Western Civilization. Faber and Faber, London and Boston

SOJA, Edward D. (1990): Postmodern Geographies. The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. Verso, London and New York.

TOBEY, G. B. (1973): A History of Landscape Architecture. The Relationship of People to Environment. American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc, New York, London and Amsterdam

WILSON, Alexander (1992): The Culture of Nature. North American Landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez. Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge

OTHER SOURCES:

BURNHAM, Daniel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Burnham
BUSHNELL, Horace: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Bushnell
CITY BEAUTIFUL MOVEMENT: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~cap/CITYBEAUTIFUL/city.html
DOWNING; Andrew Jackson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jackson_Downing
L'ENFANT, Pierre: http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/wash/lenfant.htm
HELSINKI PARK: http://www.hel.fi/wps/portal/Kaupunkisuunnitteluvirasto/Artikkeli?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/fi/Kaupunkisuunnitteluvirasto/Ajankohtaiset+suunnitelmat/Projektialueet/Helsinkipuisto
LIGHT, William: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Light
LOUDON, John Claudius: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Claudius_Loudon
MARSH, Benjamin C.: http://www.library.cornell.edu/Reps/DOCS/marsheco.htm
MARSHALL, Alfred: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Marshall
OLMSTED, Frederick Law: http://www.fredericklawolmsted.com/
ROBINSO; Charles Mulford: http://www.library.cornell.edu/Reps/DOCS/robin_01.htm
VAUX, Calvert: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvert_Vaux

Do neighborhoods effect on their residents? What neighborhoods?

2009-03-04T23:10:00.000-08:00

Do neighborhoods have additional effects on one’s livelihood in addition to the person’s own background conditions (Buck 2001, 2252)? Most research on neighborhood effects have rather a pessimistic starting point, maintaining that the demographic context of poor neighborhoods instills “dysfunctional” norms, values and behavior into residents of these areas, triggering a social pathology, poverty and marginality (Bauder 2002, 85)

There are many possibilities of classifying neighborhood effects, but measuring is much more difficult as it would require standardizing all the externalities and background conditions prior to the moving to the neighborhood. Some suggestions to classify these effects are worth mentioning, as well as classifications of background variables.

Any satisfactory attempt to “measure” neighborhood effects requires the legitimized definition of neighborhood used, as neighborhood effects are area specific (Burrows & Bradshaw 2001, 1347). However, usually some other spatial concepts have been used synonymously with neighborhoods, such as electoral wards or even whole suburbs.

Andrew McCulloch – who uses electoral wards synonymously with neighborhoods - recognizes various problems when individual livelihoods are treated as dependant and the areal settings they live in as independent variables. Firstly: how to measure, define and circumcise the geographic/social units? Secondly, it may be difficult to identify and measure the decisive neighborhood conditions. Thirdly, it is difficult to separate the neighborhood effects from the individual and household characteristics. Finally, individuals are victimized in neighborhood studies as they indeed have some degree of choice regarding the neighborhoods they live in. (McCulloch 2001, 670; Buck 2001, 2276-2277.)

Using area as an explanation for individual’s choices and possibilities is problematic for three reasons. Firstly endogenous effects in the chosen social setting refer to the propensity for an individual to behave, somewhat varying with the prevalence of that behavior in the group. Secondly the contextual (exogenous) effects indicate that the propensity of an individual to behave in somewhat varies with the distribution of background characteristics in the group. Finally correlated effects indicate the similarity of behavior between individuals in the same group due to similar institutional environments. (Buck 2001, 2256.) However, neighborhood differences are not the same as neighborhood effects (ibid., 2252)!

McCulloch claims that the importance of neighborhoods is exaggerated and that individual and household indicators rather than area should dominate the explanation of individual’s livelihoods (McCulloch 2001, 676). Instead of assuming direct effects of neighborhoods, they might influence outcomes through intervening variables; e.g. related choices of tenure and mobility and household income and wealth (Friedrichs et al 2003, 800). The single most important area indicator is residency in social housing (McCulloch 2001, 680).

According to Burrows and Bradshaw (2001), the using of neighborhood is problematic as a basis for policies or research. Firstly, there are methodological problems as national level data and individual/household level data don’t discuss; neighborhood is somewhere in-between, in a grey area. Secondly, individual and household level indicators are not appropriate to measure small area deprivation as individual and area-level characteristics need to be seen in connection. (Burrows & Bradshaw 2001, 1346-1347.)

How to measure neighborhood effects? What effects?
According to Hastings, pathological, structural or areal explanations can be used for neighborhood effects. Pathological explanations are about the micro level conditions, the neighborhood assumed to cause pathological behavior amongst its residents. Structural explanations treat the neighborhood conditions as causes of wider societal conditions, these conditions being the real reason behind possible neighborhood problems. Areal perspective accepts the uniqueness of any given neighborhood, and any satisfactory explanation must take account into the unique micro-macro –relationships forming the place as it is. (Brattbakk 17.2.2009)

There are some models to “measure” neighborhood effects (based on the typology by Jencks and Mayer, originally 1990). Epidemic model is based on peer influences transmitted in the neighborhood. Collective socialization model relies on neighborhood role models, where adults pass their pathologies onto the youths in the neighborhood. Institutional model explains neighborhood effects through externalities, such as the provision and quality of local services. In the model of relative deprivation individuals reflect their status on comparable people in their closest vicinity. In competition model, neighbors complete for scarce neighborhood resources. Network model assumes these resources being essential, when pursuing for jobs and apartments, for instance. Expectations model relies on perception of likely success when pursuing opportunities. Insecurity model has as its starting point the felt insecurity. (Buck 2001, 2254-2255.)

Neighborhood effects transmit by peer effects and role models as mentioned by Buck, but Bauder adds to these the defective local physical infrastructure and the failure of local institutions to provide adequate services. (Bauder 2002, 86.)

Interestingly, Bauder refers to peer groups as well as role models as sources of neighborhood effects, stressing the transmittance of these effects, while Buck maintains that these sources can be used as a basis for measuring typology of these effects. It seems that the both scholars rely on the influential Jencks & Mayer –typology, instilling epistemologies of their own into it.

However, using neighborhoods as independent variables, explaining individual livelihoods is problematic. In the first place - according to Bauder - we don’t know how neighborhood effects really operate. Then, the idea of neighborhood effects is a product of ideological discourse, stigmatizing and pathologizing deviance. Thirdly, neighborhood effects are based on environmental determinism, victimizing the residents of neighborhoods, this concern also being shared by McCulloch and Buck. (Bauder 2001, 86-88; McCulloch 2001, 670; Buck 2001, 2276-2277)

Friedrichs et al present two basic approaches to measure neighborhood effects, readily recognizing that measuring is far from unproblematic. The first one is a neighborhood case study, using ethnographic methods. Second possibility is to conduct a statistical analysis of non-experimental, longitudinal databases. When comparing livelihoods of siblings, parental characteristics can be differenced out, leaving the independent impacts of varying residential conditions more visible. (Friedrichs et al 2003, 801-802.)

Neighborhood effects can be internal or external. Internal effects are about the social relationships of and socialization in the neighborhood. The socialization can take place by using role models, networks or just by mere infecting. External effects are caused by the evaluations from the outside. When some area is being stigmatized as a notoriously bad and hopeless place, also its residents become stigmatized. This can accelerate its stigmatization, leading to policy neglect of that area, as all interventions would be conceived as waste of space. When that area is emptied of services or its services are sub-standard, this furthermore leads to avoiding of the area. According to Bauder, if there is no firm grasp of the causal processes involved in neighborhood effects, urban policy and planning are prone to produce unintended consequences. For instance, policies may lead to minorities’ assimilation or marginality or accelerate segregation. (Bauder 2001, 89-90.) It may well be that neighborhood itself is not the explaining factor but it triggers another set of explanatory variables, such as externalities brought about by stigmatization of an area.

Unemployment or non-employment – permanent unemployment - is a frequently used indicator for areal deprivation. As usually the disadvantaged ones with least social or financial capital move the least, the local job markets are of greatest importance for them. When the local supply and demand fail to meet, occurs a spatial mismatch (Green 2001, 1362). However, as place is more than just a mere container of economic activities, another spatial mismatch occurs if the place is not up according to the resident’s cultural aspirations or lifestyle. However, spatial mismatch of this kind is largely neglected in neighborhood studies.

Individual background always sets the basis for individual livelihoods. Individual background variables used in neighborhood studies are such as age, sex, marital status, employment status, social class (how is it defined and measured?), highest qualification and housing tenure. (Buck 2002, 2258-2262.) Friedrichs et al propose the adding of ethnicity and dynamic treatment of socio-economic position and education to the list of indicators (Friedrichs et el 2003, 84).

In addition to individual and neighborhood characteristics, other socio-spatial levels need to be taken into account as externalities, provided that they have effects on the neighborhood. According to Friedrichs et al (2003, 804), these levels include:
- household characteristics: lifestyle, urban orientations, spatial mobility
- endogenous neighborhood variables: proportion of socially “weak” households, the physical attributes and housing structure conditions, the location in the metropolitan area
- exogenous neighborhood variables, including stigmatization: perceptions of service levels and physical conditions and valuation by financial institutions
- metropolitan area characteristics: dominant economic structure or path-dependant structure, political fragmentation, the attractiveness of the area to immigrants, the overall level of segregation
- welfare state regimes (which may have metropolitan level impacts)

According to Hirschmann, there are three possible different reactions to territorial stigmatizing. When one’s neighborhood is threatened or dilapidated, one possibility is always to exit, to leave. One can also try to express loyalty: once a Romsåsbo, always a Romsåsbo. Then one can become a vocal advocate of his or hers neighborhood through neighborhood activism.

According to a much cited classical study of Oscar Lewis, the poor neighborhoods instill poverty upon their residents, suggesting a learnt behavioral and cultural model. Lewis calls this as the culture of poverty; for instance, if no friends are at work, this affects the expectations and the perceptions of normality of the individual. (Buck 2002, 2258-2262.) However, Bauder thinks that “the idea of neighborhood effects is the product of ideological discourse” and that “the culture of poverty and underclass ideas lay the blame for marginality on the poor themselves, who do not conform to dominant norms”. Furthermore, he insists that “this literature makes ideological assumptions that (…) suburban middle-class lifestyles are normal, and inner-city, minority lifestyles are pathological.” (Bauder 2001, 87-89.) This stigmatizing of neighborhoods can reflect the norms and valuations of the affluent middle class, possibly leading to the acceptance of stigmatization and it can be used to legitimate policy decisions neglecting these areas seen as pathological.

Do area-based policies cure the neighborhood? Is the patient a wrong one?
Stigmatization of some area as deprived may legitimate area-based initiatives (ABIs), aimed at tackling the poverty thought to be spatially concentrated. There is a rich vein of literature on ABIs in UK, both supporting and criticizing these policies. For instance, if the majority of the target group indeed lives outside of the deprived areas where the policies are targeted to, these policies can “miss their targets” (Smith et al 2001, 1342-1343).

Richard Mitchell sees several methodological problems in using neighborhoods as basis for policy making and research. Although he accepts that geography is a means to understand and tackle inequalities, to him it follows that macroeconomic policies are the best means to tackle the problems. He furthermore iterates that there are no deprived places as such, as the people are the place; deprived people make deprived places. (Mitchell 2001, 1358-1359.)

However, ABIs can were originally meant to be only complementing individual-based approaches, not replacing them. If there is spatial variation in livelihoods and this variation is structural, not individually based, it has to be tackled structurally (Smith et al 2001, 1342-1344).

Heather Joshi defends ABIs with three arguments: firstly, localized action is the more appropriate the more localized the problem is. Secondly, mobility can lead to gentrification of areas. Thirdly, public services are always site specific. Fourthly, general-level policies can be “tested” locally in neighborhoods. Finally, local community participation is site specific. (Joshi 2001, 1350-1352.)

Charles Pattie sees pragmatic reasons to support or at least understand the existence of ABIs. How localities fare, is of relevance to the British two-party system. Pattie sees ABIs as sensible if they succeed in reaching the most of the targeted people, adding that controlling for individual problems must control to some extent the local context if the source of problems is to be tackled. (Pattie 2001, 1354-1355.)

Nick Buck summarizes the legitimation of area-based policies by maintaining that if there is a choice between spatially targeted policies and ones targeted at disadvantaged groups regardless of their location, it is only the existence of added effects of neighborhood which would justify choice of the spatial option (Buck 2001, 254.)

Neighborhoods, suburbs and ghettos
There are some differences between US and European traditions of studying neighbourhood / neighborhood effects, in addition to the spelling differences. Firstly, US studies emphasize race, it clearly being more of an issue there. Secondly, most US studies concentrate to the deprivation of inner-city, while in Europe it is mostly the urban outskirts that are associated with the neighbourhood hazards. In the US, the neighborhood impacts are seen as independent variables, presuming that they in turn affect directly those living in these in neighborhoods, while in Europe the significantly different housing supply and welfare policies limit the variation of neighbourhood conditions. In US studies neighborhoods are relatively large units, often whole ghettoized urban areas. Furthermore, in Europe segregation and separation levels are lower than in USA, making neighbourhood effects of lesser significance. (Friedrichs et al, 798-800.)

As most of the neighborhood hazards in European studies are associated with suburbs built in the 1960s and 1970s, these problems were already recognized at the early stages of suburbanization. As an alternative to the “traditional” suburbs with their alleged Simmelian alienating effects, some attempts for alternative suburban planning have been proposed since the 1970s. However, the most of European suburbs are not slums in the real sense of the word with only scarce prospects of a decent livelihood.

An attempt of a pilot project in suburban planning in Helsinki is to be found in the suburb of Malminkartano. Meant to be an alternative attempt, aiming to strengthen the neighborhood spirit by planning large gardens inside the blocks and to provide the locality with local services and jobs by including real estates suitable for local small businesses. However, the aims of the architect Heikki Kaitera largely failed to realize. (http://www.kaupunginosat.net/malminkartano/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2138&Itemid=212). How can a non-existent spirit be heightened? In a new suburb everyone is a newcomer to the area, being aliens to each other. Still, Malminkartano was to serve as an example for all suburban planning in Helsinki for the next 15 years

Neighborhood intolerance; Nimby and Lulu
As the majority of research on neighborhoods concentrate on their socializing effects, the other possible effects have been largely neglected in neighborhood studies. Amongst these effects can be mentioned the reactions towards threats of environmental changes in the vicinity. These changes are usually caused by construction plans of roads and buildings or land use changes. Most of the latest Finnish studies on neighborhoods have concentrated on neighborhood intolerance phenomena caused by some of the following. The undesired forms of land use are frequently labeled as “lulu” (Locally Unwanted Land Use; Kopomaa 2005,11; Kaplan et al., 2008, 223), and the forms of sociability it causes are referred as “nimby” (Not In My Backyard; ibid; Peltonen & Villanen 2004, 33.)

Especially vehement has local protesting been when the planned land use suggests buildings that play a function in dealing with social problems or it is associated with social problems (Kaplan et al 2008, 380). When sheltered housing units are erected for the disabled or those with mental health hazards, criminal record or drug problems, they are met with fear or disgust (Kopomaa 2005, ). The more esteemed the area is, the more projects of this kind are objected against (ibid., 12). The most usual NIMBY concern is the social stigmatization of their neighborhood brought about the project, this diminishing the value of their real estates. Other causes of concern are fear for safety and for diminishing quality of local environment (Peltonen & Villanen 2004, 33)

While Nimby and Lulu are the best known concepts of neighborhood intolerance, there is a whole classification of species of the same phenomenon:
NIMBY = Not In My Backyard
LULU = Locally Unwanted Land Use
NOOS = Not On Our Street
NOPE = Not On Planet Earth
YTESBY = Yes To Somebody Else´s Backyard
NIABY = Not In Anybody´s Backyard
CAVE = Citizens Against Virtually Everything
BANANA = Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone (Snellman, 2002)

Another frequent form of unwanted land use is replacing a free area, public space, especially a green area in recreational use by land use of other kind. In fact, the urban parkland is really valuable, fuelling land use speculation, planning of park-side estates or even of park estates (USA Today). Examples of this are readily found; I have studied the green areas activism in Helsinki and Oslo for my doctoral thesis. (Perukangas 2008.)

Urban parks are – according to Jane Jacobs - in their purest form neighborhood parks, representing a "generalised public-yard use", then urban forests that outstretch any specific neighbourhoods (such as the Central Park of Helsinki) or are located outside the urban core (such as the Oslomarka) are generalised neighborhood parks. Jacobs thinks that the essence of parks stem from the way the immediate neighborhood uses and appreciates them. A successful park needs to be used by different kinds of people for different purposes at different times, it is not a vacuum between the built masses but it instead adds up to its surroundings an appreciated and a functional element. Neighborhood parks can celebrate the local sociality, but nevertheless they can’t substitute for it; neither can they bring about any forms of sociality not already inherent in the neighborhood (Jacobs 1961, 91-95.)

REFERENCES:
BAUDER, Harald (2001): "Neighbourhood Effects and Cultural Exclusion." In Urban Studies, vol. 39, s. 85-93
BRATTBAKK, Ingar: Lecture on the 17th Feb, 2009
BUCK, Nick (2001): Identifying Neighbourhood Effects on Social Exclusion. In Urban Studies vol. 38, number 12, Nov. 2001,pp. 2251-2277
BURROWS, Roger & BRADSHAW, Jonathan (2001): Evidence-based policy and practice. In Environment & Planning, vol. 33:8, pp.1345-1348
FRIEDRICHS, Jürgen, GALSTER, George & MUSTERD, Sako: Neighbourhood Effects on Social Opportunities: The European and American Research and Policy Context. In Housing Studies (2003), vol. 18, no 6, pp. 797-803
GREEN, Anne E (2001): Unemployment, nonemployment, and labour-market disadvantage. In Environment & Planning, vol. 33:8, pp.1361-1364
JACOBS, Jane (1961): The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random House.
JOSHI, Heather (2001): Is there a place for area-based initiatives? In Environment & Planning, vol. 33:8, pp. 1349-1352
KAPLAN, D., WHEELER, J & HOLLOWAY, S. (2008) Urban Geography. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken
KOPOMAA, Timo (2005): Naapuruussuvaitsevaisuus. Tuetun asumisen ja palvelutoiminnan yhteys lähiympäristöön, asukasvaikuttamiseen ja kaupunkisuunnitteluun. Helsingin kaupunginsuunnitteluvirasto (Neighborhood Intolerance. The connection of sheltered housing services with environment, residential activism and urban planning. Planning Office of Helsinki)
MCCULLOCH, Andrew (2001): In Environment & Planning, vol. 33:4, pp.667-685
MITCHELL, Richard (2001): Multilevel modeling might not be the answer. In Environment & Planning, vol. 33:8, pp. 1357-1360
PATTIE, Charles (2001): On reinvented wheels. In Environment & Planning, vol. 33:8, pp. 1353-1356
PELTONEN, Lasse & VILLANEN, Sampo (2004): Maankäytön konfliktit ja niiden ratkaisumahdolliisuudet. Osa 1: Katsaus käsitteisiin ja kirjallisuuteen. Ympäristöministeriön julkaisusarja: Suomen ympäristö 723 (Conflicts in Land Use and attempts to solve them. Part One: A Literature and Conceptual Overview. A publication of the Ministery of Environment, number 723)
PERUKANGAS, Michael (2008): Right to the Urban Parks. An unpublished manuscript of a research proposal for a doctoral thesis. The University of Helsinki
SMITH, George, NOBLE, Michael Noble, WRIGHT, Gemma: Do we care about area effects? In Environment & Planning, vol. 33:8, pp. 1341-1344
SNELLMAN, Ritva Liisa: "Ei meidän nurkille" (Not In Our Backyard): an article in Helsingin Sanomat newspaper 30th June, 2002
(USA Today 14th April 2008).
http://www.kaupunginosat.net/malminkartano/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2138&Itemid=212. Downloaded at the 23rd Feb, 2009.

Gender segregation in Khartoum

2009-03-04T23:05:00.000-08:00

In Khartoum, women are subjected to multidimensional segregation, which is emphasized in the Sharia law. As we already noted, gender segregation can be closely tied to other forms of segregation such as economic and ethnic segregation. Women are economically inferior to men and spatially segregated, these practices being confirmed institutionally.

In Khartoum, especially the Nuer ethnic group members and those Southern Sudanese who had moved to Khartoum (IDPs: internally displaced persons), Christians, blacks and women are segregated. The Nuer people are the second largest ethnic group (second to the Dinka) in the South of Sudan. Traditionally cattle herders, a large proportion of Nuer people have had to depatriate due to civil war for Ethiopia or for North of Sudan, mostly Khartoum. Some of the characteristics of the Nuers are for example that they are patrilineal. Also women can be bought for cattle and their duty is producing children and taking care of the home. This portrayal of women is off course one the oldest form of segregation against women in almost all cultures. Time has brought a change to this form of segregation against women, especially in the western world, but still exists in some parts of the world as in the case of the Nuer women in Khartoum. The Nuers are mainly animistic, but some Nuers have converted to Christianity during the last 30 years.

Feministic urban research and feministic geography have focused on the gendered production of space and the production of genders by the space. According to Elizabeth Wilson, the dispersion of the urban core since the dawn of the Garden city had in fact confined the women to home keepers, the urbanity been sprawled mostly for men commuting by cars. This applies also with many post-colonial cities, as they have been planned according to the Western ideas, emphasizing the exclusion of home work. Indeed the whole ideology of Garden cities advocated the prominent role of women as housekeepers and mothers. As such, they were not only the bearers of the home economy but also of local traditions and sustainers of the local community. Women in Khartoum are not indifference to what Wilson is arguing here with these kinds of roles being found among the women in shantytowns of contemporary Khartoum.

The other frequently studied aspect in the feministic urban geography is the lived space, especially the experiencing of certain urban places as unsafe for women. Even if the city is a stage of opportunities for women, women fear for their safety in the cities. Take for instance Osman and Suliman´s (1996) depiction of the houses in Omdurman being surrounded by high walls acting like physical barriers between public and private space, with the aim of secluding the female inhabitants from visiting men and passers by.

Another form of gender segregation in Khartoum can be found within the household. If there is sufficient space to be divided, then space with the household is often segregated by function and gender. What we mean by this is that when women practically do all the household duties, then segregation of the domestic space serves both functional and gendered motives.

In Khartoum another from of gender segregation can be found among the female refugees who need to adopt the Moslem identity in order to survive. Some of the cultural practices they women perform like the wearing of the Hijab are forced onto them. This makes sense considering they have to adopt the Moslem identity in other to survive in Khartoum. There other cultural practices such as female circumcision but this mainly due to the external pressures these women face. An interviewee in the Abusharaf study on Southern Sudanese female IDPs describes this:

“ I interact with my Northern neighbours and have learned about henna, dukhan, dilka, among other customs. I am prepared to embrace these customs.”

As mentioned above gender segregation can closely be linked to other forms of segregation and in this case also economic segregation. Women in south of Sudan have more economic independence than those in other areas, and when the female refugees arrive in Khartoum they have to adapt and their independence in the economy decreases. Women are economic actors in the formal economical sector only in a restricted sense. Despite Sudan having one of the oldest and most vocal feministic movements in Africa and Moslem world, women are notably under-represented in formal labor. It is estimated that the quota of women in the labor force makes up only 26,5%. With formal economy is meant paid labor of all kind, when the informal sector embraces all forms of self-employment, most usually trading goods of various kinds. In the informal economy, they have a more prominent role, but still they are indeed restricted by “moral economy”, where loans can be paid back by favors and monetary economy is complemented with reciprocal system of mutual aid, tied with morale. The moral obligation to help is stronger than the urge to seek profit.

As women’s reproductive role was earlier largely confined to maintaining the household, since 1970s women have increasingly tried to claim a larger role by making use of their own, informal networks but also by some – albeit modest by Western standards – policy measures, including gender quotas in decision making. These networks include the informal banking and loaning systems (ROSCAs = Rotating Saving and Credit Associations) and “trabuts”, networks of mutual, voluntary help.

The informal trading is made more difficult by the Khartoum State Public Order Act (KSPOA), prohibiting women from selling food and drinks between 5 a.m. and 5 p.m. This kind of restriction first of all, undermines women’s economical independence and also restricts their mobility but clearly also a form of gender segregation (African Migration). Some attempts to improve the situation has been made; for instance, a joint project by Oxfam and the SDA (Sudan Development Association) had trained and facilitated loans to female street vendors, the numbers of which in Khartoum had grown explosively. The project has also helped the women to form cooperatives.

However, Khartoum is not just a vale of restriction; it also provides opportunities for women. There are two private universities in Sudan for women, both of which locating in Khartoum. Despite the fact these separate female universities can be seen as another from of gender segregation at lest by western standards. The founder of the Ahfad University for Women in Khartoum, Sheikh Babiker saw that “educated women were essential to achieving improvements in nutrition, health, child care, community development, and for preparing both young men and women for life in the emerging urban society of Sudan” . A very important argument by Sheikh Babiker when considering the fact that not only in Khartoum but most African countries looked down on female education years ago. With often their side of the argument being that, if post-primary education improves prospects for a healthy living, then it can be considered a “marital hazard” as education makes women more independent and less eligible for childbearing and thereby the period of confinement to the household being shortened by education.

REFERENCES:
Abusharaf, Rogaia Mustafa (2004): Life in Khartoum: Probing Forced Migration and Cultural Change Among War-Displaced Southern Sudanese Women. A Working Paper, downloadable at: http://web.mit.edu/CIS/www/migration/pubs/rrwp/30_abusharaf.pdf

Ahfad University for Women official website; www.ahfad.org

Elfadil, Wafaa (2004): Sudan gender profile. Downloadable at http://www.unsudanig.org/darfurjam/trackII/data/background/Sudan%20gender%20profile%20mar2004%20(WFP).pdf

Hubbard, Phil (2005): Social inequalities and spatial exclusions. An article in the book An introduction to Human Geography. Issues for the 21st Century, second edition. Pearson Education Limited, 2005

Ibrahim, F.N. (1991): The Southern Sudanese Migration to Khartoum and the Resultant Conflicts. GeoJournal 25.1., pp. 13-18

Khartoum Christians celebrate Easter under Islamic law. An AFP article, downloadable at http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article26472&var_recherche=khartoum

Lyons, Michael & Snoxell, Simon (2005): Creating Urban Social Capital: Some Evidence from Informal Traders in Nairobi. An article in Urban Studies, Vol. 42, No. 7, 1077-1097

Malik, Saadia Izzeldin: Displacement as Discourse. An open-access article at Africa Migration website. Downloadable at http://www.africamigration.com/archive_02/s_malik.htm

McCabe, Coco (2007): With Oxfam's Help, Women Become Entrepreneurs in Khartoum Market. An article in the www.oxfam.org; downloadable at http://www.oxfamamerica.org/whatwedo/where_we_work/hornofafrica/news_publications/with-oxfams-help-women-become-entrepreneurs-in-khartoum-market/?searchterm=entrepreneurs

Osman, Khadiga M. & Suliman, Mamoun M.A. (1996): Spatial and Cultural Dimensions of the Houses of Omdurman, Sudan. Sage Publications.

Rahim, Abdel & Mugaddam, Hamid (2006): Language maintenance and shift in Sudan: The Case of Migrant Ethnic Groups in Khartoum. Edited by Nancy C. Dorian. An article in the International Journal of the Sociology of Language No 181, pp. 123-136. Downloadable at http://ciillibrary.org:8000/ciil/jc/I/international_j_of_sociology_of_lang/vol_181_06.doc

Schulz, Ulrike & Maccawai, Asia & El-Fatih, Tayseer (2006): Women and finance in Sudan: a case study in greater Omdurman and Khartoum. Published in Ahfad Journal; downloadable at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb003/is_1_23/ai_n29273516/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1

Wilson, Elizabeth (1991): The Sphinx in the City. Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women. Virago Press, London

The effects of globalisation

2009-03-04T22:55:00.001-08:00

What is globalization? Usually it suggests transnational movement of cultural influences and economical actions and transnational relevance of these actions. While some claim that place loses its very meaning, others suggest that there are losers and winners in this game, amongst those winners being cities called as global cities.

In the influential book published in 1991 called “The Global City. New York, London and Tokyo”, Saskia Sassen claimed that these cities are something new when compared with earlier city types, such as the medieval or industrial city. In the book a non Western city was introduced for the first time to the same “rank” as the most important metropoles known so far.

According to Sassen, these cities are strategic places, articulating the global system of trade and production. They do not only host trans-national companies but especially so called producer services, being outsourced from these TNCs. In cities like New York, London and Tokyo there is a wealthy account of banks, insurance and advertising companies, benefiting from proximity with TNCs.

Nevertheless, Sassen was not the first one to introduce the concept of cities as global actors. Her teacher Anthony King wrote in 1990 in his Global Cities: Post-Imperialism and the Internationalization of London that London can’t be fully understood without taking into account the British empire. The leading cities of the world are not just generators but they also diffuse cultural influences all over the world, causing also brain drain from the Third World as centers of opportunities. As he was mainly interested in architecture, he claimed that the colonialist Indian villa had influenced the English building of villas. Western driven McDonaldization is certainly an inadequate measure to describe all the cultural exchange going on.

Globalization is nevertheless not a recent phenomenon. The logistics to transfer goods, personnel and information had increased international connectivity and disembedded the time-space-place-specificness, but places do still exist. As Sassen was interested in unique places, Michael Peter Smith claims the importance of networks. If natural resources, labor force, knowledge and land can be acquired where they are available the cheapest, places have to distinguish themselves in order to be competitive. One means to do this is to emphasize local culture.
Globalization can result from deliberate strategies. If London has been a global leader for a long time, Tokyo had just become such as a result of political will. Yet Tokyo had maintained its cultural distinctive Japaneseness despite her being a major, international financial centre.

Some places have fared better in the international competition, enabling merchantilism of new kind. As some regions and cities are the strategic hubs of headquarters, others provide the resources and produce. Not only the Wall Street is a global subject, but also the special economic zones in Hong Kong and Singapore, call centers in Bangalore and sweatshops in Indonesia result from economic globalization, each one enabling it by having a role to play in it.

Role of land and property in urban development

2009-03-04T22:54:00.002-08:00

The 1898 Kiaochow Land and Tax Stature by Sun Yat-Sen illustrates well the relationship between property, markets and the state. There the land reform was seen as a central means of a social reform, this being carried out – although rather strange it may seem - by liberalizing the definition of property value. As the land owners were granted the right to define the value of their properties, the markets “punished” the property owner if they sold too cheaply; on the other hand, the state taxed heavily if the property was valued too highly.

In the growth machine theory by Harvey Molotch cities are seen as actors aiming to maximize the profit in land use. Land and real estates are in this theory understood as a central strategic commodity in cities. This metaphor has been used, referred to and cited when motivating city policies of various kind. The growth machinery notion of cities is nevertheless not only a reference but also descriptive of city planning practices and strategic actions especially at earlier stages of urbanization.

In Zimbabwe the strategic role of land property is certainly apparent. As there some 50% of agricultural land was owned by the white commercial farmers still in 1980, the land legislation introduced by the Zanu PF regime had led into notable rearrangements in land use and habitation. The president Mugabe even used the motto “land is the economy and economy is the land” as his motto when running for re-election in 2002.

The land was used by the ruling Zanu party as a reward for its loyals and as a means of punishment for disloyals, according to the Kriger article. As the agricultural land was used as a means to build a strong party network in the countryside, this meant that the disloyal to the regime moved to the cities to large extent. As the land arrangements excluded all urban land, this has led to urban poverty as the recent urban settlers couldn’t acquire any land.

In India, the central government had with its taxation and import policies since the 1950 helped to create economical void in commercial centers, such as Mumbai (Bombay by that time). The strict import restrictions led to lack of availability of consumer’s goods, this need answered by black market enterprising, namely the local mob (OCG).

The OCG:s (organized crime groups) were also largely involved with local governance by bribery and in local property markets. The properties were seen a good means for money-laundering and also a good means to have a say in local albeit informal governance.

What kind of segregation and racial policies cities can and should have?

2009-03-04T22:54:00.001-08:00

The classification of the human race has been and can be based on culture, religion, ethnicity and race. Although classification is completely unnecessary, sometimes and in fact, often some of these classifying parameters do go hand in hand or at least, have a positive correlation, and also social and societal implementations. These divisions are often reflected in urban structure and ethnicity can be used for motivating division of labor and land use rights.

Perhaps the most studied and most drastic example of using ethnicity as a basis for social inclusion and exclusion is to be found in South Africa of the Apartheid era. Earlier a Dutch colony, it was taken over by the Brits after the Boer war between 1899 and 1902.

The Apartheid system only started in 1948, dividing the citizens into whites, colored and black population. The dissolving of the Apartheid since the early 1990s meant that the blacks were now granted full citizenship rights, this making them allowed to move freely inside the state without having to carry passports. As the cities offered most working and studying opportunities, it is also natural that the South African cities have faced a marked growth in the post-Apartheid era, this also leading to acceleration of urban poverty.

However, as the Boraine et al. article shows, the reality is a far cry from the official policy statements heralding the multiculturality and -raciality. In fact, the difference between living conditions between racial groups have grown and the ethnic segregation in the South African cities has not certainly dissolved. According to Boraine, the new pressing urban issues of sustainability and globality have put the ongoing problems of structural racism, inequality and fragmentation aside.

Where the ethnic segregation, combined with multi-dimensional social inequality, in South Africa the multiculturality or multiethnicity is a constant source of various problems. In Singapore, the situation is markedly different. While in South Africa the urban space is certainly divided according to the racial groups but fragmented, in Singapore the multi-ethnicity is tackled with deliberate policies to promote equality or, to be more accurate, to promote the pan-Singaporean identity of multiculturality. In Singapore, the ethnic separation of urban space is tackled with strong regulation; as an example, the apartments can only be sold to the representatives of the same ethnic group: to the Chinese, Malay, Indian or the “others”.

According to Chih Hoong Sin, in Singapore the so called pragmatism has become a substitute for ideology, this ideology being to promote entrepreneurship and to make Singapore a competitive environment for businesses. While in Singapore the urban regrouping is deliberately produced and quite a recent phenomenon, only occurring since the late 1980s, in South Africa, the official dissolving of the Apartheid policy is still in strong contrast with the rather mosaically segregated urbanities. While in Singapore there has been a strong economical growth, the rich resources in South Africa have only helped the previously privileged groups.

How to plan and develop cities?

2009-03-04T22:53:00.000-08:00

According to Jussi Kulonpalo, a general current trend in European urbanization tends to lead from centrally lead planning to development of urbanity in partnerships with private, usually commercial actors. In Helsinki this inclusion of private enterprises into urban development is something new.

Such is the case also in China, Shanghai. Earlier a European style city in its outlook, Shanghai was largely neglected in the Mao era. Only since the 1980s has it deliberately been turned into a foci for economical activities for China. This has been made possible by legislative measures but also by investment both from the central government and from foreign investors.

In order to attract enterprises to Shanghai, special economic zones (SEZs) have been founded outside the old city centre, especially in the Pudong area with some place-specific legislation in order to make them attractive environments for the companies. However, according to Weiping Wu, the faster-than-expect congestion of financial activities and people, aided by deliberate policy actions have lead to environmental and populational hazards, while the general standard of living conditions have increased only incrementally in the old part of the town.

While in China the recent stake of urbanization has been conducted in partnership between municipalities and private enterprises, in Mozambique both parties have been lagging. Since the death of president Machel, the political system has been drifting into decentralization. During the Portuguese colonial regime there was some qualified local albeit colonial administration; now in the absence of operative legal system, much of the local economical activities are informal and local administratives in fact often corrupted.

While in China the financial injection needed for urban development has come mainly from business enterprises and foreign investors, according to Jenkins, in Mozambique the main contributor have been the World Bank and various UN developmental programs. These have addressed only partly the developmental issues they were meant to address.
Housing is one of the most pressing issues in urban growth. Not only provision of housing is enough but it has to adequate. In order to provide plots for housing, in Maputo most of the previously privately owned land has been bought by the municipality. However, when the land management is lacking and corruptive, very little progress have actually occurred for the living conditions of the vast majority, while the select few have gained.

When the land resources for building are insufficient, it is always possible to build upwards. Such had happened in Singapore, aided by rigorous governmental attempts to acquire land for housing and to provide adequate apartments as incentives for housing the workers of business enterprises. The strong contribution to public housing is for attracting business enterprises by providing the workers with quality appartments; public housing is not necessarily social housing, as its image is usually understood here in Helsinki.

Understanding urbanization

2009-03-04T22:52:00.000-08:00

According to the most scholars, the process of urbanization – meaning the growing size of the cities and the increasing proportion of people living in towns – is triggered, even caused by industrial modernization. In more precise terms, according to Timothy McGee, the process of urbanization is not one solitary process but instead three parallel processes of demographic, economic and social urbanization.

Urbanization presented such as according to the neo-Marxist theory by David Harvey, the creation of surplus in industrial production made possible the acceleration of urbanization. When the industrial modernization, applying the Fordist production principles, was about supplying the goods, the post-industrial city is characterized by consumption these goods, being a demand-side update of the industrial city.

Urbanization can not be properly understood if towns and cities are treated as isolated entities. Instead they have to be in a wider context in order to make sense for the processes that have lead to urbanization. Therefore, studying the urban-rural relationship and the industrial as well as economical development and global market dependancies is essential in order to understand the urbanization process or processes.

However, the urbanization is not occurring as a causal process. The development can be circular; migration between cities and the countryside can go back and forth. Examples of this in the developing world are readily found, resulting from political interventions, social or economical reasons.

While China was still largely a rural country in the early 1960s, the urbanization process was still gathering pace rather slowly. The direction of the wave was then reversed by the communist regime led by Mao by the introduction of the so called cultural revolution in the mid-60s. As one implementation of this, a large number of educated youth were transferred to the countryside.

In Africa, Zambia was considered as one of the relative success stories of the post-colonial continent. When keeping in mind that there had already been cities in Africa even in pre-colonial era, the colonial merchantilism treated the colonies as inexhaustible sources of raw material for industrial production. In Zambia, there were large supplies of copper available, this making possible the launching of new industrial cities around these mines.

However, the direction of industry driven urbanization have taken some steps backwards since the 1970s. The state of global economy alongside with demographic transition, lack of social integration of urban newcomers and the recent idealization of rural culture as the most suitable way of life for Africans has paved the way for de-urbanization in the Zambian copper mining region.

From local symbols to global corporations - the case of professional football

2009-03-04T13:55:00.000-08:00

By the time Glasgow Celtic won the coveted European Champions’ Cup in Lisbon in 1967, the whole starting eleven was made up of boys born and grown up in Glasgow (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/25/newsid_5071000/5071020.stm). This team was generally to known as the “Lisbon Lions”. When facing the Olympique Lyonnais in December 2003 in the group stage of the Champions League competition, there were no Scots in the starting eleven, let alone any Glasgowians (http://www.uefa.com/competitions/ucl/history/season=2003/round=1712/match=1056877/report=lu.html). What has happened during the 36 years?When a Frenchman Arsene Wenger was appointed as the manager of a London club Arsenal in the autumn of 1996, only 4 out of 34 first team players were non-British (in here, also the Welsh, Irish, Northern Irish and Scots are included as British), and the whole defence was of English origin; this legendary defence line being Dixon-Keown-Adams-Winterburn. Now the only Englishman making into the first team is Theo Walcott, usually a substitute (World Soccer November 10-11); (http://www.arseweb.com/history/faq/faq97.html.)

It is commonly recognised that the best foreign players bring about new playing styles and cultures, and more class. In seven years, between 1992 and 1999, the number of foreign players increased from 11 to 2000, by 1800% in England. This growing internationalisation has in fact meant outsourcing labour force in English football corporations, resulting to growing unemployment of English players. (Freeman 2000.)Since the early 1990, a rapid professionalisation and industrialisation has occurred in football, mostly due to pay TV and Bosman case. This development has brought about an increased friction between the traditional picture of football representing locality and the function of football being a world-wide entertainment industry.

Here I will present a picture of the professional football as a case of the global shift, the football clubs being trans-national corporations (TNCs) supported worldwide but with a local essence. The relationships between TNCs, nations and states are also studied and the increased friction between locality and trans-national capital. Different relationships between the state, nation, locality and identity in football are presented. A special case in point is the outsourcing of acquisition of work force, in here football players. I will present a generalised model of football players’ career path, based on the prestige, wealth and performance of football clubs and stage of development of a football player.

The global shift is evident in football in the increasing moving of work force and capital across the borders; this is studied by using examples occurred in football. As a theoretical background and for illustrating, how the varying social and spatial dimensions in attachment into football of different actors involved with football can be understood, I will use the notions of trans-nationalisation by Peter Dicken (2007) and Bartlett & Ghoshal (1998).

The football clubs become TNCs: the launch of the Premiership and Champions League

The English Football League, the oldest of national football league competitions, was launched in 1888 (http://www.fchd.btinternet.co.uk/lghist/fl/fl.htm). It was to set an example for other national football league competitions. The highest division of the competition was later to form the Premiership, independent and above of the English Football League.

As the interest to "measure" which one of the national football champions was the best increased, the oldest and most prestigious international club competition, the European Champions' Cup was launched for the season of 1955-1956, being later modified into the Champions League in 1992. (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-06/03/content_336218.htm); (http://www.fotballen.eu/Emner/champions_league.html).
TV broadcasting of football dates back to the late 30s, but before the early 1990s, it was a rare treat. The occurrence of the Premiership and the Champions League practically coincided with the satellite TV in the early 1990s. The introduction of the satellite TV has caused or at least triggered the increased flow of capital involved in professional football. The BSkyB TV contract from 1992 opened up new horizons for clubs to sign better players, who would in turn attract larger crowds and sell more fan merchandise. Now television football has become from a supporting industry of football into a major industry in its own right, attracting more overseas fans with a mere virtual reality relationship to the clubs (Freeman 2000).

The growing number of audiences also meant that the investment into football become more attractive. (Brown 1998.) The turnover in the English Premier League rose since its launch in 1992 by 350% in nine years. (Freeman 2000). At present, the income of the English Premier League clubs from overseas television rights is 625 million pounds a year (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/7232390.stm);
(http://www.my-youth-soccer-guide.com/soccer-history-timeline.html).

Club, nation, state, locality: cases of different relationships between them

The rivalry between football clubs is often the most intense when between two local rivals.
The football clubs can serve as representants of local community, as containers for cultural, religious and political, localised practices and even as a national manifestations, when the nation state is lacking. The more intense the rivalry becomes if the local dimension is further divided culturally, politically, ethnically or religiously. Next I will present different relationships between football clubs, nations, states and localities in globalised football.

Football clubs and locality

In Roma and Milan, two major Italian football centres with two major football clubs, one club (AS Roma in Rome and AC in Milan) is traditionally rooted to the labour movement and to the socialist parties, while the other is mainly supported amongst the right-wing (Lazio in Rome and Inter Milan in Milan) (Giulianotti et al 2001). However, these political ties were put under some controversy as the Italian right-wing prime minister Silvio Berlusconi became the club president at AC Milan (http://www.sportspundit.com/team/37/); (http://www.theromanforum.com/articolo.asp?ID=306).
In Scotland, the rivalry between the two clubs, Celtic and Rangers has been furtherintensified with the intertwining of religion and by the concentration of success insidethe Scottish league as these two clubs have usually shared the domestic spoils between them. The contests between Celtic, a club traditionally supported amongst the Catholics and Rangers, supported amongst the Protestants, are referred as the Old Firm. The transfer of a Catholic Celtic player Mo Johnston to Rangers caused an uproar (http://www.mollymaguirescsc.com/celtichist.htm);
(http://worldsoccer.about.com/od/scottishclubs/p/rangers.htm); (Barrett 2001).

Wimbledon was just one of the least known of the dozens of London based professional football clubs, when it by surprise entered the English FA cup final in 1988. The "Crazy Gang" struck the most by surprise by winning the final (Barrett 2001), and later on, by promoting into the English first division. The fairytale was over at the turn of the century. The club went down two divisions in four years and went into administration.The club was then rescued from bankruptcy by Peter Winckelman and transferred from London into Milton Keynes. The loyal localist supporters of Wimbledon established then a new club, AFC Wimbledon to maintain the local traditional attachment to the club
(http://arkiv.alltidfotball.no/?module=articles&tournament=7&id=488); (http://www.afcwimbledon.co.uk/history.php?Psection_id=4&Psub_section_id=6&squad=).

Supporters demand that players of their favourite club remain loyal to their clubs. As the rivalry between local competitors is usually the fiercest, it also is most unthinkable for supporters that a player switches from one local club to its local rival, such feat representing almost blasphemy. When the English defender Sol Campbell went from Tottenham to its local rival Arsenal, he was regard as a traitor, “Judas” by the Tottenham faithfuls (http://www.123football.com/players/c/sol-campbell/index.htm).Still, there are some exceptions of the rule, perhaps the best known in Italy, more precisely, in Milan based clubs. Defenders Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini have played all of their career in AC Milan and defender Giuseppe Bergomi has played only for Inter Milan (http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/football/paolo-maldini.html); (http://salpacino66.tripod.com/soccer.htm); (http://www.planetworldcup.com/LEGENDS/bergomi.html).

Club, country, nations and leagues: different relationships
The small emperorship of Monaco has a notable football club of its own, AC Monaco. It plays in the French league as Monaco has scarcely any domestic players (http://www.asm-fc.com/).

The two Welsh clubs, Cardiff and Swansea play in the English league. In fact, a Welsh football league exists, but these two clubs have been accepted to play in the more competitive English league (http://www.cardiffcityfc.premiumtv.co.uk/page/Welcome); (http://www.swanseacity.premiumtv.co.uk/page/Welcome). This represents an interesting relationship between nations, states and clubs: there are four nations “inside” one state, but the participation in league competitions is transnational.

United Kingdom is one country with four national teams: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. How is this possible? The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the main governing body of international football was founded in 1904, England being one of the founders. The Welsh, Scottish and Irish football associations were accepted as members of FIFA already in 1905, this allowing them to have national teams of their own (http://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=Minisite_Generic&content_type_id=839&display_order=2&mini_id=1343).As there is only one state - Great Britain - the question of eligibility for playing for the British teams represents some controversies and at least creative interpretation of homestead. The commonplace practice has been that the winner takes all, meaning that the strongest association – being England - takes the first pick of the bunch. If a British player has hardly any prospects to represent England at international level, the competing other British football associations study hard the heritage of the player. For example, if the player has once lived in Northern Ireland or has Northern Irish parentage or grand-parentage, he is eligible for Northern Ireland if he wishes so. The case of a Manchester United midfielder Darron Gibson is revealing; a Northern Ireland born player, representing an English club, being ineligible to represent Northern Ireland as he has already played for Ireland
(http://www.worldcupblog.org/world-football/fifa-face-impossible-decision-on-irish-eligibility.html).
When states are lacking, the football clubs may serve as the containers of distinctive cultural practices. Two examples of this include FC Barcelona in Spain and Assyriska in Sweden, both of them boosting and representing the national sentiment of nations without states (according to Dicken 2007, 174-177).
The football club with more registrated supporters than any other football club in the world, FC Barcelona is often referred as "Mes que en club" (More than a club). For many Catalans, it represents their national pride, being a sort of their national team, compensating the lack of internationally recognised state. The games between Barcelona and its arch rival Real Madrid, another Spanish giant, are in fact manifestations of the Catalan will of independency from the mainland Spain. This rivalry was established during regime of General Franco, himself an ardent supporter of Real Madrid (World Soccer January 2007); (http://www.fcbarcelona.cat/web/english/club/historia/introduccio/introduccio.html);
(http://www.columbia.edu/~xs23/catala/articles/2006/more_than_a_club/more_than_a_club.htm).Another such example - albeit on a much smaller scale - is to be found is Sweden. The promotion of Assyriska into the top-flight of Swedish football attracted some international media attraction, as it was founded by immigrants of Assyrian origin. When the Assyriska was playing in the Swedish league, it was followed by the Assyrians worldwide considering it to represent sort of a lacking national team (http://www.assyria.se/default_5.asp.)

Added friction and challenge to the locality: the foreign ownership

Generally speaking, the capital flows from developed countries to the less developed or developing countries. The influx of capital takes various forms; it is evident in football merchandising, employees' contracting, in the ownership and sponsorship deals. However, there have lately been some indications that the direction of the cash flow is changing. Many of the new big “players” in business come from developing or transitional economies.

At present, 10 out of the 20 clubs of the English Premier League football, are owned by foreigners. Or more precisely, as the English Premier League clubs are commercial PLC’s (Public Limited Companies), the major share holder was non-British in 50% of the clubs.

The acquisition of a London based club, Chelsea by a Russian multi-billionaire Roman Abramovitch set an example of subsequent acquisitions of that sort; another English club, Portsmouth, is now bankrolled by another Russian, Alexander Gaidamak and Manchester City has been acquired by the prime minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinavatra (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3036838.stm); (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/5195590.stm); (http://www.helium.com/tm/310781/prime-minister-thailand-thaksin).

Sponsorship deals entered a new era when a Russian based gas company, Gazprom struck a deal with a German club Schalke (http://www.schalke04.de/sponsoren.html). The sponsors are not involved with sports for their sheer benevolence; they want something in return. A Londoner club of Arsenal, even a new stadium with greater capacity has been made possible by the capital from the Emirates flying company; as a result, this new stadium is called the Emirates Stadium. In Korea, a local club is now called as Chonbuk Motors after their main sponsor (World Soccer December 2006.).
The foreign capital brings about an added change of competitiveness in footballcompetitions. Still, not all have a positive attitude towards this. The traditionalists,mainly local supporters are in some cases protesting against that their team has been taken over by the foreign hands. In England, Manchester United was recently acquired by an American businessman Malcolm Glazer and by the American International Group (AIG) (http://www.manutd.com/default.sps?pagegid={235041B8-C516-4517-8D04-AEEBB5882B8A}&sponsors=aig); (http://www.aigcorporate.com/corpsite/index.html); (http://www.cbc.ca/sports/columns/newsmakers/malcolm_glazer.html). As a protest and as a manifestation of concern, some supporters launched a new club, United of Manchester, known as the “Fans Club”. This organisation of fans has been seen as a counter-reaction to the growing power of commercialism in football (Brown 1998); (http://www.malcolmglazer.com/); (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/m/man_utd/4541093.stm); (http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=1961184755).

The prestige, wealthiness and performance of clubs, leagues and countries

The wealth frequently brings about success, allowing the football clubs to strike the economically most advantageous deals with the best possible players. As the success is rewarded with significant prizes, it also attracts the sponsors, this leading to better means to compete. As the added capital in football has benefited most the top football clubs, they have launched a negotiating body, the G 14, representing the 14 most prestigious clubs from the most prestigious European leagues (World Soccer January 2007).The performance of football clubs is summarised in the UEFA seeding system, where the success of clubs is put in order in respect of nations. The lower a country is placed in the rankings, the more difficult it becomes for a club from that country to enter the club competitions, most notably the coveted Champions League. The UEFA seedings are topped by Spain, followed closely by England and Italy (http://www.xs4all.nl/~kassiesa/bert/uefa/data/method3/crank2006.html). This means that the two clubs best placed in their national league competitions have an automatic entry to the Champions League, and the 3rd and 4th placed teams from these leagues have to play only one qualifying round to enter the competition. In turn, clubs from countries like Andorra, San Marino and Montenegro have to play three qualifying rounds in order to enter the Champions League (http://www.xs4all.nl/~kassiesa/bert/uefa/access2007.html).
The club team ranking for individual European club teams suggests that the success isconcentrated into a select few European countries. In the top 10, 9 club teams come from the three countries – Spain, England and Italy - the best ranked in the European club team rankings. (http://www.xs4all.nl/~kassiesa/bert/uefa/data/method3/trank2007.html). The best football players tend to ply their trade in the most prestigious football leagues. This notion is supported by the voting of the best football player of the year. In 2006, all players in the top ten played either in the Spanish, English or Italian leagues (World Soccer Jan 2007). That the most prestigious football clubs can afford the best players - often also the most expensive ones - is further supported by the list of the most expensive player transfers ever, as all the ten most expensive transfer deals are conducted by either the Spanish, English or Italian football clubs (http://www.top-ten-10.com/sports/football/football_transfers.htm) (list is based on the situation of the June 2007).As Spain, Italy and England are traditional football countries, the competitiveness of their national leagues was largely of domestic origin. Lately, major football players as well as well-known managers have been attracted to clubs from countries with little or no football history and culture. The wages paid in the US, in Japan and in some of the Arab countries are competitive enough even when compared with their more illustrious European rivals but as the general standard of football in those countries is relatively poor, usually the big stars of yesterday are there for their last pay check. In footballing terms countries like Japan or Qatar might be developing countries but in economical terms, certainly not.

For instance, players in the Qatar league in the season 2006-2007 included renowned players at the twilight of their careers; best known players of the Qatar league were the French players Frank Lebouef, Marcel Desailly and Christoph Dugarry - all players from the French World Cup winner team of 1998 - Dutch Ronald de Boer, the Spaniard Fernando Hierro and Pep Guardiola, Argentinians Gabriel Batistuta, Claudio Caniggia and German Stefan Effenberg. Signings of Qatar League include not only well-known players from major football countries but also managers (World Soccer Nov 2006, 18-22); (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ittihad_(Jeddah)#Notable_former_players); (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._League).The best known recent example of this development is the transfer of David Beckham to Los Angeles Galaxy (http://www.davidbeckham.com/). Still, this phenomenon is not quite without precedents. Already in the 70s major stars like Pele, Franz Beckenbauer and George Best were attracted to New York Cosmos (World Soccer Jan 2007); (http://www.nycosmos.com/cosmos/chstage.html). The signing of well-known players help the clubs attract bigger audiences and to market their merchandise but also sets an inspiring example for the junior development, giving the local junior players well-known idols to watch and the signing of established managers aims to develop the local know-how in football (World Soccer Nov 2006).

Outsourcing the players’ market; the capital logic of players' transfers

Football is a representative case of movement of labour force across national borders. Generally speaking, the football market is a winner-takes-all market, where the most prestigious clubs are the primary movers in the corporative industry of football. Still, players are not quite without a say in the movement of labour force.

A telling example of labour mobility is the French player Nicolas Anelka. The money involved with his transfers from one club to another went up to 115 million EUR when he went from Bolton to Chelsea in the January 2008. During his professional career, Anelka has played for 9 different clubs in 4 different countries (http://www.sportsya.com/english/news.php/The_moves_of_Nicolas_Anelka__Chelsea_FC__amount_to_115_million_euros.html?id=168322&id_estruc=283); (http://www.footballdatabase.com/index.php?page=player&Id=173&pn=Nicolas_Sebastien_Anelka).
Usually the non-costliest workforce is to found in so called developing countries. Such is the case also in football. As there is a wealthy account of football players in Brazil, being the most successful country in world football, there are currently (22nd of February, 2008) 585 Brazilian football players plying their trade in Europe. Practically all of the European leagues are staffed by the Brazilian work force, the greatest coverage of Brazilians probably for linguistic reasons being in Portugal (140) as Brazil used to be a Portuguese colony. There are a notable account of Brazilians even in countries formerly part of the Soviet Union and in emerging countries like Romania, Poland, Moldova, Lithuania, Macedonia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Belarus and Azerbaijan, and Bulgaria. Peripheries in football terms like Faroe Islands and Cyprus, Andorra and Albania are also represented in the list of countries employing Brazilian football players (http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-brazilian-football-players-in-europe).In addition to the emigration of Brazilian players, since the 80s the world has seen an internationalisation of African football. There are currently African players playing in 18 European leagues, the largest proportion in France (130). Often the African players first emigrate to France and then to third countries with a more wealthy football league, such as England, Spain, Italy or Germany. One example of this is to be found later on in this presentation.

The African Cup of Nations, the African competition of national teams therefore hurts the French league most, as many clubs struggle to get a competitive side during the competition as their African employers are representing their countries in the national teams tournament. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African_football_players_in_Europe);
(http://sport.setanta.com/en/Sport/News/Football/2008/01/04/ACN-Ligue-1-stars-going-to-Africa-/).

Who owns a player? Towards an increased mobility of football players

In the early 1990s, a Belgian footballer Jean-Marc Bosman sued his old club RFC Liege, the Belgian football association and the FIFA for preventing him to transfer into another club. In 1996, the European Court of Justice upheld his complaint, and since then, European players with no contracts have been able to move between football clubs without a transfer fee. This case helped to develop new legislation for protecting labour rights of football players. It also stressed the central European principle of free movement of labour force, now also applied to the professional football (Barrett 2001); (Freeman 2000); (http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-242668/football-soccer#844743.hook); (http://www.liv.ac.uk/footballindustry/bosman.html).In the spring of 2005, three Nigerian players aged 17 were scouted by the Lyn Oslo and their player rights were purchased by the Lyn. The best-known of these was John Obi Mikel, awaking soon the interest of some of the most prestigious continental football clubs. In 29th April 2005, Mikel signed a deal with Manchester United, only two weeks later having signed another contract with another English club, FC Chelsea. In the summer of 2006, the two English clubs struck a deal between them, allowing the Manchester United to be compensated by Chelsea, the accurate details and conditions of this agreement being not known (http://www.fotballservice.no/tippeligaen/lyn/index.php); (http://pub.tv2.no/nettavisen/innenriks/article1597820.ece).
The two most talented Argentine footballers of their generation, Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano were sold from Argentina to a Brazilian club called Corinthians. This case struck the world of football by surprise, as it was by no means usual that Argentine players would go to Brazil, especially as it was expected that some of the major European clubs with more purchasing power would buy them (World Soccer Jan 2007).How was this possible? A cosmopolitan (British) businessman called Kia Joorabchian had become a major shareholder in the Brazilian club, using his company Media Sport Investment (MSI) as the negotiating party of the deal and as the major sponsor of the club. There have also been unproven speculations that the players in fact were not owned by Joorabchian or the club but by a third party, Roman Abramovich, the major shareholder of Chelsea and also a shareholder in MSI.In the autumn of 2006, another twist occurred in the saga as the Argentines weretransferred into West Ham United, a medium-sized English club, again this time not being purchased by a “big” club. As the contract details and ownership relationship was far from clear, West Ham sold the players forward, wanting to avoid a possible action from governing bodies of football. West Ham was fined £5.5 and Tevez sold to Manchester United and Mascherano borrowed to Liverpool respectively(http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,1563,1370763,00.html); (http://www.carlostevez.net/).

Nursery or feeder clubs, farm teams

It is common that the TNCs outsource some of their activities to smaller companies, often located in Third World countries. One form of outsourcing is to use certain - often geographically wide-spread - lesser companies as suppliers, providing the major company with resources it is lacking. (Dicken 2007.) This is also evident in football, the practical difference in implementing this strategy being that usually the “Third World” is being replaced by another club of lesser wealth or by a less competitive league in the developed world, in countries like Sweden, Belgium or Norway. (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19990116/ai_n9654003).

The using of suppliers in football is called as using nursery or feeder clubs. This means that a major football club strikes a strategic deal with another club, aiming to “nurse” fringe players at smaller clubs, providing them with invaluable match practice (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/low/sports_talk/1738561.stm). If subsequently the player sent to smaller club develops so that the primary employer wishes to have him back, then the player is sent back to his “owner” club. Companionship of another type is when the more prestigious club has a deal with a lesser club, allowing the more prestigious club to have the upper hand in possible permanent transfer deals of players. So, if an “owner” club wishes to acquire another player and if the “feeder” club has got an appropriate one, then the deal can be accomplished without difficulties.The examples of such deals, when financially the wealthiest clubs residing in England, Italy, Spain or perhaps in Germany have such a deal with “lesser” clubs are readily found. Arsenal of London has a deal with Belgian Beveren and Manchester United has a deal of a similar kind with another Belgian club, Royal Antwerp (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/s/sheff_utd/5256792.stm). Clubs from the developed economies may have such deals with clubs from the developing countries. Sometimes this is due to the wish of having cheap labour. The well-known club of Ajax Amsterdam has launched a local variant in South Africa, the Ajax Cape Town, allowing the possibility for the greatest talents of the South African club to transfer into the respective Dutch club (World Soccer December 2006); http://www.ajaxct.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=77&Itemid=65). As this is a classic case of launching a new “production unit” in a country with significant price advantage in wages and infrastructure, the case of Sheffield United is different.
The English club Sheffield United has acquired a Chinese football club, Chengdu Five Bulls (http://www.sufc.premiumtv.co.uk/page/ChengduBladesIndex/0,,10418,00.html). As China is the major up-and-coming power in the world economy, this is also reflected in the growing consuming power of the Chinese and the growth of the Chinese market. As the Chinese football league is not very competitive in itself and China has hardly produced any major football players to date, the motivation of acquiring a Chinese club is hardly for reducing labour costs. Instead, it can be interpreted as a market oriented purchase. (Dicken 2007.)

Path study in players’ transfers: the winner takes it all

The usual career path of a football player is that he (or she) transfers from a minor employer (football club) to a major one and that the level of employer reflects the level of the player and the phase of his development. The relationship of minor-major indicates the differences in status and stature of the football clubs and the leagues these clubs participate in. Often – especially if the player is very talented – some stages of the career path may be skipped altogether.

The developing and developed countries are here understood in football terms, not in general terms of development.

Career paths of some individual players illustrate this. Didier Drogba came from Ivory Coast to France as a five-year-old boy, signing his first senior contract with a small French club Levallois, playing now in the fourth division of French league. From there he went two divisions up to Le Mans, and from there he went to a minor club of Guincamp at the highest level of French league. From there he was bought to Olympique Marseille, a major French club, and later on to a major English club, Chelsea. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/c/chelsea/3896465.stm
http://www.didierdrogba.com/en/biographie/index.asp

A Brazilian born later-to-be naturalised Portuguese player, Deco, signed his first professional contract in Brazil with Nacional Sao Paolo, later being bought by another Brazilian club, Corinthians. As Brazil is a country rich in football culture but economically a developing country, he went to Europe, to Alverca, playing at the second level of the Portuguese league. From there he went to a minor club at the highest level of the Portuguese league, Salgueiros. Only after two games he was bought by a major Portuguese club, Porto. From Porto he went further to Barcelona.
http://www.fcbarcelona.com/web/english/futbol/temporada_07-08/plantilla/jugadors/deco.html

Kim Källström is a Swedish player, who signed his first senior contract with a Gothenburg based club Häcken, playing at the second level of Swedish league. With Häcken he won promotion to the first level of Swedish league, and after his club relegated back to the second level of Swedish league, he was transferred to a major Swedish club, Djurgården. From there he went to the French club, Rennes, later on being transferred to Olympique Lyonnais, a major French club playing in the Champions League regularly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_K%C3%A4llstr%C3%B6m

Despite the flow of the player traffic being from developing to developed countries, there are exceptions of the rule. An Italian player, Daniele Massaro signed his first professional contract with Monza at the second level of Italian league. From there he went to a Serie A (the highest level of Italian league) club Fiorentina. From there he went further to Milan, an Italian giant. From Milan, he went to Japan, Shimizu S-Pulse.
http://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showpost.php?p=4673807&postcount=80

Players often return to the club where they started their professional career. Juan Veron started at a Argentinian club of Estudiantes, later being transferred to an Argentinian giant, Boca Juniors. From there he went to Europe, playing in relatively big Italian clubs like Sampdoria, Parma and Lazio, and from there he went on to an English giant, Manchester United and from there, to Chelsea. From Chelsea he returned to Italy, to Inter Milan, and now he plays again for Estudiantes in Argentina. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Sebasti%C3%A1n_Ver%C3%B3n.)

Conclusion

Many models of transnational corporative behaviour are evident in professional football. The player market follows predominantly that of a transnational vertical integration, with the system of nursery or feeder clubs of different hierarchical levels.

The friction between multi- or cross-national capital can be interpreted as a clash between mainstream economic activities of TNCs and community economies. As the features of a locally attached supporter are those of place attachment, cultural distinction, social embeddedness and locally ownership, in turn, the features of a football corporation are aspatiality/globality, aculturalism, social disembeddedness and non-local ownership. (Dicken 2007.) The supporters who consider the club a representant of their local community, seem their values to be threatened and disconnected from the community and its values and culture by the multinational capital.

The management and corporative system of professional football is that of any transnational corporations when seeking competitiveness both domestically and internationally. Success in domestic competitions is a pre-requisite for clubs of entering the international competitions, and success in these international competitions escalates the means to succeed domestically. This leads to a vicious circle, into a winner-take-all economy.

Even for trans - or multinational football corporations, some resources (most notably the essence, the special identity, for example, Englishness, Londonness or East-Londonness) are essentially home based. Then, some resources – such as financing and players’ market and selling football merchandise – can be placed outside the traditional homestead of the club. These resources or assets are interdependent: the investing and sponsoring helps to afford attracting well-known players, who in turn help to sell the fan merchandise. (based on Bartlett&Ghoshal 1998.)

The offsourcing of players’ markets follows the global model of TNCs, especially when using feeder clubs. The use of feeder clubs means that the parent company has the final say in buying and selling players. Parent company strategies in football were presented in the Ajax case, where the parent company in Amsterdam is mainly responsible for corporate strategies and developing knowledge, transferring them to the sub company in Cape Town.

If the traditional picture of football clubs was that they represented local society, today they are also global corporations with local supporter organisations spread worldwide – mainly due to TV – and globally sold merchandise. The friction between those two notions of football is ever present and these two notions, functions or representations of a football club are concurrent.

REFERENCES:
BARTLETT, Christopher A., GHOSHAL, Sumantra 1998: Managing Across Borders. The Transnational Solution. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Massachusetts. 2nd edition.
BENNETT, Norman 2001: Fotballleksikon. En gjennomgan av de footballhistoriene som skapte overskrifter helt fra 1863 og frem til i dag, sesong for sesong. Fotballforlaget.
BROWN, Adam (ed.) 1998: FANATICS! Power, identity and fandom in football. Routledge London and New York.
DICKEN, Peter 2007: Global shift. Mapping the changing contours of the world economy. Sage Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi.
FREEMAN, Simon 2000: Own Goal! How Egotism and Greed are Destroying Football. Orion
GIULIANOTTI, Richard, BONNEY, Norman, HEPWORTH, Mike (eds.) 1994: Football, Violence and Social Identity. Routledge London and New York.

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Naisten kaupunki

2009-03-03T23:27:00.000-08:00

Feministinen kaupunkitutkimus on ollut kiinnostunut kaupunkirakenteen sukupuolittumisesta, sen vaikutuksesta sukupuolirooleihin sekä kaupunkitilan kokemisesta. Monien kaupunkitutkijoiden mielestä nykykaupungissa kaupunkilaisuus näyttäytyy kuluttajuutena, sillä kulutusvapaata julkista tilaa on tarjolla ja sitä suunnitellaan kovin vähän.

Yhdyskuntasuunnittelun hallitseva suuntaus lähtee kaupunkirakenteen funktionaalisesta eriyttämisestä, jolloin kello kahdeksasta neljään ollaan joko kotona asumalähiössä tai töissä toimitila- tai teollisuusalueella, ja iltaisin ja viikonloppuisin kansoitetaan ostoskeskukset. Ostoskeskukset taas sijaitsevat joko kaupunkikeskustoissa tai automatkan päässä kaupungin laita-alueilla, joiden väliin asuinalueet jäävät sosiaalisiksi tyhjiöiksi.

Feministinen kaupunkitutkimus on auttanut ymmärtämään, että kaupunkisuunnittelun eri toimijoilla on eriäviä intressejä ja eriävässä määrin valtaa. Lapsilla on pulaa leikkipaikoista etenkin kaupunkikeskustoissa, koska niissä kaupunkitila tahdotaan käyttää taloudellisesti kannattavammin tai kaupunkien imagonrakennukseen. Lasten toiseus kaupungeissa näkyy myös siinä, että kaupungin mittasuhteet on tehty aikuisille, ja autoihin perustuva liikennejärjestelmä on lapsille vaarallinen, koska lapsi on arvaamaton liikkuja, joka näkyy autoon huonosti. Vammaiset taistelevat edelleenkin oikeudestaan esteettömään kaupunkiin, vaikka esimerkiksi Helsingin rakennuslautakunnassa Kalle Könkkölälle on veto-oikeus. Naisten toiseus ilmenee etenkin autoliikenteeseen perustuvan kaupunkirakenteen tuottamisessa.

Kaupunkirakenne etenkin amerikkalaisissa autokaupungeissa, joissa asutaan hajallaan omakotitaloalueilla, eristää naiset kotiin. Kun asuinalueille ei ole julkisia kulkuyhteyksiä ja mies ajaa perheen mahdollisesti ainoalla autolla töihin, naisen valtakunnaksi jää piha ja koti. Kun kaupunkirakenne tukee sellaista rooliajattelua, jossa naisen tehtävä on perheen uusintaminen, hän samalla syrjäytyy elinkeinoelämästä ja yhteiskunnallisesta elämästä. Tietenkin Suomessa naiset käyvät enemmän töissä kuin Yhdysvalloissa, mutta idea lienee yleispätevästi ymmärrettävä. Työpaikkojen ja asuntojen ollessa erillään, etenkin nainen syrjäytyy, kun taas alkuperäisen puutarhakaupungin sosiaalisena ihanteena oli työpaikkaomavaraisuus, jolloin nainen pystyisi paremmin osallistumaan työelämään.

Suomessa kaupungit kilpailevat avoimesti laajoista ydinperheistä, suunnitellen isoja perheasuntoja. Tämä näkyy myös Helsingin kaupunkisuunnittelussa ja asuntopolitiikassa. Tämä kilpailu on täysin avointa ja hyväksyttävää; lapsista ajatellaan tulevan tulevaisuuden veronmaksajia.

Kuka on kaupunkilainen ja mitkä ovat hänen oikeutensa? Feministinen kaupunkitutkimus on tulkinnut uudelleen osallisuuden käsitettä ja normaaleiksi katsottuja osallisuuden rooleja. Kun yleensä kaupunkisuunnittelun virallisiksi pääosallisiksi katsotaan kaupunkisuunnitteluvirkamiehet, luottamusmiespoliitikot ja kuntalaiset, lisäksi taustalla vaikuttaa liike-elämän intressejä, jotka pyritään naamioimaan tai piilottamaan ja joihin viittaamista tai edes vihjaamista kaupunkisuunnittelupoliitikot ja virkamiehet pitävät loukkauksena, henkilökohtaisen integriteettinsä epäilemisenä. Kaikille kuitenkin pitäisi olla selvää, että esimerkiksi kauppakeskuksia ei suunnitella ainoastaan pyytettöminä kunnan työpaikka- ja palveluntarjonnan nostajattajina. Sen, minkä ketjun kauppakeskus pellolle nostatetaan, määrää raha, samoin sen, mille grynderille kaupungin omistama maa myydään kehittämiskohteeksi.

Pelon maantieteeksi kutsutaan niiden paikkojen kartoittamista ja kokemisen tutkimusta, joissa nainen ei uskalla oleskella ainakaan öisin, koska pelkää fyysisen koskemattomuutensa puolesta, vaikka miehet joutuvatkin naisia enemmän kaupungeissa tuntemattomien väkivallan uhreiksi. Helsingissä vaarallisena paikkana tunnetaan esimerkiksi Kaisaniemen puisto; yleensä kaikki sellaiset paikat, joissa on "katvealueita" ja pimeitä pusikkoja, ja joissa pimeänä aikana ei liiku juuri kukaan, voidaan kokea pelottaviksi. Tällä perustellaan joskus myös kaupunkipuistojen pitämistä hoidettuina ja tätä vastaan suunnitellaan esimerkiksi puistojen valaistuksen lisäämistä.

Paikan maine vaarallisena toimii itseään toteuttavana ennusteena; se, että jossakin ei liiku ihmisiä, johtaa paikan kokemiseen vaaralliseksi, jolloin siellä liikkuu entistäkin vähemmän ihmisiä. Suomessa aihepiiriä on tutkinut etenkin Hille Koskela, aiheesta on kirjoittanut kirjan termin lanseerannut Anja Snellman ja jonka pohjalta Kaisa Rastimo on ohjannut samannimisen elokuvan.Paikat eivät ole ainoastaan sijainnin merkitsijöitä, jolloin ne yksinkertaisimmillaan palautuvat pituus- ja leveysasteiksi. Paikat konstruoidaan sosiaalisissa prosesseissa, joissa paikkoihin kytketään merkityksiä ja tulkintoja(esimerkiksi: onko tämä ja tuo paikka tarkoitettu ostamiseen, oleskeluun tai vain katseltavaksi). Paikan merkitys ja luonne tai paikan hallinnasta taistelevien toimijoiden voimasuhteet voivat myös muuttua; esimerkiksi Helsingissä Kallio on muuntautunut ryysyköyhälistön säilyttämöstä trenditietoisten suosimaksi kansainväliseksi sulatusuuniksi. Eri toimijoilla on eriävässä määrin valtaa määritellä kaupunkien paikkojen merkityksiä ja käyttöä, ja esimerkiksi kaupunkisuunnittelussa tämä voi näkyä siten, että heikot ihmisryhmät, kuten lapset, vammaiset tai naiset huomioidaan heikosti. Tästä aihepiiristä on kirjoittanut etenkin Doreen Massey.

Tekniikasta kulttuuria, kulttuurista elämäntapa?

2009-03-03T08:05:00.000-08:00

Viivakoodi tuotteen kyljessä ja tavallinen luottokortti ovat viimeisen parinkymmenen vuoden aikana muuttuneet niin viattomilta vaikuttaviksi jokapäiväisiksi nähtävyyksiksi, asiaankuuluviksi tavaroiden kylkiäisiksi, ettei niitä aina edes huomaa, vaikkakin viivakoodin ilmestyminen koskenkorvapullon kylkeen olikin aiheuttaa kulttuurisodan ja -sokin, loukkauksena pyhinä pidettyjä suomalaisia perusarvoja kohtaan. Mutta niiden avulla on kuitenkin mahdollista huomata sinut, tunnistaa, tarkkailla ja valvoa. Jokapäiväiseen kulutukseemme liittyy nykyään paljon erilaisia elektronisia tunnisteita, joiden avulla tarkkaillaan kulutuskäyttäytymistä ja joiden avulla voidaan myös tarkkailla yksittäisen kuluttajan liikkeitä.

Tällä ilmiöllä on tekniset edellytyksensä, mutta myös ihmisten käyttäytymiseen, kulttuuriin ja elämäntapoihin liittyvät vaikutuksensa.

RFID - tavaroiden henkilötunnus
Elektronisia tunnisteita on, paitsi luotto -ja pankkikorteissa, myös julkisen liikenteen matkakorteissa, erilaisissa kulunvalvonnan avain-ja magneettikorteissa ja kauppojen varashälyttimissä. Lyhennettä Rfid (Radio Frequency Identification) käytetään yleisnimenä sähköiselle tunnistustekniikalle. Tunnistimia on kiinnitetty suoraan myös itse tuotteisiin: viivakoodeja, myymälävarkauksia estäviä varashälyttimiä, ja vielä kehittyneemmässä muodossaan, niitä on esimerkiksi kodinelektroniikkaan liitetyissä eräänlaisissa minitietokoneissa, jotka sulattavat jääkaapin pakasteosan automaattisesti, tai sykemittareissa, jotka hälyttävät silloin kun kuntoilijan syke ylittää esiohjelmoidun ihannetiheyden.

Kehitys on kuitenkin vasta alussa. Tekeillä on esimerkiksi älyllisten kodinkoneiden sovelluksia, jotka ilmoittavat “isännälleen” jonkinlaisen puhelimen hakulaitteeseen verrattavan etäispäätteen avulla, milloin kotona on varkaita tai milloin jääkaapin olutlokero on tyhjä. Eikä äly-ja tunnistetekniikka suinkaan pysähdy elektronisiin laitteisiin: esimerkiksi vaateteollisuudella on kehitteillä “ajattelevia” kenkiä, ja jo nyt on mahdollista tilata omien mittojen mukaan suunniteltuja vaatteita, joita mallinnetaan, leikataan ja sovitetaan tietokoneella. Samanlainen tekniikka on pilottikäytössä myös jo joillakin parturi-kampaamoilla.

Uusi tekniikka mahdollistaa siis nykyistäkin yksilöidymmän ja täsmällisemmin räätälöidyn kulutuksen, jolloin yksittäisillä kuluttajilla on entistäkin hienopiirteisemmin mahdollisuus määrittää itsensä “brand citizeninä”, eli tehdä itsestään kävelevä, kokonaisvaltainen brändi, jonka vaatteet ja kampaus ovat täsmäsuunniteltuja ja jonka taskussa oleva hakulaite tai ihon alle ommeltu siru ilmoittaisi vakiobaarin baarimikolle, milloin kanta-asiakkaan saapuminen on odotettavissa. Kun mainoslause julistaa, että auto on “My Toyota” tai kenkä on “My Adidas”, tämä lause oikeastaan sisältää suuren lupauksen kyseisen tuotteen identiteettiä kantavasta ja muovaavasta vaikutuksesta.

Tämän täsmäbrändäyksen muutokset kulttuuriin ja elämäntapoihin näkyvät hyvin esimerkiksi siinä, miten suhde musiikin kuluttamiseen on muuttunut. Livekonserteista ja omasta musisoinnista, jolloin musiikki oli tilassa tapahtuvaa toimintaa, objektivoitiin musiikki keräiltäviksi esineiksi, kuten savikiekoiksi, lp-levyiksi ja lopulta cd-levyiksi. Musiikkiin liittyvä sosiaalisuus on sekin muuttunut, musisoiva yhteisö korvautui osittain keräilijäyhteisöllä, mahdollistaen miltei omakohtaisen musiikkisuhteen sellaisillekin ihmisille, joilla ei ole mahdollisuutta käydä konserteissa tai jotka eivät itse soita mitään instrumenttia. Vielä ei ole nähtävissä, millaista sosiaalisuutta kehityksen tällä hetkellä viimeisin piste, mp3 -soittimet, jotka mahdollistavat persoonallisesti täsmäkoostetut musiikkiäänitteet, tuovat tullessaan, mutta joka tapauksessa, musiikki on jälleen irtaantumassa tavaraluonteestaan, jolloin sen kuluttamisen luonne oikeastaan palaa juurilleen, musiikin kuluttaja ja tuottaja ovat tosin yhtä, mutta edelleenkään musiikin alkutuotannon ja kulutuksen suhde ei ole välitön.

Rfid - ihmisistä tavaroita?
Joskin rfid -tekniikka avaa uudenlaisia mahdollisuuksia kuluttamisessa, asian kääntöpuolena yksityisten kansalaisten kannalta on, että näitä samoja mahdollisuuksia voidaan soveltaa kääntäen, markkinoinnillisesti. Suoramarkkinoinnille uusi tekniikka tarjoaa runsaasti lisääntyneitä mahdollisuuksia. Samaten turvallisuuden kääntöpuolena on intimiteettisuojan kärsiminen, vapauden kääntöpuolena valvonta.

Koska Rfid -tekniikka perustuu tunnistukseen radiotaajuuksilla, vaarana on, sen mahdollistaessa paitsi tavaroiden, myös ihmisten tunnistamisen, merkitsemisen ja valvonnan, että tietoja voidaan siepata “ilmasta” ja käyttää sellaisiin tarkoituksiin joihin sitä ei olla suunniteltu, jopa kaupallisesti ja henkilöä itseänsä vastaan. Periaatteessa olisi mahdollista, että tunnistetietoja voitaisiin käyttää kiristämiseen ja niillä voitaisiin käydä kauppaa, ja jo nyt suoramarkkinoinnissa, ja etenkin Internetin kautta tapahtuvassa tietoliikenteessä henkilötiedot ja sähköpostiosoitteet leviävät nopeammin kuin kuulopuhe. Radiotaajuuksia voidaan myös häiritä, jolloin pelkona on, että ihmisten henkilötietojen ja pankkitilitietojen kaltaista arkaluonteista informaatiota saattaa kadota tai muuttua.

Kaupungistuminen on ollut teollistumisen kanssa yhtäaikainen ja kiihtyvä kehitystrendi, ja useiden kaupunkisosiologisten teorioiden mukaan, kaupunkimainen elämäntapa on tullut länsimaissa vallitsevaksi. Tätä elämäntapaa luonnehtivat yleinen välinpitämättömyys reaktiona mahdollisuuksien ja aistiärsykkeiden moninaisuuteen, kulutuksen ymmärtäminen elämyksellisyytenä sekä korostunut yksilöllisyys reaktiona ihmispaljouteen, eräänlainen moderni nomadismi.

Jälkiteollisessa yhteiskunnassa ollaan siirrytty suoranaisesta tavarantuotannosta palveluiden tuotantoon, ja nyttemmin oikeastaan ollaankin siirtymässä, ja paljolti jo siirrytty, palveluyhteiskunnasta asiakasyhteiskuntaan, jossa vertikaalisista asiantuntija-maallikko -suhteista ollaan siirrytty horisontaalisiin asiakas-partneri -suhteisiin, sekä diskursiivisella että mielikuvallisella tasolla.

Vanhan sanonnan mukaan “tuli on hyvä renki mutta huono isäntä”. Uusi rfid -tekniikka tarjoaa mahdollisuuksia yksittäisille kansalaisille toteuttaa omaa citizen brändiään, mutta se myös haastaa tai suoranaisesti saattaa uhata tämän brändin kanssa käsi kädessä kulkevaa yliyksilöllistynyttä elämäntapaa, koska se mahdollistaa lisääntyneet häiriköinnit yksilöllisiä intimiteettejä kohtaan. Identiteetin voimistuminen saattaa siis olla haaste intimiteetille. Rfid -tekniikka on myös haaste läpiasiakkaistuneelle palveluyhteiskunnalle, sillä kuka oikeastaan on kontekstualisoituneissa palvelukontakteissa rfid -teknologian asiakas ja käyttäjä? On mahdollista, että varsinainen hyötyjä ja asiakas onkin lopulta jokin tilanteen ulkopuolinen taho, kolmas, kutsumaton vieras.

Pioneereista vastarannankiiskeihin - from early adaptors to late converters
Älytunnisteita voidaan liittää suoraan myös ihmisiin, eräänlaisiksi sähköisiksi antabus -kapseleiksi, ja nähtäväksi jää, tuleeko jatkossa henkilöllisyyden tunnistaminen perustumaan ihon alle laitettaviin mikrosiruihin, jolloin esimerkiksi jalkapallostadionien sisäänkäynteihin voitaisiin asentaa lukulaitteita, jotka piippaisivat heti kun sisään yrittää jalkapallohuliganismista tuomittu henkilö.

Uuteen teknologiaan, keksintöihin tai mihin tahansa uuteen, voi suhtautua yksinkertaistaen kolmella tavalla. Välittömät mielleyhtymät ovat positiivisia, negatiivisia ja epäileviä. Niitä voidaan kannattaa innokkaasti jo ennen minkäänlaista omakohtaista kokemusta, mahdollisesti ennen kuin ne ovat edes nähneet päivänvalon, kun ne ovat vasta insinöörien piirustuspöytäasteella tai mahdollisesti vasta apokalyptisina visioina. Ihmisiä, joilla on tämäntyyppinen Tulenkantajat -asenne, joka lähtökohtaisesti innostuu kaikesta uudesta, etenkin tieteeseen ja teknologiseen edistykseen liittyvästä, kutsutaan nimellä Early Adaptors eli varhaiset omaksujat. Usein he ovat kulttuurisen muutoksen edelläkävijöitä, kuten 80-90 -luvun taitteessa, jolloin matkapuhelimet yhdistettiin ensisijaisesti “jupeiksi” kutsuttuun ryhmään. Yhtäältä nämä varhaiset omaksujat itse levittävät uutta teknologiaa, joskus aktiivisestikin, toisaalta heidän omaksumaansa uuteen teknologiaan liitettyä elämäntapaa jäljitellään, ihaillaan ja seurataan. Nämä ihmiset ovat tyypillisesti kaupunkilaisia, singlejä, nuorehkoja, korkeasti koulutettuja, usein poliittisesti punavihertäviä, vaihtoehtoisiksi itsensä mieltäviä ihmisiä, jotka jäsentävät jokapäiväisen elämänsä itsetoteutuksena, nautinnonhakuisuutena ja haluna saada jatkuvaa hallittua vaihtelua ja jännitystä.

Suurinta osaa ihmisistä leimaa kuitenkin varovaisuus heidän suhteessaan uusiin keksintöihin. Ja vasta silloin kun merkittävä määrä ihmisiä on omaksunut uusia innovaatioita, niistä tulee kulttuurisesti merkitseviä. Tästä eteenpäin puhun innovaatioista tieteellis-teknisten keksintöjen synonyymeinä, sillä sana innovaatio on oikeastaan yleistynyt suomalaisessa kielenkäytössä 90 -luvun insinörismin sivutuotteena. Pankki- ja luottokortit alkoivat toden teolla yleistymään vasta 80 -luvulla ja matkapuhelimet 90 -luvun puolivälistä alkaen, minkä kehityksen kanssa internetin käyttö on yleistynyt laajamittaisesti. Vanhaa matkapuhelinmainosta mukaellen, yhtäkkiä hyve, että “sut saa kii”, onkin muuttunut välttämättömyydeksi. Matkapuhelimesta on tullut välttämättömyys ja oletusarvo, minkä kulttuurisen ja ajattelutavallisen muutoksen käytännössä voi havaita esimerkiksi puhelinluetteloiden ohenemisesta ja valtiojohtoisen suunnitelmakapitalismin murtumisessa vapaaksi kilpailuksi, joka on muuttanut perinteisten puhelinmonopolien rooleja, näkyen HPY:n ja Telen vähittäisenä liikelaitostumisena, yhtiöittämisenä, pilkkomisena, ulkoistamisena ja myyntinä.

Usein hitaimmin ja vastentahtoisimmin uusia keksintöjä omaksuvat vanhat ihmiset, vaikkakin tämä on yleistys, tai positiivinen korrelaatio, ei koko totuus, koska heillä on pisin tottumus siitä, miten ennen toimittiin kun vielä mentiin asioimaan tutussa konttorissa tutun pankkivirkailijan kanssa henkilökohtaisesti tai miten ennen pankkikorttien aikakautta kirjoitettiin sekkejä. Nyt nämä henkilökohtaiset kontaktit on korvattu laskujen alalaidassa olevilla viivakoodeilla ja pankkitilien avainkorteilla. Joskus uuden oppiminen voi tietenkin vanhenemiseen usein kuuluvista muistihäiriöistä johtuen olla vaikeaa, mutta moni nuorehkokin ihminen suhtautuu uusiin innovaatioihin hyvin epäilevästi, suorastaan nuivasti. Matkapuhelin saatetaan hankkia vasta sitten kun sellainen on melkein koko tuttavapiirillä, ja kokemukset syrjäytymisestä omista viiteryhmistään saattavat suorastaan työntää matkapuhelimen ostamiseen. Usein näistä “epäilevistä tuomaista”, jotka oikeastaan ovat pikemminkin “myöhäisiä lintuja” tuleekin mitä innokkaimpia “käännynnäisiä”, aivan samoin kuin usein kaikkein ehdottomimpia omassa uskossaan ainakin ulospäin ovat käännynnäiset. (=zealots)

Lähteet:
Huhtanen, Jarmo: Kirjoitus Helsingin Sanomissa 24.8.2004
Maffesoli, Michel: The Shadow of Dionysos. New York: State University of New York Press, 1992
Noro, Arto: Gerhard Schulzen elämysyhteiskunta. Artikkeli teoksessa Sosiologisen teorian uusimmat virtaukset, toimittanut Keijo Rahkonen. Gaudeamus, Helsinki 1996
Perukangas, Michael: Julkaisematon väitöskirjasuunnitelma Sibelius-Akatemialle ja Helsingin yliopistolle, 2002
Schulze, Gerhard: Die Erlebnisgesellschaft. Kultursoziologie der Gegenwart. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1992
Sulkunen, Pekka: Orgioiden aika: Michel Maffesolin postmodernismi. Artikkeli teoksessa Sosiologisen teorian uusimmat virtaukset, toimittanut Keijo Rahkonen. Gaudeamus, Helsinki, 1996