Looking for the role of nature experiences in planning and decision making: a perspective from the Helsinki Metropolitan Area

Abstract

Public experiences of everyday environments influence well-being and quality of life and effective planning for these environments can promote social sustainability. This article discusses how residents' values related to urban nature areas are as important as ecological and technical issues and can inform urban nature planning and decision making. We first provide a generic review of residents' values and meanings regarding urban nature. We then outline practices for obtaining data on these values and meanings and present examples from the Helsinki (Finland) Metropolitan Area. The article concludes with a discussion of the challenges that nature experiences bring to planning and decision making and highlights why and how insights generated as a result of residents' participation should be included in the knowledge base for planning decisions.

Residents, customers or citizens? Tracing the idea of youthful participation in the context of administrative reforms in Finnish public administration

“…Second, it is difficult for normative steering and comprehensive-rationalist planning to accept the multilevel politics of planning and planning knowledge. Making the distinction between the inhabitants' subjective opinions and the educated planners' apolitical knowledge is still strongly visible in Finnish planning practices (Bäcklund, 2007;Bäcklund & Mäntysalo, 2010;Faehnle, Bäcklund & Tyrväinen, 2011;Puustinen, 2006). For example, Davoudi (2012, p. 434) sees that despite a lengthy and ongoing critical theoretical discussion concerning the nature of knowledge in planning, planning practices based on positivistic approaches are re-establishing their position in public administration, in part fostered by, for example, the climate change debate that emphasizes the importance of objective and apolitical data.…”

“…Second, participation also challenges the "evidence" of evidencebased planning by emphasizing the subjective experiences of inhabitants. However, inhabitants' experiential knowledge is often "translated" into objective, factual knowledge, for example by utilizing quantitative methods (see, for example, Bamberg, 2013;Brown & Kyttä, 2014;Faehnle et al, 2011). This way, the information produced by inhabitants is made to fit the idea of what is considered to be valid information in the evidence-based approach.…”

“…Previously, we have studied institutional and civic perspectives, policy rhetoric, strategies and related policy processes of administrative developments pertaining to urban planning, and participation in municipal, national and international contexts (e.g. Häkli, 1998Häkli, , 2009Bäcklund, 2007;Bäcklund & Mäntysalo, 2010;Faehnle et al, 2011;Kallio, 2014a, 2014b;Kallio, 2012aKallio, , 2012bKallio, , 2014Kallio & Häkli, 2011a, 2011b, 2014 forthcoming; Kanninen et al, 2013). The tool is a simplified theoretical construction of how the motive for arranging participation, the goal of participation and the role of the inhabitant are construed in different steering modes.…”

“…26 Cassia & Magno, 2011;Dalehite, 2008;Demsky & Nassehi, 2012;Faehnle et al, 2011;Freeman & Wass, 2010).…”

“…Second, civil servants' expressions of their experiences made it clear that irrespective of the objective of arranging participation, the practical challenge is to utilize the information thus gathered (also e.g. Bäcklund, 2007;Davoudi, 2012;Delvaux & Schoenaers, 2012;Demszky & Nassehi, 2012;Faehnle et. al, 2011).…”