Espoo: California Dreaming?

Abstract

Many of the most salient features and some of the emerging contradictions of, and inequalities associated with, the very rapid and very recent urbanisation that has taken place in Finland are distilled in the urban politics surrounding the growth of the municipality of Espoo which stands to the immediate west of Helsinki (Figure 7.1). Castells and Himanen (2002) have recounted the story of one apparently paradoxical progeny of Finland’s strong welfare state system — namely its coexistence with a highly internationally competitive information technology industry (Van den Berg et al., 2001). The story of the growth of Espoo, itself now one of the major concentrations of the information technology industry in Finland, reveals another paradox — namely the coexistence of localised American-style processes of urban development with a strong national welfare state framework.

This is like California. You need two cars. If you don’t have two cars you are in trouble.

Interview E8