Rescaling and urban-regional restructuring in Finland and in the Helsinki region

Abstract

While Finland has traditionally been a country where major political forces have put important emphasis on balancing the regional structure and supporting the peripheral regions, development since the 1990s has been characterised by growing regional differences and increasing dominance of centralising tendencies. In the first decade of the new millennium, these tendencies have further intensified. This article analyses the processes, dynamics and underlying rationalities of this state restructuring and state spatial transformation in Finland and in the Helsinki region, the capital area of the country. The developments in Finland are placed in broader international context as they are analysed in relation to recent debates on state rescaling. The validity of some of the core arguments presented in these debates is examined in the Finnish context. The case of the Helsinki region and Finland is also set into a Nordic perspective by presenting a comparison of rescaling tendencies in the Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark and Norway). The findings are mixed, as there are both elements supporting the rescaling thesis and clear deviations from the core arguments.

Regional governance in second-tier city-regions in Sweden: a multi-scalar approach to institutional change

“…This illustrates the importance of regional conditions for recombination, and which supports the arguments that development policy needs to be place based (Barca et al, 2012). It also explains why the present model of decentralized regional governance makes it difficult for slow-growing regions to mobilize resources to achieve development (Crescenzi & Giua, 2016) and highlights how regional differences are an inherent aspect of such regional development policy (Pelkonen, 2016). This suggest an approach that balances assumption about the importance of resources to be generated from the uniqueness of regions with a recognition of the challenges derived from the regionally uneven effects of international and global economic and industrial restructuring.…”

“…The upscaling of regional policy includes movements from the national to the supranational (e.g., European Union -EU) scale and from the local to the regional scale. Downscaling involves movements from national to various subnational scales (Pelkonen, 2016). Rescaling should not be misapprehended as describing 'pure' movements between scales, because it also involves the reorganization of scalar relations for shared responsibilities (Brenner, 2003).…”

“…The formation of regions means, in brief, the extension of county councils' responsibilities for healthcare and public transport to include tasks for regional policy interventions, for which innovation policy and industrial development policy are important elements. The inauguration of regions reflects the rescaling of regional policy interventions, which includes upscaling from the national to the EU level and from the municipal to the regional level and downscaling from the national to the regional level (Jonas & Moisio, 2018;Pelkonen, 2016). The downscaling of regional development policy from the national to the regional level is evident in our empirical material through the way in which tasks are being moved to regions from the county administrative boards, which are offices of the national government covering the territories of regions.…”

“…The national context of Sweden represents an example of a unitary state and a Nordic country with a strong welfare tradition. This is an important background conditioning the particular ways in which the decentralization of policy interventions and rescaling is developing (Pelkonen, 2016), with effects on how subnational governance institutions are formed. The subnational governance institutions studied in this article are organized through local authorities (the local industry office), regional political bodies (the regional development office) and triple-helix constellations (science parks) across three second-tier city-regions in Sweden.…”

Urban Sustainability and the SDGs: A Nordic Perspective and Opportunity for Integration

“…Governance has been recognized as part of the Nordic model of urban sustainability, where cities have an active and crucial role [50]. However, reflecting the notion of cities as actors competing for taxpayers and businesses, short-term economic interests in the municipal decision-making have sometimes challenged this tradition [40,51].…”