SER2014 5.8.2014 Hanna Sarkkinen Reception hosted by the city of Oulu Welcome speech and some perspectives about the land use policies in Oulu I would like to warmly welcome you all, the participants of the 9 th European Conference of ecological restoration, to my home town Oulu and now to the reception hosted by the City of Oulu. We are very happy that the conference is held this year in Oulu and that we have the privilege to host you tonight here at our city hall. The city hall is our pride, it has been built 1886 and nowadays city uses it as place where city council and the city board meets, it also hosts the offices of our mayors and other leading public officers and here in the great hall we welcome around hundred groups to the city every year. I have understood that this is the northernmost location that the conference has ever been organized. Even though you may not believe it today when you look at the temperature and whether outside! Oulu considers itself as a capital of northern Skandinavia. Oulu is a biggest city in the northernmost Scandinavia with its 194 000 inhabitants. Even though the economic situation in Finland and in Oulu is currently not very good due to the European economic crisis and the fall of Nokia, we believe that the future is here in Oulu. We have a very young age structure, average age of the inhabitants being 36, and the people in Oulu are highly educated. We also believe that the economic situation will get better and we have belief in our traditional economic sectors such as wood and paper industry, chemical industry and ict-industry and we hope that we will also have new business and jobs from health tech, environmental technology, services and tourism. Europe and the world is looking more and more to north because of the natural resources and logistical chains. The artic rush creates possibilities for us living in the northern parts of Europe, but we have to of course remember the vulnerability of the arctic nature also.
But now, let me introduce myself. My name is Hanna Sarkkinen, I am a member of city council and the chairperson of the urban planning committee. The urban planning committee is a democratic decision making body under the city council, which is in responsible of city planning, land use and traffic in the city of Oulu. I have the honor to be tonight the main host at this reception and to give a welcome speech and a short presentation to the topics of land use and land use policies in Oulu especially in the view of sustainability, climate change and biodiversity. I have understood, that the land use is one of the topics in your conference so it may be interesting to know something about these topics in Oulu. Oulu has recently undergone a huge municipality transformation. 5 before independent municipalities joined together as a one new municipality in the beginning of 2013. The area of the town grew wastly when you compare it to the size of the old town of Oulu, the surface area of Oulu is now 3 880 km². In the perspective of land use 5 municipalities coming together as a one was a good thing, I believe. In Finland municipalities are in responsible of the communal planning and land use issues. In the growing urban areas the boundaries of municipalities often create problems to the reasonable and sustainable land use, because all municipalities only look things at their own perspective and the common interest and the questions of ecological sustainability might be forgotten when municipalities try to maximize their economical outcome in short term. Of course there are many difficulties when many municipalities come together but when you look at the questions of land use, I believe that it is a good thing that we managed to renew our municipality structures in the Oulu region. In fact, Finnish national government has been striving for a big municipality structure renewal in the whole country. One reason for this is the questions of land use, especially in the growing urban regions. When the municipality structure is shattered and there exists a lot of small independent municipalities in the same economical region which are independent in their land use, the land use in the whole region may become un-efficient, un-ecological and even un-economical. Every independent municipality wants to build their own shopping mall, and to build huge separate houses to attract the wealthiest inhabitants and nobody wants to
fund public transportation or low-budget rental housing for the poor. Nobody looks at the big picture. Also in small municipalities the interests of a few influential landowners or builders may have unhealthy and big influence over the public interest and the urban planning. My argument is, that bigger units have better opportunities and possibilities and incentives to do more sustainable land use policies and urban structure. I don t say, that they will always do so, but they have better possibilities to do so. That s why I am glad that in our region we succeeded in doing the new and bigger municipality and I also hope, that renewal of municipal structures also succeeds in other urban areas. I believe that urban planning and the big picture of land use should be decided in units that are big enough to ensure the sustainable land use and the common interest. Or at least we need co-operation between municipalities in the questions of land use to ensure the common interest and the eco-friendliness of urban planning. In Oulu the urban structure is quite loose. Our biggest challenge is to dense the urban structure and to channel the new inhabitants and buildings to inside of the existing community structure. This is economically important question, because it costs a lot to provide services and build new infrastructure to the people who live loosely shattered around a big area. But it is also ecological issue, because people living loosely shattered around means that public transportation, cycling and walking are not attractive options for transportation compared to the private cars. Public transportation and muscle transportation work best at more dense populated areas. Also if people live loosely around the big area, there is less pristine nature left for the other life forms to live in. In Oulu, big portion of people live loosely in big separate houses. It creates challenges for sustainable land use and especially for sustainable traffic policies. Another challenge is the question of locating the commercial services. In Finland the trend has been that the commercial actors want to build shops and malls outside the centers, and we have seen the same trend also in Oulu. This trend of course scatters the urban structure and creates more needs for private cars. This is not sustainable trend in my perspective.
There is however different ideas in the political field about the need to dense the city structure and about the wanted proportion of new separate housing compared to the amount of apartment buildings. Also the need to regulate the land use of commercial actors in order to ensure sustainable land use greates different political opinions. Also the necessity to prioritize public transportation, cycling and walking over the private cars is not something taken for granted in every body s mind. Despite of the differences in the political views about the land use, the new overall community planning scheme for Oulu, which is currently under work and which reaches to the year 2020, contains the main idea to dense the urban structure of Oulu. Because of the issues of climate change and declining of global resources, sustainability and eco-friendliness are important topics in the scheme. However is to been seen, will the topics actually mean anything in practice or will the future be business as usual when it comes the community planning and land use. In the new land use scheme there is also the idea of better exploiting the sea and the three rivers banks for housing, tourism and leisure activities. This is all fine, but it of course creates some contradiction with the natural values because the banks and waterfronts are important habitats for many species, especially birds. So the question and challenge rises, how much is it acceptable to exploit banks and beaches for human needs and how much should be left untouched? How can we use our sea and river banks in sustainable fashion? Also when we have the goal of more dense community structure the question of inhabitants experience about the quality and comfort of the built environment rises questions. The question is, how dense is too dense when you consider the comfort in living and how to build high density living environments that are also esthetically pleasing and comfortable to live. The question of urban nature also rises, because parks and left-over lands inside the community structure are important for the inhabitants but are often also potential building sites. In Oulu we have been exploiting old industrial lands for new housing, we have been building for old left-over lands and also in some city woods. Sometimes small parks have also been sacrificed for the needs of housing. We face the same question as other growing urban areas: how to balance the quality and comfort of the built surroundings with the need to provide housing for the growing population? How
much should we sacrifice the urban nature for the needs of housing and how can we satisfy the need to densify the community structure and build new housing without destroying the quality of life and also other species that live side by side of humans in urban nature? As I have already told you, the new city of Oulu has a vast area and yet not that much inhabitants. That means that we have a lot of forest and wetland areas as well as agricultural area. Actually only minority of the city is urban area. Mostly our nature is not untouched by people but there are some impressive and biologically valuable areas and sights in Oulu. One of the most extensive and important area is the city own woods in Sanginjoki. There has been many attemps to get the Sanginjoki-forest area a status as a natural conservation area, but unfortunately there has not been political consensus for it. Last time we had a vote about the conservation issue two months ago in June, but the conservation project lost by one vote in the city council. I believe that by protecting and conserving forest, swamps and wetlands near the urban areas we can enhance the biodiversity but also create nice places for the inhabitants to relax and enjoy and learn about the nature. Nature and nature conservation areas can also be tourist attractions for the region if they are well branded and advertised. I have told you about some goals and challenges and future plans that we have in Oulu regarding the sustainable land use policies. I would also like to tell you some positive things about the land use policies in Oulu from different perspective. Oulu is seen in Finland as an example of a good land use policy when it comes to the price of housing and sufficient amount of housing for inhabitants. Even though Oulu is a growing city our housing prices and rents are quite reasonable, and that is partially to be thanked for our land use policies. In Oulu, city buys and owns a lot of land. After buying city makes the schemes for building and then sells or rents the land for builders. This policy makes sure that there is always enough land to build for the needs of housing and business. And because there is enough supply, the price of houses, rents and living does not rise too high. Reasonable prized housing is the one the biggest attraction factor for the city. By owning the land the city can also better guide the development of community structure and also have power to effect the eco-friendliness of the urban structure.
One example of the city-led development projects in Oulu is the ongoing planning and building of the new residential area for 20 000 inhabitants called, area called Hiukkavaara, which is situated just 5-7 kilometres from the center to the east. The new area will have separate housing, attached housing, appartment buildings, shops and offices. The planning of the Hiukkavaara-area is interesting also in the land-use point of view. Before planning the lands of the area were bought to the city, which enabled big overall planning and goal-setting for the project and building schemes. The main idea for the planning was chosen to be the modern winter city. As you may know, the winter is quite long and cold here, so the winter was chosen as a main theme. The theme is visible in all of the planning: building and roads are planned so that the winter breeze would not be too hard for the pedestrians and there is enough space for the snow so that it doesn t have to be moved outside the area. There is also a lot possibilities for winter sports. Awareness about the global warming is also present in all of the planning. The streets were planned so that the co2 emissions will be minimized and the whole area is biking and walking friendly and the needs of public transportation were also being taken account already in the planning. Awareness about the global warming is also seen in the eco-quarters of Hiukkavaara. When giving away the properties in the specified eco-quarters city demands that the buildings are built in energyefficient, material-saving manner. The example of Hiukkavaara shows us, that cities and urban planners can have a big effect in the carbon footprint and ecological footprint of residents and the whole city, especially when planning new areas. As I previously described, it is harder to transform old urban structures to the new eco-friendly requirements without sacrificing the comfort of living. Yet I don t believe that it is impossible. With a good planning the comfort and the quality of living doesn t have to be sacrificed when building the eco-friendly cities. But that is enough about the topics of land use. I am sure that you are all very eager to get to the best point of evening, which is of course eating, drinking and socialising with your colleagues. Before that I would also like to introduce you some leading politicians and public servants in Oulu, who are with me here as the co-hosts of this evening
Veikko Ervasti, member of the city council and city board, he has done a long political career in communal politics of Oulu and has been dealing a lot of environmental issues in his political career. Then some younger politicians. Marianne Isola who is the vice-chair of the urban planning committee. And Hilkka Haaga who is a member of city board. And then the vice mayor of the city Pia Rantala-Korhonen I hope that you will come to talk with us if you have any more questions or some comments. On behalf of the city of Oulu and the hosts I wish you a fruitful conference, have a good stay in Oulu, enjoy the city and the nice weather, and I hope that many of you will also return some day to Oulu! But now let us have a nice and tasteful evening! Thank you and welcome!