Urban Commons in Helsinki's Suvilahti
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* Article / Chapter: Land Rent and the Struggle for the Urban Commons in Helsinki's Suvilahti Diy Skatepark.By Mika Hyötyläinen. In the book: The Political Economy of Land. Routledge, 2022.
Abstract
"The area of Suvilahti is part of the old industrial harbor of Kalasatama, one of Helsinki's largest urban development projects, a waterfront site where new high-rise towers, shopping center, hotels, residential real estate, offices, and high-profile cultural and event spaces have been planned, developed, or are under construction. This chapter introduces the concepts of land rent and value grabbing and discusses the concepts of commons in general and urban commons more specifically. It then presents the case of Suvilahti do-it-yourself, intended more as an illustration of the dialectic between land rent and the commons than an empirical case of the skatepark per se. Using this illustration, the chapter also discusses how the urban commons are abused for rent maximization purposes and rendered precarious by value grabbing. Before the brownfield development began in Kalasatama, the City designated it as an "arts neighborhood." The pioneer and frontier rhetoric of gentrification has always been strongly present in the redevelopment of Kalasatama."