Antikainen & Vartiainen: Framing the Urban Network in Finland - the Urban Network Study 1998

In this article the urban network in Finland is analysed by investigating the functionally significant urban regions of Finland during the mid-1990s. Using statistical criteria, this is accomplished by grading their significance at the national level and by studying their functional specialisation. This study adopts the national and European urban policy point of view, in which the preconditions for development and, thus, the role of functional urban regions (FURs, Hall & Hay 1980, Cheshire et al 1988) as both arenas for supraregional functions and as nodes for national and international networks are examined. Also, the preconditions for development are compared with the characteristics of development occurring in concert with profound Finnish societal structure changes in the mid-1990s.

Currently, the urban network in Finland is characterised by one predominant European-level centre (Helsinki Region), a few strong national centres - all located in Southern Finland, with the exception of Oulu - and by a few dozen medium and small-sized regional centres. Before any national urban policy can be efficiently implemented, the characteristics of urban regions must be explicitly analysed and their special requirements mapped. In fact, the urban policy in Finland is still searching for its form. The main guidelines for Finnish urban policy so far is that, firstly, the policy is primarily implemented in the functional urban regions, and, secondly, that attention is also paid to the medium and small-sized urban regions. One impetus for this study comes from the ongoing change in Finnish regional policy: there have been clear signs (as well as pressure) to underline the role of urban regions in regional development, thus reflecting the assertions of urban regions as the locomotives of socio-economic development.

The development logic of urban regions has changed in the 1990s. For example, the urban regions strongly specialised in public sector services have declined, whereas those specialised in designing or manufacturing information technologies are prospering. In the current situation, information and know-how plays a central role and learning is paramount in the process of production. In terms of the pace of change, the urban regions in Finland are in new and dynamic situation: they are facing the same challenges and unpredictable laws of information and global economies concurrently with other European urban regions, whereas historically urbanisation and restructuring of industrialisation took place at least a decade later in Finland than in continental Europe. Simultaneously, power is increasingly shifting to international institutions and global processes, however, there are also signs of a new type of regional development in which the local and supraregional networking of urban regions - or more precisely, of the various actors of urban regions - is gaining momentum.

The basic framework for this study was developed in a previous study, Method of description for the urban network in Finland (Vartiainen 1995). Vartiainen's study has been used, firstly, to define the targets of urban policy (i.e. the significant functional urban regions in Finland) and, secondly, as a descriptive tool for urban development. A primary purpose of the Urban Network Study 1998 was to update and further develop the previous study. As a result of an improved data basis, the Urban Network Study 1998 has a more in-depth analysis of the preconditions of the informational and global economy (cf. Castells 1996). Consequently, the interpretation of the data, in comparison with previous study, is more explicit and policy-oriented, encompassing the requirements and the delineation of renewed urban policy. The main goal of the Urban Network Study 1998 was to identify regions that have a wider regional significance in the national urban system. Even though this study is carried out quantitatively, more qualitative indicators and variables are incorporated.

In the description of an urban network and in the definition of urban regions, the different functions of a city must be taken into account. Simultaneously, a city functions at the:

1. Local level: neighbourhood for citizens and daily social practices and quality of life indicators
2. Regional level: centre for its functional urban region
3. National level: node in the national urban system
4. Global level: location for international activities and a node of international urban systems

In this study, attention is paid to the second, third and fourth functions of the city, whereas the quality of life indicators, related to the first function of a city, are covered in other articles of this publication.

Traditionally, national-level regional planning has focussed on the third function of the city, as a national node. Due to globalisation, attention is increasingly placed on the fourth function, however, simultaneously, more attention is being paid to local resources and the functional (regional) operational environment. In other words, there is also an increasing tendency for localisation (covering the first and second aspects of the city). The catch-all term for the current trend is glocalisation which intertwines all four functions of the city (cf. Swyngedown 1992, Castells 1993).

Urban regions has become the most essential functional level of the Finnish urban and regional system. Regionalisation (cf. Järnegren & Ventura 1977, Ventura & Wärneryd 1983)(in Finnish seutuistuminen cf. Vartiainen 1992) began already in the 1970s and it is now considered as the most important structural change of the regional system. Originally, regionalisation referred to the growth of many-sided large and medium-sized urban regions and intra-regionally to the branch-out of population growth from the centre to the surrounding rural areas. In practise, this has meant that economic activities and jobs were concentrated in the centres of the urban regions but that population growth occurred in the surrounding municipalities. Thus, the core (the centre) of the urban region along with fringe areas (the adjacent municipalities) together have formed an increasingly interwoven and interactive functional region (cf. van der Laan 1998).

The urban region is the actual functional area of daily activities for its inhabitants and various organisations in the community. Thus, the functional urban region is the most fruitful level in measuring and monitoring regional development. The functional region is defined primarily according to labour and housing markets, though not without disregard of other features of co-operation in regional level. The most important quality of the functional region is its ability to exceed administrative boundaries. For statistical reasons, data analysis has often been based on administrative units (municipalities), but there has been an increasing effort to combine these smaller administrative units according to their functional orientation in order to reflect actual daily operational conditions of people, enterprises and other community organisations. As a result, the needs of economic activity and production of services can be more efficiently mapped, leading to more coherent strategic planning and, for example, rationalisation of public services.

Since 1994, there has been a more solid basis in the Finnish administrative structure for the urban regions owing to the fact that the Ministry of Interior introduced a "new" regional governance level between the municipality and county levels, called a district (seutukunta). These units were determined according to their travel-to-work-patterns and volumes as well as by an analysis of existing co-operation between municipalities. At the operational level, districts are utilised in targeting subsidies according to the disparities and the characteristics of them. In this classification, Finland was originally divided into 88 districts, each composed of several municipalities. In 1997, three districts were abolished (the current number is 85) and modifications were made to 14 districts. During the 1990s, this division has, along with the municipality and county-level division, occupied a central role for regional development policy implementation and statistical monitoring. However, the boundaries of these districts have, in some cases, been suited to political purposes. Furthermore, in some cases, county boundaries determine district boundaries, heightening the need to reassess travel-to-work-areas as a parallel concept of the territorial form of a functional region. The travel-to-work-area is an useful concept when comparing regions because it distinguishes the local (internal) structures of regions and the features of national development relatively well.

The Finnish definition of centre of travel-to-work-area, according to the method introduced by Statistic Finland, is following: a municipality is a travel-to-work-area centre if, firstly, no more than 20 per cent of its labour force are out-commuters, and, secondly, no more than 7.5 per cent of its labour force is commuting to a single municipality. If a municipality is not defined as a travel-to-work-area centre, it is attached to the municipality to which the largest portion of commuting is directed to. In many international studies, a commuting-flow threshold of either 15 or 20 per cent is used to determine whether a municipality is attached to a particular centre or not (for travel-to-work area definitions see e.g. Berry et al 1969, Smart 1974, Coombes et al 1979, 1982, Green & Owen 1990).

A core area may consist of several municipalities, i.e. it may be multinodal. According to a first definition, only the most pronounced employment cores are considered as core cities. There are three urban regions in Finland in which multiple strong travel-to-work-area centres can be identified within a single urban region. In these cases, core cities form a single interconnected core area. In the Helsinki urban region (in addition to the city of Helsinki), the cities of Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen are also centres of the urban region (together forming the Helsinki Metropolitan Area). Other such multiple-centre urban regions are Kemi-Tornio and Kouvola-Kuusankoski. According to a second definition, core city refers to an urban municipality according to the statistical grouping of Statistics Finland. Using this definition, there is, for example, a chain of core cities from Helsinki to Riihimäki falling within the Helsinki urban region. Significantly, the Helsinki urban region is the only two-tier urban region in Finland which possesses genuinely attached urban regions. The district-centres of Riihimäki and Lohja can be considered as subdominant centres of the wider Helsinki conurbation, whilst the district-centre of Porvoo can be classified as a near-by centre of the Helsinki urban region. This approach tracks the existing structure of labour and housing markets more accurately and, therefore, provides more relevant data for planning and decision-making.

In the following Table, the structure and variables of the Urban Network Study 1998 are introduced (Table 1). For this research, measuring the functional significance of urban regions was done by checking the variables in the strength column. The value for a particular urban region had to exceed a certain value (at least 1 per cent), based on national-level values: for example, if the population of Finland is 5.1 million inhabitants, the value required to fulfil the criterion of being a significant urban region, in terms of population, was 51 000 inhabitants. Of all the 85 districts in Finland, 35 fulfilled the criteria of being a significant urban region in terms of size and central place functions. The functional specialisation and preconditions for development (competence basis, cultural amenities and internationalisation) of chosen urban regions were analysed in Urban Network Study 1998 as well.

Table 1. The structure and basic variables of the Urban Network Study 1998

The urban regions were classified according to the volume and versatility of size and central place functions. The purpose of this classification was not to model a hierarchical system, but rather to describe any unique characteristics of urban regions and, thus, provide options for urban policy targeting. This process yielded the result that urban policies should be differentiated according to the role and characteristics of urban regions. For instance, large city policy should be implemented in the urban regions of Helsinki, Tampere and Turku. On the other end of the spectrum, there should be an urban policy for one-sided industrial urban regions. Similarly, there should also be an urban policy for middle-sized university regions. Functional spesialisation was measured by counting location quotient by share of labour force by sectors. The versatility and strength classification and functional specialisation is summarised in Map 1.

Map 1. Synthesis I. Functional basis of urban regions in Finland.

In the Urban Network Study 1998, the requirements of the informational and global economy - the preconditions for development - were analysed and compared to the current characteristics of development. The results of this section are presented in Table 2. In general, urban regions with good preconditions have enjoyed a positive trend in terms of development and vice versa. However, the number of prospering regions is small and all of them are fairly large university cities and/or foci of electronics designing or manufacturing.

Table 5. Syntehesis II. Preconditions and current characteristics of development of urban regions