Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Tilburg University, Manchester Metropolitan University, Eesti Kunstiakadeemia 13 Why Townhouses? A Comparative Study of Emerging Housing Concepts in Helsinki and Stockholm Timo Hämäläinen – MA in European Urban Cultures Supervisor: Prof. Panu Lehtovuori Second Reader: Vrije Universiteit Brussel
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Why Townhouses? A Comparative Study of Emerging Housing Concepts in Helsinki and Stockholm
Master's thesis - MA in European Urban Cultures (POLIS).
Helsinki and Stockholm have witnessed the emergence of townhouses in their urban landscapes during the past decade or so. This building type is a common way of living in Central Europe and older North American cities, but it hasn’t been adopted in the Nordic capitals. Until recently. Why is that? The 21st century has brought about a newly found interest in urban living concepts and neighborhoods as concerns over climate change force people to consider more compact living, and the nuclear family of the 20th century has broken down into a diverse crowd of individuals working in information industries.
This thesis applies a frame analysis to discover how the new townhouses in Helsinki and Stockholm are conceptualized. A number of expert interviews and secondary data research showed that the emergences of townhouses are not similar processes in the two cities and only loosely related to changing user needs. In both cities townhouses are linked to desires to create urban environments, but in Helsinki they simultaneously are sold as detached single-family homes to lure families into staying in Helsinki instead of the suburbs. In Stockholm townhouses on the other hand seem to contribute to attracting urbanites from across the globe.
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Transcript
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Tilburg University, Manchester Metropolitan University, Eesti Kunstiakadeemia
13
Why Townhouses? A Comparative Study of Emerging Housing
Concepts in Helsinki and Stockholm
Timo Hämäläinen – MA in European Urban Cultures
Supervisor: Prof. Panu Lehtovuori
Second Reader: Vrije Universiteit Brussel
1
Preface
Back in 2012 when I was working before my study break, one of my tasks was to organize a
seminar about townhouse development. The city of Helsinki had recently gotten serious about
promoting this building type and my office got involved in helping out in this effort by
facilitating knowledge exchange. We quickly learned that one specific interest in this context
was to learn from foreign examples and especially from similar planning contexts. Great, we
thought, and decided to invite a foreign speaker.
But from where? Stockholm and Sweden are always considered a safe bet not only for
societal similarity but also city-wise for Helsinki. And bingo, a townhouse development in the
suburbs of Stockholm had just won a newspaper-led “building of the year” award. The
architect also turned out to be interested in the idea and promised to come introduce his
townhouse concept. We then moved on to working with other things, but I later learned that it
was actually quite impossible to find much more information on townhouses in Stockholm.
And when the seminar eventually took place, I learned that no one knew Helsinki’s
townhouse ambitions on the other side of the Baltic Sea.
Soon afterwards I started my POLIS studies, but could not forget about townhouses in the
Nordic capitals. Finally I decided to turn this curiosity into my thesis project. I wanted to
know what is going on with this townhouse development and in the process of doing so I
could help build useful knowledge and hopefully inspire some further inquiries into the topic.
I want to thank Professor Panu Lehtovuori for his supervision, and all the rest of the POLIS
faculty for their support and the new things I’ve learned.
Thank you also POLIS student colleagues 2012/2013, it wouldn’t of have been the same
without you!
Find me on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/timohamalainen1
2.3.3. Community & Planning for Urbanity .............................................................................................. 23
2.4.5. Cost & the Economics of Urban Development ............................................................................... 28
2.5. Helsinki & Stockholm – The Local Contexts for Townhouse Development ............ 31
2.5.1. Points of Departure and Terminology ................................................................................................. 32
2.5.2. Conservation in Context ...................................................................................................................... 35
2.5.3. Choice in Context ................................................................................................................................ 37
2.5.4. Community in Context ........................................................................................................................ 40
2.5.5. Cost in Context ................................................................................................................................ 41
2.6. Conceptual Framework and Research Questions ...................................................... 44
3. Design and Method ....................................................................................................... 45
4.1.3. Community ...................................................................................................................................... 60
A. Interviews and Item list ................................................................................................. 92
B. Systematically examined journals, magazines and newspapers.................................... 93
Timo Hämäläinen – MA in European Urban Cultures
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Abstract
Helsinki and Stockholm have witnessed the emergence of townhouses in their urban
landscapes during the past decade or so. This building type is a common way of living in
Central Europe and older North American cities, but it hasn’t been adopted in the Nordic
capitals. Until recently. Why is that? The 21st century has brought about a newly found
interest in urban living concepts and neighborhoods as concerns over climate change force
people to consider more compact living, and the nuclear family of the 20th
century has broken
down into a diverse crowd of individuals working in information industries.
The study applied a frame analysis to discover how the new townhouses in Helsinki and
Stockholm are conceptualized. A number of expert interviews and secondary data research
showed that the emergences of townhouses are not similar processes in the two cities and only
loosely related to changing user needs. In both cities townhouses are linked to desires to
create urban environments, but in Helsinki they simultaneously are sold as detached single-
family homes to lure families into staying in Helsinki instead of the suburbs. In Stockholm
townhouses on the other hand seem to contribute to attracting urbanites from across the globe.
5
1. Introduction
The “townhouse” is a building type with a long history and a distinctive yet metamorphous
character. Its defining architectural qualities are a rectangular long and narrow footprint; a
vertically oriented circulation on multiple stories; and wall-to-wall attachment on one or both
sides of each housing unit (Friedman 2012: 1). Variations of townhouses are found across the
globe and different cultures (Friedman 2012), and they have generally endured over centuries
for two main reasons: their land-use efficiency and adaptability. Locations that one might
associate these buildings with are for example New York with its “brownstones”, the
Netherlands and its townhouse-lined canals or the endless rows of “terraces” in just about any
city in Great Britain.
For much of the post-WWII period townhouse development has however been in considerable
decline due to suburbanization, modern apartment building development, and changes in
planning ideologies and practice (Friedman 2012: 36). But the turn of the millennium has
witnessed a change to this trend and the policies, planning ideals, individualization and
architectural trends of the new century have triggered an “urban renaissance” and
consequently new forms of attached housing - often referred to as townhouses - have emerged
into the urban planning debates and landscapes in Western cities.
The Nordic capitals of Helsinki and Stockholm have followed suit and townhouses have
emerged to the urban landscapes of the cities during the past decade or so. In Helsinki this has
happened through a conscious policy from the City Planning Department whereas in
Stockholm it has occurred largely independent of policy. However, what makes this
development of events particularly interesting is that the townhouse building type has to a
large extent never characterized urban development in the cities (Manninen & Holopainen
2006). On the contrary, both cities consist dominantly of apartment buildings. Principal
concerns that have characterized the discussions revolving around these new townhouses are
that how do they fit into the local contexts and how will they succeed in the housing markets
(e.g. Sanaksenaho 2013)? This is the case especially in Helsinki where there has thus far been
limited success in the materialization of townhouses despite gracious land allocation
(Jalkanen et al. 2012).
Timo Hämäläinen – MA in European Urban Cultures
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Very little research has been done on the topic of modern-day townhouses internationally, in
the case cities, and especially from a comparative point of view. In Helsinki, previous studies
have focused on summarizing experiences from the development processes of the first
materialized townhouse projects from the administration’s point of view (Fogelholm 2003;
Helsingin kaupunki 2005); and from the residents’ point of view (Hasu 2010); examining
starting points for townhouse development from the Helsinki City Planning Department’s
point of view (Manninen & Holopainen 2006; Jalkanen et al. 2012), and synthetizing the
discussions from a series of professional workshops on townhouse development (Mälkki
2010). Mälkki’s (2010) conclusion is that the townhouse has potential in offering individual
small-scale living in a good location and by urban services.
In Stockholm, and Sweden altogether, the topic has received much less attention. The only
study retrieved in the scope of this thesis, is another master’s thesis exploring the possibility
of including small-scale actors and end-users in the development processes of townhouses
(Guterstam 2011). Thereby shedding light into the issue of townhouse development in
Helsinki and Stockholm is informative not only for further inquiries into the topic, but also for
all actors engaged in townhouse development in the two cities.
With that being said, the aim of this thesis is directed at discovering and comparing 1) how
townhouses are conceptualized in urban policy and planning in Helsinki and Stockholm, and
2) how these ideas have been materialized in practice.
The study is organized into three main parts:
A) The examination of townhouses begins with a theoretical background chapter (chapter 2).
It commences by outlining defining qualities of townhouses, and continues by positioning
townhouse development within a continuum of housing and urban development forces which
shape contemporary attitudes and development practice. The following chapter discusses
influences driving housing and urban development in contemporary times and places
townhouses within this context based on a literature review. And finally, the specific contexts
of the Helsinki and Stockholm cases are introduced.
B) The second part of the study introduces the research methodology (chapter 3). This
research has been conducted by using frame analysis, which is a research method that is
principally concerned with dissecting how an issue is defined and problematized, and the
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effect that this has on the broader discussion of the issue (Hope 2010: 1). The basic idea is
that these frames or cognitive schemes help people in identifying “what is going on” in a
given situation, and more importantly they also act as mental shortcuts when communicating
the essentials of that particular situation. This thesis will use frame analysis in an instrumental
manner to highlight “what is going on” with townhouses in the two cities and lay the ground
for a comparative analysis.
C) The third part of the thesis consists of the comparative analyzes (chapter 4). Firstly the
issues are made salient in the discourse surrounding townhouse development are compared
and contrasted. Secondly, select materialized townhouse projects in both cities are compared
and reflected upon.
Finally, the study ends with concluding remarks (chapter 5).
Timo Hämäläinen – MA in European Urban Cultures
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2. Theoretical Background
2.1. Townhouses – Defining Qualities and Evolutions
The “townhouse” is a building type with a long history and a distinctive yet metamorphous
character. Variations of the building type are found across the globe and different cultures
(Friedman 2012: viii), but this study limits the study of townhouses to its Western context.
The name “townhouse” in itself is obviously from the English-speaking tradition and
specifically used in North America. The roots of the name however lie in Europe and the
British nobility who, following the intense urbanization process triggered by the Industrial
Revolution, sought to reside in several locations for the increasingly grim circumstances in
cities. Hence their city residence was referred to as the “town house” and thus the opposite of
their “country house” (Manninen & Holopainen 2006: 9; Friedman 2012). Besides calling it a
“townhouse” in English, this particular building concept is often also referred to as the
“terraced house” (UK), “row house”, or “town house”. For the sake of clarity, the term
“townhouse” will be used throughout this study, irrespective of the cultural context of the
building type.
Historically, the townhouse concept originates from Ancient Roman urban tradition
(Friedman 2012), but has thereafter evolved in different cultural strands. The most influential
ones were the urban contexts from medieval times to the 19th
-century on the British Isles, and
most notably London, in France and Paris, and in the Netherlands (Manninen & Holopainen
2006; Friedman 2012). Colonial expansion diffused townhouses to for example North
America where different influences, especially the Dutch and British ones, got blended into a
distinct cultural strand on the East Coast (Manninen & Holopainen 2006: 11). In New York,
these buildings are now known as “brownstones” and characterized by a set of steps (a stoop)
which elevate the door slightly from the street level (picture 1.). But overall, there are also
differences within the North American townhouse context with distinct types found in e.g.
San Francisco and Canadian cities (Vernez Moudon 1989; Macdonald 2005).
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Picture 1. New York ”Brownstones”.
According to Manninen & Holopainen (2006: 12), townhouse-like housing was also common
in the then urbanized areas of the Nordic countries – including Stockholm but not the still
small town Helsinki - up until the mid-18th
century until new urban development ideologies
from Paris and Berlin stressing the age of industrialization and respective modernization of
cities took over (Hårsman & Wijmark 2013: 3-10).
In physical terms, the townhouse has three defining architectural characteristics: a rectangular
long and narrow footprint; a vertically oriented circulation on multiple stories; and wall-to-
wall attachment on one or both sides of each housing unit (Friedman 2012: 1). These defining
qualities stem from history and the accustomed way of building due to scarcity of available
land to build on within city walls (ibid.). Friedman (2012: 4) sets the historical realm of most
townhouses in horizontal and vertical terms within the width of 4.3 to 6.1 meters and not
taller than four stories. If taller, the building type is likely to lose its ground-related qualities
of easy access and human scale.
Timo Hämäläinen – MA in European Urban Cultures
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The most ubiquitous volumetric arrangement that define townhouse structures are single
housing units lined up in horizontal rows, but the townhouse can be vertically subdivided to
comprise of more than one housing unit as well (Friedman 2012). One slice or a row with two
housing units is called a duplex and with three housing units a triplex. A stuck townhouse on
the other hand refers to two-story housing units on top of each other (Friedman 2012: 4).
Besides being lined up in horizontal rows, townhouses can also be arranged back-to-back
(two rows with backs facing each other) or front-to-back (a reverse layout that is used e.g. on
slopes to enable views) (Pfeifer & Brauneck 2008: 12).
The physical dimensions of each townhouse structure are determined by how its interior (i.e.
rooms and functions) are arranged. According to Gorlin (1999, cit. Friedman 2012) it is
however not useful to try to conceptualize the interiors of the townhouse in a comprehensive
manner other than the structures ability to adapt to the changing needs of their users, because
a core quality that has historically defined townhouses is that they are “a typology of
enormous restrictions, and therefore a laboratory of creative possibilities within a very
limited realm” (p. 4). Similarly, in Binney’s (1998) examination of the history of townhouses
until recent times, he defines them as “infinitely adaptable” (p.11) due to constant discoveries
of new innovations in using the limited realm. Friedman (2012: 43) however asserts that
adaptability is particularly enhanced when the circulation of a townhouse is centrally placed
and enclosed, because this organization enables an easy transformation of a single-family
dwelling to two or three independent housing units. Multi-functionality is also advanced if the
ground floor is designed to be potentially used as a commercial or office space (Friedman
2012: 43).
Unlike apartment living, where a number of occupants share the main door, exterior space and
hallway, townhouses offer independence and privacy with individual entrances to each
housing unit. The volumetric arrangement of a townhouse (i.e. single- or multi-family) will
determine the number of entrances a given building will have (Friedman 2012: 45), but they
are generally, but not always, placed on the front side of the house and at street level (ibid.).
The configuration of the entrance can be made to either emphasize the relationship between
the house and the street in front of it by for example a porch, or the transition between the
private realm of the home and the public realm of the street by a recession or a small garden
which help create a semi-public space (Friedman 2012: 47).
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Townhouses typically also offer access to the back of the structure, which may contain an
outdoor private space in the form of a small yard, garden or patio (Friedman 2012: 47). In
multi-housing unit structures these can accordingly be multiple and come in the form of
terraces or balconies in the higher stories (Visanti 2013). The narrower a townhouse gets, the
more important the design of the front and back becomes to maintain the qualities of
independency and privacy (Friedman 2012: 45).
Townhouse housing units or communities can also have various forms of tenure, including
freehold (you own your housing unit and lot), co-ownership (shared ownership of housing
units and lots by residents) and condominium (individual ownership of housing unit, shared
ownership of lots and open spaces) (Friedman 2012: 5).
The forms of tenure are often linked to the ways of constructing townhouses but not defined
by them. Townhouses can be constructed using three different approaches: each housing unit
individually by a private person, a group of units together by a group of private people, or the
entire row mass-produced at once by a construction company. In technical terms, the structure
can be constructed on site or assembled using prefabricated modules.
The idea of the freehold townhouse structure with a private owner who is also its occupant
has its roots in the urban dwelling culture of the noble and bourgeois. These prototypes could
take the form of large or small structures depending on the owner’s wealth and desires
(Stimmann 2011: 34).
The condominium-associated idea to build townhouses in full rows and not slice by slice,
alternately emerged when speculative building took off in 16th
-centiry London in and
gradually diffused to elsewhere on the British Isles. In a combination of the time’s British
housing preferences, social status relationships, and the economic logic of speculative
building, homes started to be standardly constructed in rows of repetitive housing units and on
a single lot (Muthesius 1982: 3).
In more recent times, attached housing has also been produced through group-building which
incorporates elements from both of the previously mentioned traditional methods of
constructing townhouses. Group-building, also elsewhere conceptualized as co-housing or
Baugemeinschaft, is essentially an approach to multi-housing unit construction where the
inhabitants co-operatively acquire land for, finance and manage – with their own hands or e.g.
Timo Hämäläinen – MA in European Urban Cultures
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with the help of a small-scale construction enterprise - the construction of a building or group
of buildings as opposed to buying a ready-made product from the construction companies.
This approach is strongly linked to the co-ownership form of tenure (Rantama 2008).
According to Stimmann (2011: 34), townhouses have never been fixed to any specific
architectural idiom regardless of their production method. However, the architectural
prototype which horizontally lines up two to three windows per floor, which characterizes
many existing townhouses, has generally emerged in medieval times and established itself
during later periods of European urban expansion (ibid.). However, the method of
construction does have an impact on the level of variation between the façade architecture of
townhouse units in a row or neighborhood. Mass-produced townhouses are generally more
likely to be repetitive and less flexible for customization than privately built ones (Visanti
2013).
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2.2. From Townhouses to Row Houses – The 20th Century Legacy for
Housing Development
As the historical transformations in the conceptualization of townhouses suggests, townhouse
development doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Contemporary townhouses therefore need to be
examined in the light of underlying housing and urban development forces that have shaped
attitudes and the pattern of housing during the 20th
century.
According to Choay (1969), there are two fundamental philosophical perceptions of urbanity
and urban life that encompass most planning questions in modern times. Choay (1969)
identifies these as the progressist approach which values the ideals of modernization, the
industrial society, and functionalism as the driving forces of urban planning; and the
culturalist approach which in contrast emphasizes the importance of tradition and cultural
integrity.
Defined in the context of planning, they represent two contradictory views of the "proper"
spatial organization of cities. In short, at odds are those who value the principles of modernist
urban planning over traditional ones and vice versa. For the scope of this thesis, these two will
be introduced as attempts to create qualitatively different environments from each other.
20th
-century urban planning has been dominantly characterized by the progressist approach to
urban living (Taylor 1998). For the townhouse, this has meant a decline in its construction
from the 1920’s onwards as suburban living began to attract people to migrate out of the city.
Timo Hämäläinen – MA in European Urban Cultures
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2.2.1. Urban Utopias and the “Suburban Conspiracy”
Modernist urban planning has its roots in the Modern movement and visionary utopian
theorists who were able to capture and reproduce the “soul” of modernism in their city models
which sought to cure the ills of the Industrial City.
Modernism as an idea has its roots in enlightenment-thinking which views man as an
educated and civilized agent who can control nature, his or her destiny and ultimately the
course of society through science. And as superstition was gradually rejected and traded for
reason during the 17th
and 18th
centuries, progress became a key driver of society and the
embracement of science set technological innovation high on the agenda of mankind (Porter
2001).
This new worldview of progress however eventually materialized as the Industrial City, which
expanded in a society with little regulation – planning or environmental-wise. Factories and
other industrial facilities were often situated in close proximity to residential areas and public
places due to limitations in the era’s transportation technology. Gradually throughout the 19th
century the Industrial City evolved into a place of such pollution and poor living conditions
that something had to be done. Consequently, new ideas for organizing the city started to
emerge (Taylor 1998).
One of the most influential ones was Ebenezer Howard’s “Garden City” model. Howard was
inspired by the increasing anti-urban rhetoric of the time and modeled his Garden City
concept on the foundation of decentralization. He envisioned a series of compact and
relatively high-density satellite cities around a given city’s core which would be inter-
connected with rail transit and buffered by generous green space (Lang 1999; Parker 2004).
Another key influencer for the modernist urban planning doctrine was Le Corbusier and his
Radiant City concept from 1924. Le Corbusier was inspired by the Garden City model, but he
embraced the emerging artistic expression and aesthetic of the modernist movement (Bauman
1998; Taylor 1998). The Radiant City model was fundamentally a set of large high-density
skyscrapers, which were surrounded by vast areas of green space for public amenity. The
towers in the city center were for the elite and business functions, and these were separated
from regular apartment building blocks and industrial areas. Transportation was based on the
use of automobiles and separated from elevated pedestrian zones. Modernist progressive
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thinking in the Radiant City was not only expressed by modern, functionalist, architecture,
building materials and techniques, but it rejected the traditional city completely. Le Corbusier
suggested that any existing urban fabric should be demolished and replaced by his
skyscrapers. Furthermore, he associated the buildings with machines paving the way for
technocratic thinking into construction and living. Houses and buildings became to be
understood as standardized industrial products rather than pieces of art (Bauman 1998; Taylor
1998). According to Taylor (1998: p. 25), the two guiding principles of Le Corbusier were
“the plan must rule” and “disappearance of the street”. The latter principle ultimately led to
the abandonment of the street as the dominant organizing principle of urban form (Dunnett
2000).
Parallel to these and other similar visions for a better urban future, urban planning also started
to form as a profession. This was discussed and conceptualized for example during Congrès
Internationaux d'Architecture Modern (CIAM - International Congress of Modern
Architecture) congresses – a series of high-profile urban thinkers’ meetings between 1928 and
1959 (Mumford 2000). In this process ideas from different urban visions and ideals got mixed
and gradually institutionalized into the newly found profession of urban planning. The most
significant CIAM meeting was held in 1933 in Athens, where the congress agreed on a set of
principles for the Modern City: decentralization and separation of land uses, lower-density,
functionalist architecture and construction and the use of the automobile (Mumford 2000).
According to Boomkens (2008: 128) this planning apparatus essentially became an
“instrument for the defense of an inward-looking culture of intimacy against the dangers and
shocks of the urban public realm”. The end product would effectively be stripped of the
“chaos” and “nuisance” of the Industrial City.
Post-WWII society and planning in America and Europe adopted modernism holistically,
because the past was seen as having too much baggage. Modernist ideas were cemented and
institutionalized through government programs. Many of these interventions were so
extensive in scale that there were little alternatives to the Modern City. A good example is the
Interstate Highway Act in the USA (1956), which literally paved the way for the hegemony of
the automobile (Jackson 1985). Furthermore, modernist urban theorists generally assumed
that the general public agreed with their visions (Taylor 1998: 34) and therefore there never
was really any public consultation over such plans.
Timo Hämäläinen – MA in European Urban Cultures
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This era saw the emergence of the “row house” as a suburban configuration of the townhouse:
“The street was turned into a traffic zone providing access, and the rows of townhouses
declined into the isolated row-house estates of the periphery, found in the real estate projects
of new urban landscapes and in large and small housing estates” (Stimmann 2011: 35). This
conceptualization of attached housing generally incorporates the idea of standardized and
repetitive attached living, but has replaced the urban architectural qualities of street-linkage
and density with an emphasis on the private over the public by turning their fronts away from
the street, and a desire for wide open spaces by introducing lush and spacious buffer zones.
The era of high modernism didn’t however last very long because housing projects that were
developed with its ethos started to turn into social disasters. A well-known example in this
sense is Pruitt-Igoe, a social housing project in St. Louis, USA, that was erected in mid-1950
and bulldozed only twenty years later. Architecture critic Charles Jencks has made this day
known as the day that “modern architecture died” (Bristol 1991: 163; Fernández Cendón
2013).
Nonetheless, most professional fields dealing with urban development in one way or another
have been institutionalized based on modernist principles and keep the legacy alive. Talen
(2002: 309) dubs this legacy as a “culture of separation”, in which fragmentation is a
fundamental principle of operation on different levels: economic development planners are for
example separated from transportation planners or environmental planners and the planning
regulatory system encourages land-use separation. Similarly, when referring to what this
“suburban legacy” means for the development processes of urban infrastructure
unconventional to modernist standards, regulations and norms, Duany et al. (2000: 21)
crystallize that “the devil is in the details.”
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2.2.2. The Culturalist Critiques
The culturalist approach to urban planning is often strongly linked with Jane Jacobs (1961),
who was one of the first and most influential – if not the most influential – critics of
modernist planning and torchbearers of traditional urbanism through her landmark book The
Death and Life of Great American Cities. She called for planning based on what has proven to
be time-tested best practice and criticized that the modernist planning model is essentially
based “on a foundation of nonsense” (1961: 13). The core argument of the “traditionalists” is
thereby that the planning approach of the modernist planning model is not less than
comprehensively destructive to the foundations of urban life.
In more contemporary context and following Jacobs’ footsteps, the end of the 1980s and the
beginning of the 1990s saw the emergence of strong reform-seeking planning movements
such as New Urbanism and Smart Growth, particularly in America, but also in Europe with
e.g. the “Urban Village” proponents (Goetz 2013). At the epicenter of the contemporary
culturalists’ critique are the vast suburban landscapes of single-family houses which
characterize many Western cities, the separation of land-uses and creation of dull and non-
stimulating living environments, which are only able to deliver standardized commercial
centers and promenades that lack functions and destinations, and consequently people
(Kunstler 1993; Duany et. al. 2000).
By contrast, the planning doctrine of the “traditionalists” emphasizes that density and
diversity – both features which modernists reject in their planning model – are integral for the
creation of successful, lively, safe and sustainable cities. The culturalist view of urbanism
particularly seeks to re-elevate the street back as the organizing principle of urban form. This
approach combined with traditional building typologies is suggested to result in human-scale
neighborhoods and is connected directly with a city’s ability to deliver vibrancy, viability,
accumulation of social capital and safety (Walters & Brown 2004: 53-66).
For the past decade or two, the culturalist approach to urban planning has been in good
currency and has increasingly led to planning reforms and reform movements such as the
Urban Renaissance in the UK (Urban Task Force 2005) and the establishment of the Council
for European Urbanism (CEU 2013).
Timo Hämäläinen – MA in European Urban Cultures
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2.3. Townhouses in the 21st Century – The Four Cs Driving
Contemporary Housing and Urban Development
The townhouse-related literature reviewed for this research reveals that the cases of 21st-
century townhouses in Helsinki and Stockholm are not unique as such. Similar developments
are taking place in other countries as well: in Berlin and other metropolitan areas in Germany
(Stimmann 2011; Marquart et al. 2012), in Amsterdam and most notably its Sporenburg-
Borneo project (CABE 2013), in North America (MacDonald 2005; Dunham-Jones &
Williamson 2011; Friedman 2012) and in Great Britain (CABE 2013) to point out a few. A
common denominator characterizing these events is that the term “townhouse” has regained
attention in associations with attached living at the expense of the “row house”.
Theory underlying the re-emergence of the building type will be introduced and discussed
using Rudlin & Falk’s (1999/2009) framework of “the four Cs” - conservation, choice,
community and cost – which are argued to be influences that have always shaped housing and
urban development to a greater or lesser extent but are especially relevant drivers for
development in the beginning of the 21st century.
2.3.1. Conservation & Urban Compaction
“Conservation” underscores environmental pressures as a driver for new kinds of housing
options and patterns (Rudlin & Falk: 73-87). At present, the most influential environmental
driver is undoubtedly the concern over climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. The
discussions on environmental sustainability were initiated by the 1987 Bruntland Commission
Report and set on official policy agendas with the 1992 Rio declaration (Harding 2005). The
global scope and disastrous impact of climate change on natural and human environments are
notoriously empirically linked to factors such as urban form and land-use patterns, building
design and technology, transport modes and lifestyle choices and impacts (see e.g. Hoornweg
et al. 2011 for further analysis). The core message for urban policy is that: “There is mounting
evidence of the need for adaptation planning at the local scale” (Hallegatte & Corfee-Morlot
2010: 2).
In the planning realm, these arguments are acknowledged globally as metropolitan regions are
increasingly adopting policies that seek to tame the environmentally harmful patterns of urban
19
expansion (OECD 2012). Ideally, the remedy is to promote dense and mixed-use settlement
patterns that support walking and other means of eco-friendly transportation, and reduce the
need for car ownership (Breheny 1997; Jenks & Dempsey 2005; OECD 2012). In existing
urban areas one of the principal means of achieving the proposed benefits is through a process
of urban compaction, which is basically defined as increasing the density or intensity of
development and functions (Dunham-Jones & Williamson 2011).
Townhouses support these environmental conservation efforts for their part because the
grouping of homes into rows can result in similar population densities as achieved with high-
rise housing but with less land consumption (Binney 1998: 11; City of Toronto 2003: 2).
Friedman (2012: 5-6) widens the environmental benefits of high-density townhouses to
energy and resource efficiency. He argues that the attachment of housing units reduces wall
surface up to 53 per cent for units in the middle of a row and therefore decreases the
consumption of building materials. He also notes (p.7) that detached homes lead to increased
heating and cooling requirements due to their exposed envelope whereas, depending on local
climate, townhouses can consume up to 68 per cent less energy. Vernez Moudon (1989: 179)
adds that traditional townhouse designs, such as the North American Victorian house, have
proven to be highly resource-efficient due to their durability. The spacious rooms and central
circulation space of these structures have proven to be highly attractive for generations of
users, which means that the qualities of the buildings have mitigated needs to move house and
needs for urban renewal processes regardless of societal transformations (more on the
flexibility of townhouses in chapter 2.3.2.).
The issue of density is however a greatly debated topic in practice. While the rationale in
urban compaction regarding land use and transportation planning is to reduce the pressure of
building up open spaces and thereby to release more room for parks, other amenities for urban
living, decrease car dependency, and offer a high degree of convenience for work, service and
entertainment (Jenks & Dempsey 2005), some argue that the opposite is also true.
Compaction can be perceived to result in massive high-rise buildings, cramming, less open
space, psychological stress from unwanted social contact or reduced privacy, competition for
facilities and space, and generally a congested cityscape (Breheny 1997; Jenks & Dempsey
2005).
Timo Hämäläinen – MA in European Urban Cultures
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Talen (2002: 300) notes that the density debate is a tension that has characterized planning
efforts historically and throughout the 20th
century and revolves around the issue of finding a
consensus about integrating “town” (city) and “country” (nature) in a harmonious way. This
can be observed for example in critiques that a specific development is either too compact for
most people’s preferences (too much ‘town’) or too much like current suburban patterns of
development (too much ‘country’) (ibid.). Research shows that there indeed still are empirical
gaps to be filled in the pursuit for environmentally sound urban development. Potential
negative effects of compaction include for example loss of green space, traffic congestion and
air pollution, gentrification, and loss of recreational space (Breheny 1997; Jenks & Dempsey
2005; OECD 2012).
The complex nature of urban intensification underscores that a single theoretical planning
model for addressing environmental concerns doesn’t exist. Marvin & Guy (2000: 9-18)
suggest that planning for environmentally sound cities could best be interpreted as a range of
context-specific pathways with a common goal but varying practical solutions for achieving
it.
Friedman (2012: 1) suggests that the narrowness and wall-to-wall attachment of townhouses
offers an approach for dense living where small-scale development potentially accommodates
a residential density that can reach the equivalent of apartment-building development while
maintaining an acceptable level of independency and privacy at the same time. Moreover,
Friedman (2012: 111) argues that most densities of townhouse-filled neighborhoods will fit
into somewhere in between 25 to 85 housing units per hectare. For townhouses that face the
street a typical density is between 25 and 60 while off-street townhouses then have the
potential to reach up to 85 housing units per hectare (ibid.).
The higher the density, the more important it becomes to design the buildings carefully since
in high-density townhouses can manage only little private space. The Borneo-Sporenburg
brownfield project in Amsterdam (picture 2) is an often-quoted low-rise and high-density
townhouse development which is designed to resemble a Dutch fishing town. The density of
the area is towards the upper end of Friedman’s above-quoted density scale - officially around
100 housing units per hectare but three large housing blocks bring up the average density of
the area - and the architects have e.g. sought strategic solutions to let daylight flow deep into
the rather small living spaces to make them seem larger (CABE 2013).
21
Picture 2. Borneo-Sporenburg townhouses in Amsterdam (West 8 2013).
The example of Vancouver illustrates a more unconventional pathway for achieving high-
density development with the aid of townhouses. The city of Vancouver’s approach is to
shape new building types that will provide what are felt to be the positive qualities of older
smaller-scale, finer-grained and street-oriented building types, while working within the
contexts of modern large-scale single-developer projects (Macdonald 2005: 15). The outcome
of these ambitions is the introduction of point towers over low- or mid-rise podium bases
containing townhouses, and low- to mid-rise apartment blocks with integrated ground-floor
townhouses (ibid.).
2.3.2. Choice & Changing Housing Demands
The influence of “choice” is about matching user needs and housing design. Rudlin & Falk
(1999: 90-99) discuss two issues likely to have a substantial impact on 21st-century housing: a
changing demographic make-up and a changed socio-economic condition.
Concerning the aspect of the changing demographic make-up, the dominant trends in
household characteristics for the last two centuries and up until today have been declining
household size and increasing household numbers (Rudlin & Falk 1999: 91). This translates
as more singles, single parents, childless couples, and accompanied with generally more
living space per person as societies have become richer (Dunham-Jones & Williamson 2011:
Timo Hämäläinen – MA in European Urban Cultures
22
18-19; Friedman 2012: 9). Moreover, there is an increasingly significant aging population
segment and an ethnic minority segment which both have their special needs (Rudlin & Falk
1999: 93; Dunham-Jones & Williamson 2011: 18-19; Friedman 2012: 10). These same trends
are well-acknowledged in both the USA (Nelson 2009) and the European Union, where
“growth is fuelled mainly by immigration, whereas the population is becoming older and
more diverse” (European Commission 2011: 1).
The vertical orientation and division into multiple stories are argued to make townhouses a
flexible housing structure which potentially could offer a housing product to these changing
user needs despite that the architectural typology of the generic townhouse adds up to quite
large surface areas per housing unit. According to Schneider & Till (2005: 157), the
flexibility of a house is measured by its ability to cater for users with different lifestyles and
until the end of their use time. Especially historic townhouses have proven to possess these
qualities.
The high-ceilinged spacious rooms of the traditional American Victorian house for example
allow each room to act as a “blank canvas” that may be used in different ways, and the central
circulation space enables privacy and independence for their users within the household
(Vernez Moudon 1989: 179). Moreover, the central circulation space and possible adjoining
yard structures additionally facilitate easy transformations from a single-family dwelling to
two or three independent housing units (Friedman 2012: 43). The narrow footprint of
townhouses also eliminates the need for interior load-bearing walls and thus space can be
taken away from rooms which are no longer used as they were before (Friedman 2012: 12). A
single townhouse structure may thereby accommodate different households with various
functional and spatial needs and adapt to changes in their life circumstances. This ultimately
creates diversity of housing stock in the same development (Vernez Moudon 1989: 179;
Friedman 2012: 10).
The second aspect influencing user needs is a changed socio-economic condition. Richard
Florida (2012) has voicefully interpreted and conceptualized the 21st century socio-economic
condition in his book “The Rise of the Creative Class”. He in tone with other academics (e.g.
Landry & Bianchini 1995) identifies that the shift to a post-Fordist economy alongside the
emergence of information technology have placed creativity and innovation at the core of
economic production. This has had a significant impact on user needs through a
23
reconfiguration of work: “The no-collar workplace integrates elements of the flexible, open,
interactive model of the scientist’s lab or artist’s studio into the machine model of the factory
or the traditional corporate office (Florida 2012: p.101)”.
What this implies is what Rudlin & Falk (1999: 96) also forecast: the conventional 20th
-
century desire to separate the home and work environments is being increasingly challenged
and for example housing units that accommodate both environments will have increasing
demand. The new circumstances also downplay the role of large employers as small
businesses and self-employment are gaining ground. This highlights an increased need for
social organization through networking, which pulls people closer together and ultimately
increases the valuing of accessibility of places considerably (e.g. Potts et al. 2008).
Townhouses can also be transformed partially into working environments, which supports the
needs of many workers in the information age (Friedman 2012: 12). Pfeifer & Brauneck
(2008) additionally remind that townhouses cannot merely compete with their time-tested
qualities, but also need to be open for innovation as “Changing durations and habits of usage
require new and flexible typologies” (p. 6), due to issues “such as social interaction and
adaptation to individual sociological demands across all stages of life, the changing working
conditions” (p. 14), and “the issues of energy, resources and ecological balance” (p. 14).
2.3.3. Community & Planning for Urbanity
Rudlin & Falk (1999: 101-110) elevate the concept of “community” as a key driver in shaping
future housing and urban development, because as the nuclear family is losing its role, the
valuing of community life is likely to become more important. Pfeifer & Brauneck (2008: 13)
agree: “Future ways of living will have to return to relying more on self-organisation of
communities and groups. Work will be part of life up to old age because its definition has
changed. Patchwork families will become multigenerational patchwork families of varying
productivity and activity within a network of affinities and multi-relationships”.
More specifically, the influence that the concept of community will have on housing and
urban development depends on which kind of image of community – or lifestyle - people will
strive for, because this will influence building activities. In his thesis on linking social change
and developmental change, Tönnies (1887/2001) has conceptualized two contrasting types of
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social organization in his Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft model, which are often used to represent
the opposing ends in a continuum of settlement ideals.
Gemeinschaft is a form of social integration that is typically associated with a rural or village-
like lifestyle. In this type of ideal community personal ties are important, most people knew
each other, the community is clearly defined both spatially and socially, and people interact
with each other as whole people combining personal and social roles. Due to a sense of
enclosure, outsiders are likely to be treated with skepticism (Rudlin & Falk 1999: 105).
Gesellschaft by contrast is a form of social integration based on impersonal ties of
instrumental and contractual nature, a high degree of role differentiation, and oftentimes
characterized by tension. This type of social organization is linked with urban life. Jane
Jacobs (1961) wrote one of the best-known illustrations of this type of ideal community when
she described the 1950s and 60s life in New York. She writes that urban communities are
crucially different from the village type because they are “by definition, full of strangers
(p.30)”.
Rudlin & Falk (1999: 6) argue that the previously discussed demographic and social
influences argue for the strengthening of the urban ideal. Likewise, Florida’s (2012) research
findings indicate a more urban future as people are likely to opt for weak community ties or
“quasi-anonymity” over strong ones, which keeps on pacing up the “back-to-the-city
movement (p. 321)”. Furthermore, these changes are ultimately displayed in what kind of
surroundings people will ultimately see supportive with respect to their lifestyle. In Nelson’s
(2009: 192) account of the “urbanity” attributes people increasingly value include transit
accessibility; proximity to shopping and restaurants; mixed uses including mixed housing
choices; and mixed incomes, ages, and ethnicities. In Florida’s (2012: 281) thesis, his
“creative class” seeks a specific “quality of place” which is determined by a stimulating
physical setting that will support their lifestyle, a diverse and tolerant range of community
members, and has a wide range of active things going on. Critics however point out that many
of these assumptions are not theoretically informed enough as many studies have shown that
modern-day workers in the creative and knowledge industries are a heterogeneous group in
which individuals are attracted to different kinds of qualities in their living environments (e.g.
Borén & Young 2013).
25
For the urban project, it is relevant how architects and planners read these users’ narratives
and articulate them as concrete urban plans. Kevin Lynch has for example famously theorized
this in his book The Image of the City (1960) by arguing with his concepts of “legibility” and
“imageability” that a city’s structure exists both in physical reality and in the minds of its
inhabitants. Rudlin & Falk (1999) stress the heterogeneous nature of post-industrial society
and highlight that as society more distinctly transforms into groups valuing different ideals,
urban planning will need to adapt accordingly as: “a strong a community… will only thrive in
a particular context” (p. 108). Mäenpää (2008) similarly advances the idea of
“comprehending the city as consisting of diversified milieus and ways of life without
domination of a certain type of urbanity” (p. 22). More specifically, he points out that living
preferences are not absolute values but to be understood in a relative sense (Mäenpää 2008:
39). In this view, closeness to nature can for example mean anything between actually living
close to natural areas to being able to see a tree from the window. The main point concerning
planning practice is that the mental images and practice output need to match accordingly.
Applying for example suburban ideas of the “good community” onto urban areas won’t work
and vice versa.
With respect to any attempts to plan and design for a specific kind of “neighborhood
character”, Jiven & Larkham (2003) and Dovey et al. (2009) among other academics however
remind that such conceptualizations can have multiple meanings, making them extremely
slippery in nature. Attempts to locate and mobilize “character” within urban morphology have
a tendency to reduce character to formal (‘hard’) characteristics at the expense of experiential
(‘soft’) values, and can turn character into caricature (Dovey & Woodcock, 2010). Hence
their mobilization into planning practice is rarely adequately theoretically informed. Ploger
summarizes (2010, p. 321) the dual nature of “urbanity” by stating that it is “not only a
concept, but life lived within new emergences, the imaginary, coding and values”.
Sandercock (2010) in return asserts that despite theoretical gaps, planners nevertheless
operationalize “urbanity” in planning practice. In postmodern times, the general trend has
been to emphasize functional and economic diversification and social diversity. This has been
done at the expense of modernist mono-zoned spaces. In Sandercock’s (2010) view,
operationalized conceptualizations of urbanity consist of elements from both socio-cultural
and built environment dimensions. She puts forward a targeted definition of urbanity for
planners (table 1.) (Sandercock, 2010: 2307):
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Table 1. “Planning for urbanity” according to Sandercock (2010),
High-density/densification
Multi-functionality, mixed uses
Possibilities for cultural enrichment and educational opportunities
Possibilities for different forms of living
Possibilities for different experiences in urban space
Reinstating the street as a pedestrian-friendly space
Public transit options
Emphasis on landmarks and places of local distinctiveness
Emphasis on a lively city culture
Emphasis on tolerance, mutual consideration, and open-mindedness in urban public
spaces
Allow `visible' spaces for the poor, socially marginal, and/or deviant
Townhouses on their behalf are traditional building blocks for the physical context of urban
communities (Stimmann 2011: 34). This is manifested in their socio-cultural history and in
physical terms especially through their street-related qualities, scale and proportion, fine-
grained nature, and clear demarcation between the public and private. With their direct
linkage with the street, townhouses help create the environment for traditional urban streets
(Jacobs 1961).
Vernez Moudon (1989: 240) emphasizes that townhouses, and especially mixing townhouses
with apartments, have the capacity to add richness to the housing stock and thereby support a
greater mix of tenants and diversity. At block level, the townhouse building type may
contribute to diversity and an increase in choice by allowing easy grouping of single-housing
unit and multiple-unit townhouses together. On the level of the individual, Stimmann (2011:
104) evaluates that townhouses enable the new urban man to celebrate individuality and
freedom of self-expression through private ownership and design, especially in respect to the
buildings’ facades. Grayson Trulove (2006: 9) stresses the link between townhouses and
walkable urban environments by asserting that townhouses are becoming increasingly
desirable as “more people move back into our cities” and “are discovering the joys of walking
to work rather than commuting for two hours a day”.
27
Friedman (2012: 111-112), Dunham-Jones & Williamson (2011: 31-42) and the planning
administration in Toronto (City of Toronto 2003: 2) extend the community-context of
townhouses beyond the “Jane Jacobian urban” by stressing that townhouses are fit for any
kind of area (high, medium or low density), but they need to be matched with the according
surrounding density context, support a continuation of existing urban patterns, and respect
adjoining properties pragmatically and also architecturally to minimize impacts on the
surrounding neighborhood. In terms of the qualities of a townhouse, this generally means that
the more land-use efficient narrow and tall types as well as the multi-housing unit types are
generally associated with urban areas whereas less dense configurations can more likely be
found in other parts of the city.
Vernez Moudon (1989: 225-229) underscores that the process also has an important role when
planning and developing for urbanity. She specifically elevates townhouses as a building type
that is useful in this regard. The approach of building them one by one on individual lots
namely touches upon the idea of incremental urbanism in which cities evolve over time
through gradual accretions and infill (i.e. small-scale building activities and building
management), which is associated with the creation of interesting and organic urban places
(Vernez Moudon 1989: 225-229; Dunham-Jones & Williamson 2011: 2). This is contrasted
with the standard corporate development practice that produces characterless “instant
architecture” which in turn adds up on a larger scale as “instant cities”. The former approach
to creating urban context can predominantly be associated with the culturalist approach to
urbanism whereas the latter with the progresseist.
Another concern in planning for urban character besides focusing too much on its physical
attributes is focusing too much on a narrow perception of the “soft” qualities. Sharon Zukin
(2010) argues that along with the industrial restructuring of the late 20th
century, Western
societies have shifted from a culture of production to a culture of consumption and
reproduction, and also authentic urban life has become an object of consumption and thereby
a powerful tool in the remaking of cities.
Marquardt et al. (2012) exemplify how this practice of consuming the city also has a
dimension of displacement. Their account of a set of inner-city townhouses in Berlin whose
designs refer to a range of different cultures, eras and styles (e.g. London, Borneo-Sporenburg
Amsterdam, and Northern Germany) but not Berlin, reflect an objectification of the city as a
Timo Hämäläinen – MA in European Urban Cultures
28
vibrant and exciting atmosphere to be consumed , but where urbanity is conceptualized in a
narrow way which downplays the complex social realities of the city: “Evoked as a
distinguishing feature of the housing product, urbanity is referred to as a universal form of
vibrant city life, filled deliberately with reminiscences of iconic cities. Instead of engaging
with specific urban atmospheres the new-build developments are shaped by blueprint ideas of
urbanism that circulate as best practice in real estate discourses (Marquardt et al. 2012: 9)”.
2.4.5. Cost & the Economics of Urban Development
Rudlin & Falk’s (1999: 111-121) final “C” refers to the context-specific economies of urban
development. Yet regardless of context, factors such as location, land value, and development
industry operating models will continue to influence the cost of housing and urban
development.
Rudlin & Falk (1999: 111) view the economics of urban development in the sense that costs
are largely a constraint to in the development of new structures, but in the global information
society urban development also has a strategic dimension as the overall vitality of an urban
area obviously has a significant impact on the economics of urban development. In the era of
globalization when capital and labor are more mobile than ever, cities increasingly compete
with each other making the assets of a given city important strategic tools in the competition
for skilled workers and investments. Historically and also today, economic competitiveness
i.e. the location decisions of private enterprises and associated urban policy, has relied on
transport infrastructure and agglomeration or clustering advantages (Musterd & Kovács 2013:
4-5). In the 21st century also the “the quality of place” as described in the previous chapter has
taken an important strategic role. In Florida’s (2012) interpretation of this, it is now the
enterprises that follow people, not the other way around. And this elevates other urban assets
that contribute to the “livability” of a city – such as housing – to front stage in the quest for
economic competitiveness (Musterd & Kovács 2013: 5).
The above-presented example of Berlin (Marquardt et al. 2012) is a prime example of how
townhouse development can be used in this strategic context as well through the promotion of
a “work–live–play’ lifestyle (p. 9)”. This strategic approach to townhouse development can
also be more modest. The building type has been used as part of urban revitalization schemes
29
to upgrade existing neighborhoods by replacing aging buildings, filling-up empty lots, and by
adding variety to the housing and tenure options in a neighborhood - with an ultimate goal of
increasing the value of existing buildings and adding tax income (City of Toronto 2003: 2;
Friedman 2012: 180).
At the regional scale, a significant factor that influences the cost of housing in growing urban
areas is how the housing supply keeps up with the market demand. A key factor underlying
this is the pattern in which the supply is spread out in respect to the areas with the highest
demand, i.e. policy decisions regarding land-use efficiency. According to Loikkanen (2013),
dispersed urban growth and the resulting fragmented urban structure not only increase car-
dependency and make it more difficult to reach environmental targets, but they raise the price
of housing as the growing urban population moves further away from the jobs that are
typically located in the main and sub centers. As a result, well-located housing becomes
"scarcer" and this raises housing prices and rents everywhere, which ultimately gets reflected
in the competitiveness of the city (Loikkanen 2013: 9). In addition to the value of land, the
cost of housing gets affected whether a housing unit is acquired as a market commodity or
constructed directly by the end user as in the case of the former the construction company will
include a profit margin in the price (e.g. Harvey & Jowsey 2003).
Bengs (2010a) suggests that also concentration processes in the building and construction
industry contribute to cost increases in urban development, as monopolies in any field of
economy is conventionally associated with higher prices and a lack of innovation due to a
lack of competition (Sastry 2005). According to Bengs (2010a: 131-132) this is a
phenomenon that tends to occur as the operational field of the building and construction
industry happens in a context of limited land in a given place. But in addition, public policies
in lot distribution which entail large-scale development projects often increase the level of
concentration because the projects are too big for local entrepreneurs to compete for.
Grayson Trulove (2006: 9) notes that townhouses are an economical option in places where
land is costly for new construction as their density-related qualities will allow housing-unit
numbers to be maximized. Friedman (2012: 84) and Pfeifer & Brauneck (2008: 16) also
suggest that the simple and rational principle of adding on makes it possible to erect a large
number of housing units within a short time frame and lower related installation and
maintenance expenses. This makes the townhouse a good building type for large scale
Timo Hämäläinen – MA in European Urban Cultures
30
construction and potentially reduced housing prices. Friedman (2012: 100-101) especially
highlights the potential gained with prefabrication as townhouses are narrow and therefore
factory-made components are often suitable for ground transportation.
Like Friedman, Dunham-Jones & Williamson (2011: 3) stress that contrary to Vernez
Moudon’s (1989) appeal for urbanistic incremental development, the large-scale “instant
cities” approach is a more beneficial way for creating urban space, because more suburban
infill gets done and more cost-efficiently in that manner. Dunham-Jones & Williamson (2011:
9-12) assert that if viewed at the metropolitan scale, this approach helps achieve “incremental
metropolitanism”.
Rudlin and Falk (2009: 137) conclude that an optimal future would indeed comprise of
differentiated housing production and endless variation that can simultaneously retain the
economies of construction.
31
2.5. Helsinki & Stockholm – The Local Contexts for Townhouse
Development
The local contexts of Helsinki and Stockholm have many important similarities. Both cities
lie in geographically similar locations, are national capitals, belong to the same administrative
and regulatory family of the Nordic countries, have experienced comparable urban growth
trends during the last century, and are currently experiencing strong growth pressures.
Concerning urban development, both cities have a deeply embedded culture of government-
imposed urban planning, have a ground lease system, and the municipal authority in both
cities owns a significant portion of the land within the municipal boundaries - approximately
70% in each city (Newman & Thornley 1996; Hall 2005).
And finally, Helsinki and Stockholm are both important economic engines for their respective
countries containing strong knowledge-based clusters and are among the 10 richest metro-
regions in Europe (FORA 2010). This is reflected by the fact that both cities are currently
destinations of intense migration and are among the fastest growing urban regions in Europe.
Helsinki’s population is projected to grow from the current 603 968 up to 652 230 inhabitants
by 2022 (8%) and the Greater Helsinki Region by 10% up to 1 516 217 inhabitants (City of
Helsinki Urban Facts 2013). The city of Stockholm is projected to grow more significantly by
17% from the current population of 864 324 to 1 010 492 by 2022 (City of Stockholm 2013).
The City Region similarly will grow by 17% 2 436 745 by 2021(Stockholms läns landsting
2012).
Timo Hämäläinen – MA in European Urban Cultures
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Picture 3. Outlines of the cities and city regions. The City of Stockholm and Stockholm County on the left, and Helsinki and the Greater Helsinki region on the right (Wikimedia Commons 2013). The pictures are not to scale.
2.5.1. Points of Departure and Terminology
In a brief historic account, Stockholm is a much older city than Helsinki and has been the
political and economic center of Sweden since the 14th
century. Helsinki on the other hand
was not much more than a small regional town until it was made the capital of the Finnish
Grand Duchy in 1812. However, starting from the processes of industrialization during the
19th
century, the growth of the two cities has been characterized by very similar general
urbanization patterns (Hall 2005). During the medieval period, Stockholm got its first
townhouses as wealthy bourgeois families built themselves urban homes, but this line of
townhouse development gave way to apartment living along with the industrial revolution
(Manninen & Holopainen 2006: 12; Schartner 2013).
Alongside these developments, both Sweden and Finland have a long tradition in small-scale
wooden urban development, and wooden houses were generally the primary means of living
and building up until the early 20th
century. Now only little fragments of this tradition remains
as much has been either burnt or torn down in urban renewal processes (Karjalainen &
Suikkari 2001: 15-17).
33
In the early 20th
century masonry construction gradually became more popular than wooden
construction. The beginning of this process was accompanied by influences from Ebenezer
Howard’s Garden City concept, and following this inspiration a few brick-built strings of
urban row houses – or townhouses – were built in both capitals. In Helsinki, Eliel Saarinen
designed a couple of them in the neighborhood of Munkkiniemi and Armas Lindgren in
Kulosaari (Manninen & Holopainen 2006: 13-15). In Stockholm, similar developments took
place for example in the garden city of Bromma (Åsell 2013).
Quite soon afterwards Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City ideal however started to take
influences from Le Corbusian functionalism, which transformed the urbanization patterns of
the cities substantially. The Finnish interpretation of these influencers’ ideas came together in
the conceptualization of Tapiola, a modern garden city built to the west of the city (Hurme
1991). The Swedish equivalent at the time was the ABC stad model (Westford 2010: 12).
Both models are basically leafy satellite suburbs that consist predominantly of apartment
buildings.
As economic restructuring processes triggered a shift from agriculture to manufacturing and
service industries, especially the latter half of the 20th
century witnessed substantial increases
in the paces of urbanization, and a significant portion of the post-WWII development in both
cities took the form of suburban development using these modern garden city models
(Schulman et al. 2000; Hall & Vidén 2005). During the first decades after the war, the growth
of the cities was strongly outwards oriented and most intense during the 1960s when
construction practice became more industrialized. In Sweden this urbanization period was
linked with the government’s housing-specific Million Homes Programme
(Miljonprogrammet) which sought to construct a million new homes nationally during 1965-
1974 (Hall & Vidén 2005). In Finland as well as for Helsinki this period has been the most
significant period of urbanization in its history. According to (Heininen-Blomstedt 2013: 15)
about 90% of the entire existing building stock in the country has been designed under the
functionalist paradigm.
A key difference in this process was that in Stockholm the ABC stads were configured around
the subway or rail transit whereas in Helsinki cars became the dominant mode of transport.
Stockholm consequently took a star-shaped urban form where strings of settlements alternate
Timo Hämäläinen – MA in European Urban Cultures
34
between large open spaces, later on known as “green wedges” (LSE Cities 2013: 48-49), but
Helsinki grew in a more unorganized manner.
In the context of these developments and starting from the late 1940s and 50s, attached living
in both capitals materialized as modernist row houses. Their construction was especially
popular in the 1970s and 80s (Manninen & Hirvonen 2004).
Starting from the 1980s and 1990s onwards growth in both cities has in addition to the
outwards-directed developments been characterized by an inwards-oriented densification
trend as well, and at this point in time the urbanization patterns between the cities have clearly
become different in the larger picture. Helsinki has been characterized by parallel growths:
inwards at the core and outwards at the edge (Jaakola & Lönnqvist 2007). In Stockholm on
the other hand, growth has been diverted more explicitly to existing urban areas (Hall 2009).
It was also at this general junction in time, that the idea of the townhouse appeared in
discussions again. In Helsinki, this had been preceded by a central government project –
Dense & low-rise (Tiivis-matala) - initiated by the Ministry of the Environment (YM 2002),
which following its name sought to conceptualize and promote dense and low-rise urban
development in response to urban sprawl. Parallel to the Ministry’s project some early ideas
of townhouse-living materialized as pilot projects in e.g. Pikku-Huopalahti (Visanti 2006:
15), Säterinmetsä (Fogelholm 2003) and Malminkartano (Helsingin kaupunki 2005). In the
aftermath and followed by further investigations about the concept (Manninen & Holopainen
2006), the city organized an architecture competition for entries to assist in conceptualizing
what the Helsinki townhouse could look like (Sjöroos & Jalkanen 2010). At this stage a
definition of the townhouse in the city’s books had evolved to first and foremost mean the
traditional single housing unit on a single lot model, and also the English term was adopted to
distinguish it from other similar living arrangements (Manninen & Holopainen 2006: 7; see
chapter 2.2. for different conceptualizations). The other terms used in the context of small-
scale and low-rise development – and interchangeably also to mean attached urban living - are
“kaupunkipientalo” (small-scale urban home), “kaupunkirivitalo” (city row house), and
“kaupunkiomakotitalo” (urban single-family home).
On an applied level, there are currently two main active project sites for the introduction of
the more conceptualized Helsinki townhouses adjacent to Malmi airfield in suburban North-
East Helsinki. Both are pilot project areas, or more aptly development laboratories,
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specifically for the Helsinki townhouse (Visanti 2013). Ongoing and future plans also include
inner-city townhouses in brownfield harbor urban renewal areas and a large townhouse-
dominant “small-scale city” in Östersundom at the eastern edge of the city (Pulkkinen 2011).
In Stockholm, townhouses do not have a clear institutional path and on the contrary they seem
have emerged via the private housing sector. In any case, around the turn of the millennium
attached housing developments were no longer referred to only as row houses (radhus) but
also as “stadsradhus”, “cityradhus” (city row houses), or “urbana enbostadshus” (urban
single-family homes). This new terminology has been applied to development that is
associated with the conventional characteristics of townhouses, but also to structures that can
be found on rooftops, adjoining apartment buildings, or emerging from transformed industrial
buildings (see chapter 4.2. for pictures). All of these variations share key defining
characteristics of the townhouse such as a connection to the street (albeit the ones on rooftops
technically obviously don’t have this quality), an individual entrance, a yard or terrace if they
are not back-to-back units, and a vertical circulation. All in all, the key defining quality for
determining townhouses seems to be contradicting them to the more conventional “radhus”.
2.5.2. Conservation in Context
In Helsinki, the aims for achieving climate-conscious urban development are embedded in the
city’s current master plan from 2002 and in the city council’s Helsinki Action Plan for
Sustainability for 2009–2012 (Silfverberg et al. 2010: 6; Jaakkola 2012: 111-113). Moreover,
Helsinki has recently begun to draft a new city-wide master plan where the intensification of
existing urban fabric is suggested to be elevated as an ever more central principle in the
means to accommodate future growth (KSV 2012).
So far compaction and residential infill construction primarily been focused on under-utilized
and brownfield areas. Urban compaction beyond the redevelopment of brownfield sites has
proven to be challenging and generally not very much has been accomplished in existing
residential areas (Uudistuva kaupunki 2012: 35). In response to these concerns, the city has
introduced a program called the Renaissance of the Suburbs (Esikaupunkien renessanssi),
which primarily seeks to find solutions for advancing infill development (Esikaupunkien
renessanssi 2013).
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Even if the strategic aim in Helsinki’s physical planning at the municipal level has been to
achieve a compact urban structure that relies on a functional rail transport network and
preserves existing networks of green areas (Silfverberg et al. 2010: 7), the settlement pattern
in Helsinki has taken a two-directional path when observed at the regional scale. While the
city of Helsinki has zoned for housing around the core of the area (Jaakola & Lönnqvist
2007), on the metropolitan level, substantial low-density sprawl has occurred in the outer
suburbs especially from the 1990s onwards (EEA 2006; Ratvio 2012). Consequently, the
Helsinki region has been noted to be among the most sprawling city regions in Europe (EEA
2006).
The main cause for this is that a combined and effective urban planning master plan
concerning the whole region has never existed and municipalities have focused on their own
strategic goals at the expense of the whole. Consequently the attraction of good tax payers and
investments has been high on the local municipalities’ political agendas (e.g. Taipale 2011).
The regional perspective has been established as an official guiding policy only in 2008 as the
municipalities of the Helsinki metropolitan region agreed to start preparing a joint master plan
with a goal of preventing urban sprawl (Karjalainen 2008). From a regional perspective, the
contemporary vision is to intensify the sprawling urban landscape at select locations and
create a public transport-reliant polycentric structure (Gordon et al. 2009).
In Stockholm, the OECD (2013) acknowledges that environmental criteria have long played
an important role in the city’s policy making. In the context of land use issues, urban
intensification has been a guiding policy since the beginning of the 1980s (Hall 2009: 198;
Ståhle & Marcus 2009). In 1999 the city adopted a policy known as “building the city
inwards”, which stresses that new development is to be built using already developed land
and emphasizing the core of the city. The view to look inwards instead of outwards has for
example triggered a policy to promote the construction of housing on suitable rooftops (Hall
2009).
In 2010, the city adopted its current master plan which is set to continue the project of inward-
building with the exception that there is now pressure to expand new development to green
spaces as many brownfield sites and other previously underdeveloped areas have already been
developed (Ståhle & Marcus 2009; Stockholms stad 2010). In the wider picture, the intense
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urbanization process and policy aims to preserve the large green wedges (Boyle et al. 2012:
77-82) that characterize Stockholm are at risk of clashing.
According to Hall (2009: 197), in Stockholm, and by contrast to Helsinki, there exists a
“cultural agreement” between the other municipalities in the County of Stockholm that
growth ought to be directed primarily within Stockholm city limits. To relieve some of the
Stockholm growth pressure, a regional plan, RUFS 2010 (Stockholms läns landsting 2010),
has been drafted to shift the metropolitan region towards a more polycentric urban structure
from the current mono-centric one.
Compelling examples of the effectiveness of Stockholm’s conservation policies are the
nomination for the first European Green Capital in 2010, and that the city has managed to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions per capita over a period of continuous economic growth and
population increase, and resulting in a rate that is among the lowest in OECD metro areas
(OECD 2013: 9).
2.5.3. Choice in Context
Housing choice in both Helsinki and Stockholm is happening in conditions that are
characterized by two important interrelated factors. Both cities are significant modern
economic centers and are destinations of considerable net migration. From a housing market
perspective, there however are some differences between the cities.
Firstly, being cities in Finland and Sweden, the housing markets have been highly regulated
during the creation of the Nordic welfare state model, and the public sector has been a
significant player in all aspects of the market (Loikkanen & Lönnqvist 2007; Lundström &
Wilhelmsson 2007). From the early 1990’s onwards along with strong economic
restructuring, the housing markets have experienced considerable deregulation. According to
(Andersson et al. 2007: 24-25), this process has been much faster in Finland than in Sweden.
In the case of Stockholm, municipal housing companies are still large players, but their
operating model has transformed into that of the private sector. These developments in the
Stockholm market have had two important effects: the private sector of the housing market
has become an increasingly important player in the development of housing designs as public
procurement has decreased (Lundström & Wilhelmsson 2007: 338-339), and the political
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38
connection to the housing market has prevailed as the municipal housing companies are still
publicly owned even if operating as the private sector (Bengs 2010b).
Secondly, while there are two main types of tenure in Finland (ownership and renting), in
Sweden there is a third form called tenant-ownership that is mainly associated with
apartment-building and row-house living. In this type of tenure, the resident owns a share to
live a specific apartment but ultimately does not concretely own his or her “walls” which are
owned collectively through the residents’ association. The tenant-ownership model is close
the common apartment ownership model via a housing cooperative that is in place in many
countries as in tenant-ownership the resident also has the right to sell the share on the market.
The key difference is that in the tenant-ownership model the resident is not free to rent the
apartment onwards. The key importance in comparison to e.g. Finland is that in Finland an
individual may freely invest in apartments and put them for rent. In Sweden this kind of
small-scale private initiative in the urban housing markets doesn’t to a great degree exist. It
has only been in 2009 that similar owner-occupancy as in Finland has been introduced to
Swedish legislation (Borglund et al. 2013).
Despite these differences in housing policy, the characteristics of the housing supply in
Helsinki and Stockholm are quite similar. It is almost entirely made up of apartment buildings
(86% in HEL and 90% in STO) and thereby only a small share of detached or attached houses
(City of Helsinki Urban Facts 2013; City of Stockholm 2013). A difference is that Helsinki
has performed better than Stockholm in keeping up with the sizeable growth in housing
production (Andersson et al. 2007: 19), which means that the need for new housing is much
more critical in Stockholm. According to Lundström & Wilhelmsson (2007) this has largely
to do with the above-mentioned liberation processes of the housing market which have had a
stronger impact on the operational side in the Swedish housing industry.
Another difference is that in Helsinki apartments are smaller than in Stockholm. In 2004, the
average person in the Helsinki Region had 35.4 sqm of living space whereas his or her
counterpart in the Stockholm area had slightly over 40 sqm (Lankinen et al. 2009: 17).
At the demand side, the nuclear family definitely is not the dominant household type on the
market as suggested by e.g. Rudlin & Falk (1999/2009). According to statistics produced by
City of Helsinki Urban Facts (2013) and the City of Stockholm (2013), the average household
size in both cities is 1.9, which is much lower than the EU average of 2.4 (Eurostat 2013), and
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in Helsinki for example 49% of them are one-person households whereas 5-person
households make only 3% of the total. In Stockholm the share of one-person households is
allegedly even higher, around 60% of all households (Fortune 2012). In terms of age, the
populations in the cities are younger than the national averages which are also reflected in the
share of the elderly. The share of inhabitants over the age of 65 is 15.8% in HEL and 14.2%
in STO. Both shares are also below the national average and also the EU average (17.5%).
From a multiculturalism perspective, the share of foreign-born inhabitants is much higher in
Stockholm (ca. 30%) than in Helsinki (ca. 10%).
Future trends indicate that the share of elderly citizens in both cities is increasing but much
slower than at national level due to working-aged net migration (Eurocities 2012: 2; HSY
2012: 60). Foreign immigration will also continue to be a characteristic of future growth, but
in Helsinki it is projected to significantly intensify (Eurocities 2012: 2; HSY 2012: 60). In
Helsinki, the average household size is estimated to decrease and the average dwelling space
to increase (HSY 2012: 60) In Stockholm a factor that might influence these trends is that the
city experiencing a baby boom and families are increasingly staying in the city (Eurocities
2012: 2).
A lot of research has been done to interpret how these changing conditions affect people’s
housing decisions. In Finland, the national surveys for living preferences keep showing that
more than half of Finns living in urban areas would like to live in a detached home at some
point, and that more live in apartments than would like to. The qualities that people mostly
desire in their living environments are peace and quietness, access to services, an individual
yard and closeness to nature (Strandell 2011: 10-19). More place-specific research in the
Helsinki region has however showed that the ideal density people seek in their urban
environment is around 100 inhabitants per hectare, which is the same as the maximum that
townhouse-dominant neighborhoods potentially could house (Schmidt-Thomé et al. 2013: 2).
Furthermore, other qualities such as aesthetics, pedestrian and bicycle connectivity and
generally functional qualities are elevated among the national ones (Kyttä 2012). (Kepsu et al.
2010) on the other hand have researched the location preferences of knowledge workers in
Helsinki testing Florida’s (2012) arguments and discovered that there is significant
differentiation in what people value most within this group too. A common factor for all
groups was however that housing quality in the region is all but suffice; it is expensive and
lacking choice (Kepsu et al. 2010: 47-56).
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In studies on Stockholmites’ living preferences, Fransson et al. (2001) have analyzed that the
most important qualities people seek from their living environment are a “central location”,
“good accessibility”, “commercial services” and “buzz”. In another study, themes such as