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This anthropological study focuses on spatially ordered dimensions of sociocultural life in Kontula, a suburban housing estate located at the urban margins of Helsinki, Finland. With a notorious reputation since its construction in the 1960s, it has come to represent the numerous ills of contemporary urbanity, from poverty and substance abuse to failed immigration policies. Its urban transformation is explored as the entanglement of imagination and materiality, a make-believe space that privileges neither the social constructionist nor the purely materialist perspective. I study the everyday life of its inhabitants as recurring and routinized episodes, occasionally interrupted by events that disturb its embodied flow and force inhabitants to reflect upon their spatially situated practices. I argue that the everyday encounters in rapidly transforming Kontula are simultaneously experienced as absurd and ordinary, and constitute the ordering principles of its affective geography.

Kontula, a suburban estate at the margins of Helsinki, Finland, has been plagued by a notorious reputation since its construction in the 1960s. At different moments in history, it has reflected failed urbanity, with shifting emphases on issues such as rootlessness, segregation, intergenerational poverty, and unsuccessful integration of immigrants. Unlike many other suburban estates in Helsinki, it has become a potent symbol of the ills of contemporary urbanity in the vernacular geography of the city. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article explores how its inhabitants experience the dynamic between the internalised stigma and their responses to it. The focus is on how historically formed and spatially defined senses of belonging and exclusion shape their everyday lives and how they have found ways to challenge the dominant perceptions about their homes and neighbourhoods. I argue that an understanding of cultural intimacy, conceptually developed by Michael Herzfeld, offers a useful way to approach the tension between essentialised categories and lived realities. Rather than simply limiting their agency, the shared stigma enables inhabitants to form powerful senses of belonging. The article emphasises how culturally intimate understandings employ both complex historical trajectories and shifts in relative location to question and confront the stigma in the language of mutual trust and belonging.

VTT Science 117 ; Buildings, representing more than a third of global energy consumption, have long remained one of the focal points for the efforts to increase energy efficiency. The residential sector in particular has had more energy-related policies put in place than any other sector in the IEA countries. Therefore, the question which policies will have the greatest effect over time is very relevant to the policymakers. The main objective of this thesis is to develop a method for calculating the en-ergy efficiency potential of the building stock and to assess the economic effects of the realization of the potential in terms of changes in GDP, employment and external costs. Even though the method is meant to be applicable to different building stocks, the Finnish building stock was mostly studied as the method was developed over time. Similar but more limited analysis was also conducted for a number of EU member states. During the course of the study, a calculation tool called REMA was developed based on the methods used. The purpose of REMA is to allow conducting similar analyses in the future with relative ease in a systematized way. REMA is a bottom-up engineering model of energy use in the building stock. Future developments are estimated using annual rates of new construction, renovations and removals from the building stock. The selected approach entails selecting representative building types, also called archetypes, for estimating the energy consumption in different segments of the building stock. The scenarios calculated concerning the Finnish case indicate that a few per-cent rise in annual construction and renovation investments can decrease total primary energy consumption 5-7% of the country by 2050 compared to a baseline scenario. On the short term a slight decrease in the level of GDP and employment is expected. On the medium to long term, however, the effects on both would be positive. Furthermore, a significant drop in harmful emissions and hence external costs is anticipated. Overall, a clear net benefit is expected from improving energy efficiency. For other EU countries studied, typically energy savings of about 20% were estimated to be achievable by 2030 with cost-effective renovation investments in the building stock analysed. Overall, major economically sound energy efficiency potentials were identified, but the realization of these potentials is rather slow due to the limited renewal rates present in building stocks. ; Buildings, representing more than a third of global energy consumption, have long remained one of the focal points for the efforts to increase energy efficiency. The main objective of this thesis is to develop a method for calculating the energy efficiency potential of the building stock and to assess the economic effects of the realization of the potential in terms of changes in GDP, employment and external costs. The scenarios calculated concerning the Finnish case indicate that a few percent rise in annual construction and renovation investments can decrease total primary energy consumption 5-7% of the country by 2050 compared to a baseline scenario. On the short term a slight decrease in the level of GDP and employment is expected. On the medium to long term, however, the effects on both would be positive. Furthermore, a significant drop in harmful emissions and hence external costs is anticipated. Overall, a clear net benefit is expected from improving energy efficiency.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to describe, analyze, and understand the fading configurations in inter‐organizational relationships in the context of cultural sponsorship.Design/methodology/approachA dyadic case study investigates a long‐term cultural‐sponsorship relationship between a business sponsor and a sponsored museum.FindingsThe triggers of relationship fading are broadly elaborated into structural and situational triggers. These triggers are further categorized into negative and positive structural triggers and into negative and positive situational triggers. Negative triggers accelerate the fading of cultural‐sponsorship relationships, whereas positive triggers hinder such fading.Research limitations/implicationsThe perceptions of the business sponsor and the sponsored museum are combined into a configuration matrix of relationship fading in cultural‐sponsorships relationships. The configuration matrix can be used to analyze the composition and the dynamics of perceptions during relationship fading. The configuration matrix offers a powerful and flexible tool that allows conflicting views in the cultural‐sponsorship relationship to be revealed and described.Practical implicationsThe analytical framework facilitates managerial identification of potential structural and situational triggers of fading in cultural‐sponsorship relationships. To manage such relationships effectively, the interacting actors have to take into account the probable fading of cultural‐sponsorships relationships, and the reasons for this.Originality/valueThe triggers of relationship fading can emanate from both the structural context in which this time‐bound cultural‐sponsorship relationship is embedded and the situational process itself. Consequently, the triggers of fading can be both structural with relatively high permanence and situational with single critical events and incidents occurring in the relationship.

Part 1: eParticipation Developments ; International audience ; Balancing between online-offline stages of participatory procedures is a delicate art that may support or hinder the success of participatory democracy. Participatory budgeting (PB), in particular, is generally rooted in online platforms, but as our case study on the City of Helsinki PB trial suggests, face-to-face events are necessary to engage targeted and often less resourceful actors in the process. Based on a longer-term participant observation, covering the PB process from its early to ideation phase to the current stage of proposal development for the final vote, we argue that the process has thus far been successful in blending online-offline components, largely supported by the active support of borough liaisons who have served as navigators between the different stages. From the point of view of co-creation, different stages of the PB process (ideation, co-creation) call for different strategies of online-offline participation. Effective mobilization of marginalized actors and interactions between public servants and citizens seem to benefit from face-to-face processes, while city-wide voting and discussion can effectively occur in the online platform.

Balancing between online-offline stages of participatory procedures is a delicate art that may support or hinder the success of participatory democracy. Participatory budgeting (PB), in particular, is generally rooted in online platforms, but as our case study on the City of Helsinki PB trial suggests, face-to-face events are necessary to engage targeted and often less resourceful actors in the process. Based on a longer-term participant observation, covering the PB process from its early to ideation phase to the current stage of proposal development for the final vote, we argue that the process has thus far been successful in blending online-offline components, largely supported by the active support of borough liaisons who have served as navigators between the different stages. From the point of view of co-creation, different stages of the PB process (ideation, co-creation) call for different strategies of online-offline participation. Effective mobilization of marginalized actors and interactions between public servants and citizens seem to benefit from face-to-face processes, while city-wide voting and discussion can effectively occur in the online platform. ; Peer reviewed

Today's exponential advancement of information and communication technologies is reconfiguring participatory urban development practices. The use of digital technology implies new forms of decentralised governance, collaborative knowledge production, and social activism. The digital transformation has the potential to overcome shortcomings in citizen participation, make participatory processes more deliberative, and enable collaborative approaches for making cities. While digital tools such as digital mapping, e-participation platforms, location-based games, and social media offer new opportunities for the various actors and may act as a catalyst for renegotiating urban space and collective goods, digitalisation can also perpetuate or even attenuate existing inequalities and exclusion. This editorial introduces the thematic issue "Citizen Participation, Digital Agency, and Urban Development" which focuses on the trajectories and (dis)continuities of citizen participation through digitalisation and elaborates this with examples from Europe and Asia on how the digital transformation impacts, challenges, or reproduces hegemonic power relations in urban development.

Local authorities increasingly employ digital platforms to facilitate public engagement in participatory budgeting processes. This creates opportunities for and challenges in synthesizing citizens' voices online in an iterated cycle, requiring a systematic tool to monitor democratic quality and produce formative feedback. In this paper, we demonstrate how cases of online deliberation can be compared longitudinally by using six Big Data-based, automated indicators of deliberative quality. Longitudinal comparison is a way of setting a reference point that helps practitioners, designers, and researchers of participatory processes to interpret analytics and evaluative findings in a meaningful way. By comparing the two rounds of OmaStadi, we found that the levels of participation remain low but that the continuity and responsiveness of online deliberation developed positively.

Energy and Buildings Vol.51 Nr.August, 48-55 ; In this study the barriers to energy savings and the policy measures set up to overcome these barriers were mapped by interviewing stakeholders in ten European Union member states (MS). In addition, an estimate of energy savings potential was calculated. It seems that in most countries cost-effective energy savings of about 10% can be achieved by 2020 and 20% by 2030. A total annual energy saving of approx. 150 TWh by 2020 and approx. 280 TWh by 2030 appears possible. This can be compared to the total annual primary energy consumption of 21,000 TWh in all EU countries combined. Barriers and policies to overcome them were also studied. This was based on a literature review, stakeholder interviews and in-depth homeowner interviews in ten MS. A commonly cited problem was that people are not keen to improve energy efficiency of their homes as it does not proportionately increase the value of the property. Another widespread problem was that energy prices do not include all the negative external costs that the use of energy causes, such as pollution. The most commonly reported public policy measures in use related to information dissemination and subsidies for energy efficiency retrofits