Recipes for Systemic Change - Helsinki Design Lab

D2 – The Built EnvironmentD2.1 Land UseFinland is a sparsely populated country were most Finns live near thecoasts or in a few urban centres in the interior of the country. For much ofFinland's history, its population has lived in small, thinly distributed settlements.The structural shift during the middle of the twentieth century froman agrarian to industrial economy reorganised this settlement pattern, andFinland slowly began to urbanise. Since the 1950's Finland's population hascoalesced in the southern and western regions along the coast, near riversand inland lakes. The north and east of Finland, especially north ofthe Arctic Circle gradually became depopulated as residents moved towardcentres of economic activity.The Finnish migration toward the cities continues. In 1960, 56% of thepopulation lived in built-up areas that equaled about 1.6% of Finland's totalland area. By 2008, almost 84% of the population lived in these built-upareas, a 50% increase. Finland's cities have also grown in area by 50% toaccommodate their new residents, suggesting that densification has notbeen the key mechanism for housing delivery.A closer analysis reveals that while Finns are moving toward the cities,they are settling in the expanding suburban periphery. The Helsinki metropolitanregion is the epicentre of this suburbanization. Since the 1960's,the population of Helsinki has increased by about 27% while neighbouringEspoo has increased by over 325%. Despite Espoo's explosive growth, Helsinki'sdensity is still nearly 3.5 times that of Espoo.This relatively recent trend is common to all of Finland's largest cities.During the deep recession of the early 1990's, cities began to grow at afaster rate than the suburbs. Finland's rapid return to economic prosperitysparked a suburban population growth rate that has exceeded growth in theurban cores. In spite of this trend, urban density has again begun to slowlyincrease, after the decline of the 1980's.D2.2 Building StockOf the total heated building area in Finland in 2008, almost half wascomposed of residential and nearly forty percent was office and commercialspace. Of the residential share, there were 1.1 million detached houses,over 380,000 attached houses, and over 1.2 million dwellings in apartmentblocks. Only 10% of Finland's housing was built before 1940. Since 1970, thenumber of dwellings has increased by over 93%, most of which occurredbetween the 1970 and 1990.225