Democracy in Urban Planning. Power, Participation, and the Future of Helsinki: A conversation with Mona Schalin
- Pedro Aibéo
- May 11
- 30 min read
Updated: May 19
Article based on the Architectural Democracy's podcast interview with Mona Schalin (Episode #9, March 27th, 2024).
Mona Schalin studied architecture at the University of Technology and graduated in 1987. Schalin specializes in the design of demanding renovation projects and the protection of the built cultural environment. Schalin’s most famous work is the renovation of Käärmetalo (Mäkelänkatu 86) in Käpylä, Helsinki, of which she is the main designer. The renovation of Käärmetalo received the Finlandia Award for Architecture in 2018 , and was nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award of the European Union in 2022.
[Aibéo]
Welcome back to the Architectural Democracy podcast today, the 27th March 2024. We have an exciting guest, Mona Schallin, from Finland. I feel already that we could talk for hours, but sadly we only have one hour.
Also joining us as usual, Mark Linder.
Mona, how are you doing?
[Mona Schalin]
I'm fine, thanks. And excited to be here.
[Aibéo]
Thank you for coming over. We came across your work through an article in Helsinki-Sanomat. Being critical about the participatory planning process of Helsinki, more specifically about the Elielinaukio process, which, for people who don't know about it, is that square by the railway station. (the article: "Why are Helsinki's drastic changes being prepared in secret, asks architect Mona Schalin")
Then we digged deeper and we found out what an interesting workaholic character you are. So you definitely should be invited to talk about your experience and your wisdom around these topics. I start with a question that really excites me, which is your actually starting point, your research of the city of Roma.
And then on your work on renovations, if you could just enlighten us a little bit on that path and projects.
[Mona Schalin]
Yes, the Rome case, it was my diploma work, my thesis as an architect in the Technical University in the 1970s. I studied there and we had this contact with our cultural institute in Rome, Villa Lante, for Finnish students. We could go there for a long time with our professors and learn about town building during the millennia.
Of course, Italy was a starting point in architectural history in many ways. So learning that these building of cities and the built environment is such a long process that you have to understand how changes affect this environment. So the changes are inevitable, but that they somehow are managed and how they are managed and who is making the decisions.
This was an interest from a very early start, even when I was in school, I listened to two architects, Vilhelm Helander and Mikael Sundman, who published a book, Whose City is Helsinki? It's a pamphlet and it has inspired generations of architects to look at how the economic system and the governmental system or governing system in the cities works, how these decisions are made.
[Aibéo]
This is fascinating because the definition of architects, archi meaning the main, tect meaning construction, the main builder face a dilemma, which is the top-down planning, the master, the person who is in charge, does he or she decide on everything? Or has it changed? Do we want to involve more people in that decision process? Or are things still the same as before?
[Mark]
I was going to suggest, Pedro, maybe Mona could step back and define planning to begin with. What does planning mean to you? And then how did we get the planning system we now have in Finland?
[Mona Schalin]
I could say that planning or making plans was in the centuries before, the 19th century, the privilege of a ruling class or ruling the upper segment of the society to make plans. They drew plans. But in the 19th century, with the bourgeois society developing in Europe, you had to start working on a more comprehensive planning.
That planning involves all this, like in Paris, how the traffic system should function, or how the troops should be transformed in a crisis situation when you had soldiers who had to move. And you had then the railroads coming in, how people in the bigger cities would move around. And I think this is one of the basic things for planning that has much to do with this traffic and movement and production and to distribute goods.
[Mark]
Who does the planning process answer to?
[Mona Schalin]
The plans that I talk about of the 19th century, they were drawn to be published, to be shown, to get a kind of political support for the change that was coming. Support for certain groups of people at that time. There was noone who had the right to vote in the 19th century.
It didn't involve all the groups in society, but those who had an impact. And I guess it was the bourgeoisie, the rising bourgeoisie that wanted to be involved, because there had been revolutions in France, and revolutions were something one wanted to oppose, one didn't want them. So, how to involve people?
This is a long process on how the governmental and the democratic system begins to get involved.
[Aibéo]
And this is also the change of paradigm that we have. Now we have a literacy level remarkably higher than before. Also, the access to information is much faster, and one can reach more people, faster. So it's probably unfair to compare it, but in a way needed.
We have the main builder, the architect, who knows a bit more, but he or she is going to affect the city so much, and its citizens, that the people should actually have a saying, or should have an opinion about it. It hasn't been so because one wouldn't be able to, people wouldn't be able to understand minimally, or even access. But nowadays, it's different.
Would you agree on that?
[Mona Schalin]
Yes, it's different. And we have all the means to make decision making accessible, and all the planning processes accessible, because we have all these internet services, especially, I think, in Finland, where we have a very open society and we have all these networks. Our plans are published very quickly. And also, the pre-process, all the long process of planning should be published on this map, what would you call them, the city maps, map systems, you have this mapping system, which we didn't have 20 years ago.
Now we have everything there, possibly, to understand, but who is then able to take in all this information, that's been a different one, you need to have some help for that, because there's too much also.
[Aibéo]
There's also the usual thing you need: time. You need a civic movement, civic education, how to reply, how to access those things, but also how to contest.
[Mark]
Is there international context in your experience? So, for example, after the war, the British changed their planning system. How do you benchmark Finland, where we are, versus other democracies?
[Mona Schalin]
I guess it's the Scandinavian way of thinking, the welfare state, that's one keyword, and that involves also Great Britain, of course, because that was also a kind of welfare, all these new cities that were planned, and new schools and all that, what happened after the Second World War? I guess, the kind of Scandinavian model for it involves also the British influence on how to deal with planning, to make it public, a public interest. I don't think that's so in all countries, but I don't know very much about it, but I think we have this international context, and we usually like to speak about how we have our planning, like hierarchy and all this, that how we have build up these systems, and make possible to involve all stakeholders.
[Aibéo]
So, having that in the background, how then we justify what has been happening in so many cases in Finland, especially then the one by the railway station?
[Mona Schalin]
I see it because of my experience. I've been in this profession since the 1970s, and I have experienced this time when there was quite a need, a wish to open up and make everything, and have influence from all kinds of societies of inhabitants, and taking them into the planning process.
And then something changed about 20 years ago. The new ideas that private economic interests could come in at a very early stage, and start directing the town, for instance, the town planning, or the regional planning even, the idea that we need so much private capital to develop, of course, you need developers all the time, but the way developers became like, how they got access to these processes, somehow you also started to close down the possibility for our greater society to influence that.
I don't know if I could say it the right way, most of my experience is in Helsinki, which I follow closely. I live here, and in Helsinki, there was really a very strong sign that the town planning agency started changing the way how information is spread out, and became very, very skilled in this kind of stakeholder contacts, what you tell people, and what you keep secret, and so many decisions started, one began to develop a parallel decision-making institutions that aren't open for, you don't publish what they have decided.
[Mark]
That's very strange. But was this just a sort of slippery slope, or was there some trigger events that started this sort of parallel?
[Mona Schalin]
It began with the bigger scale of buildings in the city center, because the Helsinki city is a 19th century city with a 19th century town plan, and buildings from the 19th and 20th century, early 20th century. There were places that were left open for new development, because they had been empty spaces, bus stations, harbor areas, industrial areas.
Suddenly you had a completely new scale of development. One developer and a very big area, a very valuable land, and how to make interesting for the developers to come into Helsinki, then some new processes were quickly developed, so that they could influence the planning in a very early stage before it became public.
[Mark]
So it's a case of bigger jobs, so to speak. You have to create attractive conditions, but then there's a string attached to the attractive conditions, because the developer says, well, I'm going to take on this big job, but I would like to have more control.
[Mona Schalin]
You're quite right. That's what I think happened, and that involves our democratic planning processes with all these decisions made by the city. Not the city, but a kind of parliament that works for the urban area, the city council. With political parties represented. Because they approved these decisions in the past, they have always been approving the town plans. They have had a political decision, and this could be problematic for a developer who wants a quick process, smooth and easy.
[Aibéo]
We are in a world economy setting, and that's a characteristic of business, to be fast, implement fast, react fast. Otherwise, the client goes somewhere else. And so that's something that probably is one of the big pressures to undermine that process.
[Mark]
But surely, across the Nordics, the same pressure would have been felt.
[Mona Schalin]
Yes.
[Mark]
So do you think the response was different?
[Mona Schalin]
We don't have really the same town planning system in the different countries. So that's also different. Finland has a three level planning that I don't think they have in Sweden or Denmark.
So I can't say that's the same. I can only speak for Finland in this case. But of course, in the growing cities, in Oslo, in Stockholm, in Copenhagen, in Aarhus, you have had this kind of huge projects in the same.
And somehow I have a feeling that the quality is better somewhere else that you don't really have the quality control. They have other means.
[Mark]
Well, for example, to take that, I mean, Copenhagen's skyline is completely transformed.
[Mona Schalin]
Yes. And the harbor area completely.
[Mark]
Yes. And what do you think is it about the planning system, the way they looked at the planning system that might have done that? And how would that be different from us?
[Mona Schalin]
Yes, I guess that you have had in, for instance, Copenhagen, a kind of quality control of the architecture. I don't know, that may be just a rose colored dream, but that you had some kind of other means to control what is built.
And the high class of the Danish architecture.
[Mark]
Well, I was going to say that there are just more Danish architects, something like 30,000 Danish architects. They educated so many architects. So that you say might, by itself, might have raised the standards.
[Mona Schalin]
In design and architecture, Denmark is really strange, a small country, few people, but the design is in the society everywhere, and not so in Finland.
[Aibéo]
You're being negative as an insider, but an outsider would say Finland has a huge design approach. Itala or Marimekko, even the cartoons like Moomin. But now, some bigger projects are here. Is it a cultural phenomena in that sense that it's not so extravagant or experimental as the neighbors? Is it a historical constraint?
[Mona Schalin]
It must be, it must have to do, because you mentioned these companies and the Moomin, of course, they are from the 1950s and even earlier, Itala goes back to the 19th century, it is the post-war period, the rebuilding period when everything was somehow, there was this kind of change. Finland was such a rural country until the early 20th century. And then this urbanization starts even after the second world war and the rebuilding.
Finland was in the war, it was different, the experience was different with the bombing and rebuilding was quite a national project. Sweden wasn't in the war and Denmark didn't have to rebuild, but Finland had to. And that's where design came in. And we had these architects who worked in during the war with the rebuilding.
They, in fact, they had to, because they didn't have jobs, otherwise they were involved in the rebuilding and developed all kinds of processes and model projects. You can admire what they did when they started this, and they wanted to have quality, architectural quality in the rebuilding. And it also involved in the design, I think you go back to the fifties when you paint this picture of the Finnish design, but you didn't mention very new companies. They are coming, I mean, I don't want to speak ill of design, but I think design is not today on such a level.
[Mark]
So you had this umbrella concept of the welfare state. You had the exuberance of urbanization, post-war reconstruction, a real atmosphere where you had a big role for design and big build out. You're suggesting perhaps that this job was sort of done and peaked and has not necessarily continued on that trajectory, whereas perhaps Denmark having more cultural passion for design and architecture has powered on in with basically a bigger supply of design talent who has just helped to lobby a more energetic approach to continuing to reimagine the city of Copenhagen.
[Mona Schalin]
Why do you find so many pleasant areas in the Danish cities? They're welcoming and somehow built for people. They also had their own good theoreticians like Jan Gehl, who published Life Between Buildings, 50 years ago.
And it has been so influential because they built Strøget in Copenhagen, this pedestrian street, and it wasn't thinkable in Helsinki at that time to have something like that, to abolish cars from the city center. I mean, this is something you...
[Aibéo]
But they produced both the human scale architect, Jan Gehl, but also the hedonistic sustainability megalomaniac, big Bjarke Ingels. And he was here some years ago, and he talks often with several architects in Danish, and he says there is this love and hate approach, but they do communicate. And the communication is then central in between experts and likely people.
And that's where I don't know enough about the Danish process. But do you know anything about the top-down or the bottom-up decision-making process there in comparison with here? A democracy in urban planning?
[Mona Schalin]
Yeah, no, I don't really know, but I've been more involved with, let's say, the historic environments in the cities in Denmark. And I know, but they developed very long ago methods for publishing. They had the same system that they published kind of atlases about the towns and tell about the towns, not so much with historic facts, but more about how you experienced the town.
And they were books about it. And it was a very famous system of showing architects working and trying to make it very public how the cities, or not only cities, suburban areas, of course, a lot also, and analyze them and make them publicized, that you share this knowledge in a popular way with drawings and easy drawings, not too much technology in that. All these books, they save atlases.
They are quite famous.
[Mark]
It's a rich environment to help educate, improve the literacy, help attract ideas, help attract people into career paths.
[Mona Schalin]
Yes.
[Mark]
In that, and so you can see this, how the culture nourished all the elements to keep the fire going, so to speak. But then now, do you then see, how do you see then the attitude here? In other words, is there a desire to change or?
[Mona Schalin]
I don't know. Are we talking about professionals or?
[Mark]
Professionals.
[Mona Schalin]
Yeah. We talked in the lobby about stakeholders. And so the interest among Finnish planners hasn't been great, one hasn't really noticed that interest in theory and in having this international experience involved.
I mean, contacts, how many years did it take before Jan Gehl as a name was even accepted? He was laughed about in the planning circles, decades ago. We in the architecture history department and the architects university, we were of course interested in Jan Gehl.
But the town planning authorities didn't really think these kinds of Scandinavian things were really for us. We know better ourselves. In our country, there is a kind of, you don't really want to take in all those good government processes and ideas that you should take, should have for like facing the present.
[Aibéo]
There is a rhetoric about openness and participation. But in a practical level, it falls short in so many places, like just in comparison with Jan Gehl in terms of pedestrian areas, which was probably the most important.
And also Amsterdam, if you see Amsterdam on the sixties or seventies disaster, the tyranny of the car, as Jan also tells and the reclaiming the city for the pedestrians, creating businesses on the street level. We have so many cases here.
We proposed something similar to Lohja. There's very often. in cities accross Finland, two parallel streets crossing through the center. It could so be easy to just make one pedestrian and the other one as a support for cars.
But still, it still is that almost all of them are still both drivable. And is it a generational thing or is it cultural? Even though there's a rhetoric of openness, that's hard to understand how, how there is an acknowledgement that people need to improve.
But at the pragmatic level, it falls short in so many levels. What do you think? Is it the club phenomena?
Is it, this is our place and it was worked before?
[Mona Schalin]
You mentioned the car.
I think the fact that these things, even though it's so simple as just a pedestrian area are not done, the lack of implementation, even though in theory side, they know they should be experimenting more.
Yes. I can remember how long it took before the Aleksanteri street (Aleksanterinkatu) in the center of Helsinki became a pedestrian street. And it's not even a very successful pedestrian street because it goes from east to west.
The sun doesn't shine there. And you don't have this small, kinds of small establishments, small cafeterias and things that make it interesting. They have banks and big department stores and that kind.
You don't really get people living outside in such an area.
[Aibéo]
But what do you think of the new city square and railway station plans I guess the winner is Snøhetta, right?
[Mona Schalin]
Yes, Snøhetta.
[Aibéo]
So a Norwegian coming here to make a building promising some kind of open market area. Even though the whole process is already quite limiting of any kind of public participation. What do you think is going to be?
[Mona Schalin]
I think there will be more backstreets around the railway station. My view is that railway stations and this kind of central traffic like knots in the city need open space because people need to be able to move on foot towards and there is such a huge amount of citizens moving around the railway station daily. It's incredible the amount and people don't need to be crammed between buildings.
They need also to be able to cross the open spaces. And I think it's very interesting that the former Bürgermeister, this Jan Vapavuori in Helsinki, when he was asked about the open areas in Helsinki, he said that I see empty spaces everywhere and he meant that they should all be built. And that's also the program that they implement in Helsinki now, that open spaces should be developed into plots and have developers making office buildings and so on in this that we have.
Because Helsinki is a very open city with broad streets and open big squares. Of course, not full of life like in Italy's small cities. We need this light and space because we are a Nordic country with a dark winter and we need to have light, daylight in the streets and building and cramming.
These open spaces will not, I think, improve this city life.
[Aibéo]
It was also a fire safety issue after the rebuilding of Helsinki after the big fire.
[Mona Schalin]
Yes, of course. The Russian period was about fire safety with small wooden houses and broad streets because the whole city could burn in a night if you were unlucky before that. So it came from Russia that we have broad streets and tree lined streets to protect.
[Mark]
With all of the exposure you've had, how does a city develop a sense of itself and its future? I mean, your point about Rome is that it came in a way from above, but it was embraced by, because there was a sort of story behind it, because it was the coming together and the first time as a capital. The story of rebuilding of Helsinki and Finland is a narrative that brings everyone together.
But when you don't have, those are examples of sort of extreme things that bring things together. You have Copenhagen that didn't have anything extreme, but it sort of brought its own narrative together. What are some of the things that caused that grand consensus, if you will, about the direction of travel to come?
Does it require an inspiring leader who lays out a plan? Does it require a push, if you will, from the architectural community? Do citizens have to play a role in that?
[Aibéo]
Is it the literacy problem in architecture, like reading the city?
[Mona Schalin]
I was thinking about the role of professionals when you asked that question. As an architect, and speaking also for my professional colleagues, I believe it's very important that we understand how we can interpret and support these processes more effectively. That has been my experience—through my work, we've conducted many investigations and produced reports on the environment, specific areas, their history, and the current built environment, including their values, parks, open spaces, and historical layers.
We aim to make this information visible and write in a clear, accessible language—not complicated—so that people can understand how a place has developed. There are many resident organizations in different areas, especially in suburban regions. These communities often form their own representative groups to participate in decision-making and influence urban planning.
They’ve built systems themselves to ensure their voices are heard, and they are naturally very interested when they receive this kind of material, which often hadn’t been available before. With the reports the city has commissioned from us, these resident organizations now have tools and arguments to advocate for the protection of parks or to oppose construction in certain areas. For example, they can reference the report to show that a specific park has historical significance and plays a valuable role in the community’s daily life and movement patterns—something we try to explain and make understandable.
I think this work is necessary because of the overwhelming amount of information that needs to be interpreted and made accessible.
[Aibéo]
So it's not just that, it may also be due to a lack of tools, or perhaps a lack of diverse and practical tools to implement it. But it's also likely related to broader issues. I mean, there are so many articles appearing that are critical of this situation.
[Mark]
Well, you wrote a pamphlet a few years ago.
[Mona Schalin]
Yes, we were part of this "Whose City" initiative. It was criticized for focusing mainly on the inner city, but that was simply because you can't cover everything at once. There should be more pamphlets addressing other areas, but this particular one was about the city of Helsinki
[Aibéo]
Compared to other cities around the world, there is a fair amount of public participation and engagement here, but there is also a lot of frustration. Just yesterday, I received a phone call from a citizen in Helsinki saying, “They're going to destroy a forest. Can you help us?”
“Your forest?”
“Yes, it's another building project we just found out about. We're trying to do something about it.”
“Me? Why me?” There should be someone in the city available immediately—like a hotline or some kind of support system—where people can ask, “What’s going on?” Why would an ordinary Finnish citizen call a foreign architect who doesn't even live in Helsinki?
That alone is already a reflection of how the system isn’t working. The communication is somehow broken or undermined.
[Mona Schalin]
Yes, of course, these people also contact Finnish architects. But you seem to be well-known because of your work with Architectural Democracy. Many of us don’t have websites, and even though we could, we don't promote ourselves that way. Still, I believe many of my colleagues are involved in supporting residents and the public in planning processes.
The problem, however, for many architects working professionally, is that this isn't a very kind society in that regard. If you become known for working in this area, supporting the public or being critical, you may suddenly find yourself with fewer job opportunities.
I said in an interview once, on my birthday, that I’m old enough now that I don’t have to worry, I can say what I want without fear of it ruining my career. I don’t have anything to prove anymore. But if you’re a young architect trying to build a career, being outspoken in this way can close doors. As I said, kindness and understanding for this kind of criticism aren’t highly valued today.
There’s a kind of growing harshness in the profession. You see it especially if you express critical views. On social media, for example, things can get very toxic. You probably know how bad it can get, someone voices an opinion, and then others just pile on.
[Aibéo]
Absolutely. You’ve touched on a very important point, the role of social media in these discussions.
It ties directly into the broader issue of careers and the tension between personal ethics and professional practice in architecture. It’s a delicate balance. Take, for example, the German architect Christoph Ingenhoven, who spoke very openly about refusing to design a parliament for Gaddafi. That’s a powerful ethical stance. But realistically, how many architects, or offices, can afford to say no to such large-scale projects, especially from a purely business perspective?
Who would turn down a major commission on the grounds that “it’s not a democracy”? Why would I, as an architect, agree to design a parliament for a regime that doesn’t represent democratic values?
[Mona Schalin]
Yeah. And the big offices are growing because, funny enough, we have developers coming in—international property development companies that are buying the architects' offices today. They are—they are coming in.
They are also already part of it. I mean, that makes the situation really new, and—and how to deal with that.
[Mark]
What's an example of a time when we actually got it right? I mean, post-war, was there a community that was developed where you can look at it today and say, that has livability, the right kind of efficiency?
It has the right sense of modernity, the balance was right. What comes to mind in the Helsinki area, a time or place where redevelopment was really done well?
[Mona Schalin]
Well, I live in Ruoholahti, which is the former harbor area. It was developed at the end of the 1980s and into the 1990s. There was a town planning competition, we took part in it with my colleagues, but we thought it would be better suited for office space than for living.
But there are lots of blocks of flats on a nice scale, maybe six or seven stories, with green areas, tree-lined streets, and a canal that gives a bit of an Amsterdam feel. It has a mix of people with different income levels. There’s rental housing, student housing, and what we call the more expensive apartments, but from the outside, you can’t really tell, they all look the same.
And there are lots of people living there. When I moved in, I thought it was more like a suburban area, but now I realize it’s only about fifteen minutes from the exact city center. It has shops, pubs, and people on the streets, especially in summer when everyone is outside.
So I think it has worked out quite well, much better maybe than the southern harbor area that was developed later. That area doesn’t have the same daylight in the streets, or trees and green spaces. It feels much denser, with taller and darker buildings. Even as you move toward the open sea, the buildings get darker and darker, which feels like the opposite of how you should build here.
Helsinki is on the coast, and the sea and light are so important. So, socially, I think Ruoholahti is quite a good example. Of course, there are others too, but this is one I know from my own daily experience.
[Mark]
So, to just go to a more, sort of say, tactical area, if you're a developer and you would like to have some kind of consent for your plans, what are the kinds of things you think they should be doing? So, in other words, without changing the system, the system is the way it is.
It's sort of developer responsive. What are the kinds of behaviors that you see, that actually are on the right side of the path, so to speak?
[Mona Schalin]
Well, I have great faith that a developer could also be very, very educated and understand the society they are working in. They could see that it would be a good idea to get some second opinions beyond just those from the people currently in power in city government, who maybe prefer more secrecy and smoother processes.
Maybe you could have a kind of advisory board made up of different professions, who could advise on how to approach your project. Maybe you don't get as many square meters as your first idea proposed, but you could aim for something that avoids this kind of collision between interests. You have to understand and analyze the situation.
You can't just come in and say, I want this and you have to give it to me, because very often you're buying municipal land. You should be aware that it's common property you're acquiring.
[Mark]
So, if you had an advisory board that had members representing the various groups in the catchment area, the various groups that are going to be affected by this, and there was a public process, not a secret advisory board, but a public advisory board.
[Mona Schalin]
Yeah.
[Mark]
Then at least there would be a filter for the developer.
[Mona Schalin]
I've been thinking that when, in the technical university, Aalto University, when the School of Economics, or the University of Economics, was combined into the same school with engineering and planning and so on, why couldn't someone start to really think about this kind of process? Because of course, like we said, we need the investors. You can't build and develop without anyone wanting to invest.
But the interest in investing, I guess nowadays, is much based on the idea that you have this, what do you call it, a bank, you... desecuritize, what do you call it, when your property has a special value?
It's valued in a certain way.
[Mark]
Yeah, valuation of it. Yes.
[Mona Schalin]
And that makes it possible for you to develop more, and globally, if you have this kind of setup. But if you develop something in Helsinki, in Finland, it's strange that nowadays you can have your office spaces or street-level spaces empty and not rent them out, because you have such high rents. It even seems to be possible to have empty spaces and just wait, and not have them in use. You don't even, as a developer, always need to have tenants.
[Aibéo]
That's a worldwide phenomenon.
[Mona Schalin]
But it affects Helsinki.
[Aibéo]
Yes. For example, if you go to Doha in Qatar, I would say probably every third building is almost empty when you look at the skyline, which is very bizarre, especially in that setting. And here, of course, it's about speculation, right?
The markets, if you lower the rents, then the others will suffer. So it compensates to keep it empty. But then there's the environmental aspect, the question of resources. But from what you were saying, Mark, it feels like we are missing some kind of citizens' assembly, like a bit more of an open forum where these matters should be discussed?
[Mona Schalin]
Yeah.
[Aibéo]
Not just the city council, because I think we rely too much on city council approval or disapproval. Like, oh, let’s see what the politics say about this polemic project, and then it goes to the city council. Does it pass?
Okay. And it's seen as the people's voice, right? It's the city council. But it's not really, it's not the experts.
It's not.
[Mona Schalin]
No, it's actually the opposite. Today, for example, in the Helsinki City Council, there are various boards, but currently only one board, the Urban Environment Board, essentially determines how decisions should be made within the council.
This board is composed solely of politicians, and town planners can present decision-making materials, but they do not have the time or the professional expertise to fully understand the projects being presented. They have told me this themselves, as we have discussed it. They receive the materials just a few days before the meetings. These documents include perspective drawings and polished descriptions, but there is simply not enough time, or the necessary skill, to properly grasp what is being proposed.
Of course, these projects have been developed over a long time before reaching the meeting stage, but still, the politicians are just that, politicians, and they do not truly evaluate the content in depth.
[Aibéo]
Politicians, many times, and let’s not forget this, are just regular people with normal jobs who do city council work on the side. The same goes for board members, who nowadays are often not professionals either. I am on the urban planning board of the city of Lohja, so I know the process firsthand. You receive everything digitally, usually as a massive PDF, sometimes over a hundred pages long, all in Finnish.
The funny thing is that just two or three years ago, I told them they should change the format. I said, don’t send a photo of the document, make it a proper PDF, because then I can translate it, read it, and form an opinion. And they actually changed that, because before, everything was just an image.
That was a big improvement, and people welcomed it, even Finnish speakers. They said the documents were incredibly difficult to read in Finnish, not because of the length, but because the language is so technical and bureaucratic that even they could not fully understand it.
It would be very helpful to have a simplified version of these documents. And then, of course, there is all the political weirdness in the system here. For example, a prime minister can also be a city council member in Tampere, right?
Like in the last term. How would she possibly have the time to vote?
[Mona Schalin]
The same people are in all this.
[Mark]
So Mona, if you were in charge of the entire process, would you perhaps create an introductory training program that every council member would have to go through, about how to receive plans and how to actually understand what is being proposed? In other words, city councillors would need to go through some training in order to decode this myriad of documents, so they could become more literate in terms of inquiry. Shouldn’t there be, perhaps, some preparation for that?
[Mona Schalin]
Well, I totally agree that this would be a good idea. I also think we should involve journalists. The media, as it is now, when you read the news, whether in print or in digital newspapers, the information about urban planning is usually just a copy of an information sheet that has been sent to them. This is because they do not have the time, and often not the skill, to go deeper.
We have had some team meetings with journalists. For example, when we worked on the book Whose City, we reached out to all the Swedish-speaking journalists we could find. We had a very interesting team session with them, where we explained the planning processes. They said it was really valuable to hear from architects who understand how these processes work, especially when explained in simple language. That way, they could relate to the material they receive from the city council or other authorities.
Nowadays, journalists are under constant pressure. They do not have the time to research or produce original content, so they often just use what is given to them. And this has become very common.
Usually, when you read about a new large development project in a newspaper or online, it is presented in a very positive light, almost as if it has already been decided. There is no mention of us, the inhabitants, or how we might still be able to question or influence the process. In Helsinki, for example, there are five or six major projects that have been presented this way, as if they came down from the heavens, fully formed, instead of being something we can still discuss or shape.
[Mark]
Sure, with renders that look fantastic.
[Mona Schalin]
Yeah, everything is already there. And that’s strange because you really shouldn’t be allowed to say it has already been decided. Earlier, you mentioned the old market, the square next to the railway station. That’s how it happened.
The developer’s representative contacted the newspapers and announced that a new building would be constructed there, one even taller than the railway station. Then people could vote on it, but only among three options, right? Yeah, but the competition happened after that.
This was before the architectural competition. He just said that they would build this here. And it was a municipally owned square, a square in the town plan from the 1990s, quite a recent plan with an underground parking area built in the 1990s.
And suddenly, you read in the papers that this is going to be the developer's new huge project. How is that possible? The newspapers don't mention that this is only the beginning of the process, and that they have just submitted a proposal to the city. Nothing has been decided yet.
[Aibéo]
Do you think the city is lacking in this regard? Our previous guest, Carlos, also talked about how the different departments within a city often do not communicate well with each other, and how that can undermine or even kill projects. Do you think the same applies to the City of Helsinki or other cities? That bureaucracy or inefficiencies might be preventing these kinds of things from happening?
And it seems like maybe there was a lack of communication beforehand, or perhaps the process itself was simply missing.
[Mona Schalin]
It's strange to say this, because Helsinki underwent a major organizational change a few years ago. Various departments—such as town planning, master planning, school building, general construction, and the property assets division—were merged into a single entity: the Helsinki Urban Environment Office, now located in one building. They all moved into this shared space with open-plan offices and common cafeterias.
The idea was to foster easier cooperation and reduce the siloed communication between departments. However, I feel that the result has been a more hierarchical structure. The upper levels now filter down planning ideas and decisions. For instance, architects working in town planning today seem to have far fewer opportunities to express their own viewpoints, despite being highly educated experts in their fields. It appears that they mostly echo what is already stated in the master plan, without critically examining it. They may lack either the courage or the freedom to speak up without putting their jobs at risk.
[Mark]
So you're saying that it goes back to, to what you said about socially, if you challenge the brief, which is what you're saying, but the risk of that, is you become seen as a difficult character.
[Mona Schalin]
Yes. And, and somehow your professional career, it just drifts away.
[Mark]
But there's an awareness about that. One would presume that perhaps in, let's say Denmark, not to just put Denmark on a pedestal, but there's enough impetus from the profession so that maybe architects feel more relaxed about challenging briefs and, and rethink what's been given to them.
[Mona Schalin]
They are much more skilled in communication in Denmark. It's amazing—the difference between the Scandinavian countries in this regard. In Sweden too, communication is highly valued, though perhaps less so when it comes to decision-making. You often get the sense that discussions go on endlessly. But in Denmark—at least in my admittedly simplified view—communication is about learning to engage respectfully and effectively with people who have different opinions. In Finland, things so easily become personal.
Why is that? Is it because we used to live far apart in the forests, and having a different opinion was almost a threat—like you’d kill your neighbor over it? It’s strange how difficult it is to be critical in our field.
I feel that if I have the privilege of studying for free—meaning I don’t pay tuition, even though I still have to cover my living costs—then earning a degree in architecture comes with a responsibility. With that professional knowledge, we have a duty to contribute and share our insights.
[Mark]
So perhaps, in the mythical idea of this training camp, one part of it would be training the city council to better understand what they’re receiving. But maybe another part would be training architects to be more confident in pushing back against briefs that don’t make sense, and to get involved. Really involved.
And then the third part would be the media—encouraging a more informed perspective that goes a bit deeper. As you mentioned, the media is under a lot of pressure these days. Journalists are expected to produce story after story, but even a little more literacy and depth in reporting would really help the process.
[Aibéo]
But also then the developers are saying if you do a job here, you have to involve a wider amount of people into the project that will bring resilience to the whole project in the long run. So that's the benefit. Although it seems like a bigger investment in the beginning, the long-term return is higher.
That's another kind of process that somehow needs work, right?
[Mark]
So maybe there's, just extrapolating here, maybe there's an idea for an authority like Aalto and maybe some backing to create this boot camp for these different entities to come together in an efficient way, but something that gives you some high level concept awareness.
[Mona Schalin]
Yeah, I guess because we train a lot of people in enterprise and as entrepreneurs nowadays, but we should also train people for this kind of being prepared to renew and innovate these processes to make them more like open and democratic.
[Aibéo]
Mona, this has been a great talk. Fascinating. We have to come back again sometime soon.
We didn't even touch your work around renovation, but I just wanted to mention that very briefly here because it gives legitimacy to what you've been saying. So I really respect that. And one day, hopefully, we'll have you back to go again over these topics and a bit more around the renovation projects that you've been working on.
Thank you for coming over and hope to see you soon.
[Mark]
Thank you very much.
[Mona Schalin]
Thank you. Can I just add one more thing?
Yes, this has been an interesting and surprising event for me as well. What I’d like to say about renovation—something I’ve learned through working on a variety of very different projects—is that you really have to listen to other people. You can’t just see yourself as the professional expert. You have to be open to hearing different opinions and work towards getting others on board.
In my renovation projects, I’ve experienced this firsthand. You might start off with an engineer who has completely different ideas about how the renovation should be done, but by the end of the project, you’ve become close colleagues—maybe even friends—because you were able to find common ground and reach a consensus.
[Aibéo]
Because in that case, you really have to make a consensus because you do have to finish the project. It's not that you can just go home with a perspective, but you do have to come. You have to bring in people together, literally.
So the renovation projects, in a way, it's a very good example for democratic arenas.
[Mona Schalin]
Especially if you have time enough for it.
[Aibéo]
Which is tough. But because I'm also involved in renovation projects, it's also very cultural and social. Process.
How can we even do it without time? That's probably the question that we should ask ourselves. How can renovation be done without investing time in getting to know all these actors and cultural contexts?
Anyhow, again. Slow architecture. Slow architecture.
That's a good motto for today. Thank you so much for coming over.
Hope to see you again soon, Mona. Thank you.
[Mark]
Thank you.
Pedro Aibeo, Kathmandu, 12.05.2025
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