Panel discussion on Finnish Geography Days 10th November 2023 in Joensuu
Speakers & panelists: Sanna Ala-Mantila/Helsinki University, Tarmo Pikner/Tallinn University, Burcu Yigit Turan/Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Tero Mustonen/University of Eastern Finland, Maija Kuivalainen/University of Eastern Finland
Moderator: Kirsi Pauliina Kallio, Tampere University
Planetary Urbanism
The broad context of this Fennia Panel is the contemporary ’planetary turn’ identified by critical scholars, specialists from various fields, NGOs, intergovernmental bodies, politicians, and civil society actors across the world. It refers to what geographers often call ’scale jump’, that is, a shift of spatial attention. In this case, the jump is perhaps most importantly from scales such as ’global’ and ’transnational’, to the planetary perspective.
While the shift may first seem semantic, those attentive to the current environmental situation of the globe see it fundamental. Whereas ’globalization’ draws attention to the global mobilities of people, goods and ideas, with strong emphasis on the economy and the capitalist world order, ’transnationalization’ stresses the changing connections and disruptions between states, primarily political power relations between them, but acknowledging also cultural and social dimensions of the constantly transforming relational world. Both concepts are often coupled with the idea of ’translocalization’ where scalar attunement is toward cities, city-regions, and other regions and localities that together form economically, politically, socially, and culturally significant spatial configurations.
Diverting from these, the planetary turn urges us to see the world as a living environment consisting of fragile ecosystems that humans, among other species, are completely dependent on. A concern broadly shared by ’planetarists’ is that tipping points in the human-induced destruction of the planet are close if not already at hand. Brought together with the translocal perspective, this worry gets an urban face.
The over-consumption of the world’s resources takes place in urban centers, making the production of carbon emissions an urban matter, similarly to nature loss that actually happens most alarmingly beyond urban agglomerations. Major urban areas are connected through worldwide city-regional networks, driven by capitalist logics with an obvious northern-western tilt, and leaving other areas disconnected and depriving.
Currently, the whole planet is made to serve the increasingly rapid urbanization, which is leading to the collapse of ecosystems in various locations, to irreversible climate change with earth-shattering consequences, and to deepening inequalities between places and people. To stop and reverse this development, a radical change from globalization and transnationalization towards planetary balance and justice is needed. It needs to build on viable ecosystems and socially just environmental sustainability, through urban change. The panel discusses these and other aspects of the ‘planetocene’ from urban perspectives.
Picture: Sean Benesh /Unsplash
Sanna Ala-Mantila
Sanna Ala-Mantila is an assistant professor of Sustainable Urban Systems at the Ecosystems and Environment Research Program at University of Helsinki’s faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences. She is also affiliated with Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science. Her research aims to understand how we can build and transform our urban systems into more sustainable ones, with a focus on ecological and social sustainability and their interconnectedness. Her research encompasses various areas, including e.g. environmental inequality, carbon footprints, subjective well-being, and socio-economic segregation within urban environments.
Tarmo Pikner
Tarmo Pikner is a senior researcher at the Centre of Landscape and Culture, School of Humanities, Tallinn University. He completed his doctoral degree at the University of Oulu by analysing hybrid networks related to border-towns in the Baltic Sea region. Tarmo’s current research focuses mainly on two broader themes. One is the dynamics of urbanity, and how it forms relations between nature, culture and technology. The political ecologies and role of wastelands in these dynamics is a particular focus. The second theme explores assemblages of significant environmental change that connect legacies and Anthropocene appearances. It includes the spatialisation of rural-urban relations within turbulent crisis and climate change adaptation.
Burcu Yigit Turan
Burcu Yigit Turan is a senior lecturer in the subject area of ‘planning in cultural environments’ at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Landscape Architecture Division, Uppsala. Her works have generated at the intersections of landscape architecture, urban studies and critical social theory and cultural studies, and focused on reproduction of social inequality in spatial planning and design. Her recent works delineate the role of public space and landscape production in urban bordering, (neo)colonial urbanism, racialization and segregation.
Tero Mustonen
Tero Mustonen is a fisher and a geographer. He works for the Snowchange Cooperative. He has worked in Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Faroe Islands, Sámi home area, boreal Finland and Siberia for over 20 years on questions of biodiversity, climate change and Indigenous and traditional communities. Currently he leads the Landscape Rewilding Programme, which is restoring Finnish landscapes back to health. He is based in the village of Selkie in North Karelia.
Maija Kuivalainen
Maija Kuivalainen has connected her environment policy studies with a practical take towards environmental politics. So aside of being a student at the Department of Geographical and Historical Studies at UEF she is a (local) politician with the Left Alliance and an environmental and social activist. She is a member of the City Council of Joensuu and the Joensuu Urban Planning Board since 2021. She also has been a Youth Climate Delegate of Finland from 2021-2022 and knows also from this international experience that locals can and should truly make their concerns and demands understood globally.
Panel discussion on Finnish Geography Days 10th November 2023 in Joensuu
Speakers & panelists: Sanna Ala-Mantila/Helsinki University, Tarmo Pikner/Tallinn University, Burcu Yigit Turan/Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Tero Mustonen/University of Eastern Finland, Maija Kuivalainen/University of Eastern Finland
Moderator: Kirsi Pauliina Kallio, Tampere University
Planetary Urbanism
The broad context of this Fennia Panel is the contemporary ’planetary turn’ identified by critical scholars, specialists from various fields, NGOs, intergovernmental bodies, politicians, and civil society actors across the world. It refers to what geographers often call ’scale jump’, that is, a shift of spatial attention. In this case, the jump is perhaps most importantly from scales such as ’global’ and ’transnational’, to the planetary perspective.
While the shift may first seem semantic, those attentive to the current environmental situation of the globe see it fundamental. Whereas ’globalization’ draws attention to the global mobilities of people, goods and ideas, with strong emphasis on the economy and the capitalist world order, ’transnationalization’ stresses the changing connections and disruptions between states, primarily political power relations between them, but acknowledging also cultural and social dimensions of the constantly transforming relational world. Both concepts are often coupled with the idea of ’translocalization’ where scalar attunement is toward cities, city-regions, and other regions and localities that together form economically, politically, socially, and culturally significant spatial configurations.
Diverting from these, the planetary turn urges us to see the world as a living environment consisting of fragile ecosystems that humans, among other species, are completely dependent on. A concern broadly shared by ’planetarists’ is that tipping points in the human-induced destruction of the planet are close if not already at hand. Brought together with the translocal perspective, this worry gets an urban face.
The over-consumption of the world’s resources takes place in urban centers, making the production of carbon emissions an urban matter, similarly to nature loss that actually happens most alarmingly beyond urban agglomerations. Major urban areas are connected through worldwide city-regional networks, driven by capitalist logics with an obvious northern-western tilt, and leaving other areas disconnected and depriving.
Currently, the whole planet is made to serve the increasingly rapid urbanization, which is leading to the collapse of ecosystems in various locations, to irreversible climate change with earth-shattering consequences, and to deepening inequalities between places and people. To stop and reverse this development, a radical change from globalization and transnationalization towards planetary balance and justice is needed. It needs to build on viable ecosystems and socially just environmental sustainability, through urban change. The panel discusses these and other aspects of the ‘planetocene’ from urban perspectives.
Sanna Ala-Mantila
Sanna Ala-Mantila is an assistant professor of Sustainable Urban Systems at the Ecosystems and Environment Research Program at University of Helsinki’s faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences. She is also affiliated with Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science. Her research aims to understand how we can build and transform our urban systems into more sustainable ones, with a focus on ecological and social sustainability and their interconnectedness. Her research encompasses various areas, including e.g. environmental inequality, carbon footprints, subjective well-being, and socio-economic segregation within urban environments.
Tarmo Pikner
Tarmo Pikner is a senior researcher at the Centre of Landscape and Culture, School of Humanities, Tallinn University. He completed his doctoral degree at the University of Oulu by analysing hybrid networks related to border-towns in the Baltic Sea region. Tarmo’s current research focuses mainly on two broader themes. One is the dynamics of urbanity, and how it forms relations between nature, culture and technology. The political ecologies and role of wastelands in these dynamics is a particular focus. The second theme explores assemblages of significant environmental change that connect legacies and Anthropocene appearances. It includes the spatialisation of rural-urban relations within turbulent crisis and climate change adaptation.
Burcu Yigit Turan
Burcu Yigit Turan is a senior lecturer in the subject area of ‘planning in cultural environments’ at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Urban and Rural Development, Landscape Architecture Division, Uppsala. Her works have generated at the intersections of landscape architecture, urban studies and critical social theory and cultural studies, and focused on reproduction of social inequality in spatial planning and design. Her recent works delineate the role of public space and landscape production in urban bordering, (neo)colonial urbanism, racialization and segregation.
Tero Mustonen
Tero Mustonen is a fisher and a geographer. He works for the Snowchange Cooperative. He has worked in Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Faroe Islands, Sámi home area, boreal Finland and Siberia for over 20 years on questions of biodiversity, climate change and Indigenous and traditional communities. Currently he leads the Landscape Rewilding Programme, which is restoring Finnish landscapes back to health. He is based in the village of Selkie in North Karelia.
Maija Kuivalainen
Maija Kuivalainen has connected her environment policy studies with a practical take towards environmental politics. So aside of being a student at the Department of Geographical and Historical Studies at UEF she is a (local) politician with the Left Alliance and an environmental and social activist. She is a member of the City Council of Joensuu and the Joensuu Urban Planning Board since 2021. She also has been a Youth Climate Delegate of Finland from 2021-2022 and knows also from this international experience that locals can and should truly make their concerns and demands understood globally.