Archipelago City. A trans-national metropolis in the Baltic Sea

by Bauhaus Kolleg IX*

In 2007/2008, the Border Cities Kolleg, facilitated by the Germany-based Bauhaus Dessau Foundation [1], brought together an international group of young planners, architects, artists and urbanists to explore the complex dynamics of trans-national urbanism in the Baltic Sea Region. Within this framework our group came together to consider the cities of Helsinki and Tallinn as a case of self-made trans-national metropolis in EU. Our research tested the notion of an integrated regional identity formation as desired by region makers to determine whether this model, or alternate emergent forms better describe the situation of the Helsinki-Tallinn-Region (HTR). The cross border effects as well as historical pre-conditions manifest in the urban fabric of Tallinn appeared to us as an archipelago of ‘islands’, each with different economic, social, and cultural milieus; segregations overlooked or under considered by city planners and administrators. The model of the archipelago also created an inverse space between these hegemonic ‘islands’ where new inputs can enrich HTR’s diversity. These latter hypotheses were tested in Tallinn through a series of public interventions in May 2008, concluding with a discussion between city planners, architects, art critics and general public. The outcome led to following proposals developed within our program as a series of experimental urban scenarios dealing with Tallinn’s urban structure seen as an archipelago of islands, a social segregation process and new strategies to enable both stakeholders and inhabitants to influence the future of HTR.

Start: a Development Strategy for the Urban Landscape
The project ARCHIPELAGO CITY draws on the structural potentials of the city itself for future urban development [2]. The project uses landscape elements for a determined process-oriented development strategy, tightly linked to the upcoming contemporary planning issue of landscape urbanism theorized especially in North America and more often already successfully practiced in Europe. The project begins with an analysis of the urban fabric looking for specific demands regarding topics such as population density, typological supply of open spaces, hierarchization and stigmatization and structural issues. From this a map of zones with very specific combinations of problems was elaborated as a base on which to develop structural planning process addressing different issues in certain zones. As the most underprivileged urban islands identified through this elaboration fall together with the most stigmatized districts, the qualification of these urban areas to prevent segregation processes within the city seems the most necessary. The proposes of the project, exploring the possibilities of open space programs for urban qualification, uses three scales already existing in the city fabric as points to intervene – big areas with importance on city scale, inner qualification of urban islands, punctual interventions using also temporary strategies in an ever changing cityscape. On the city scale big potentials are stated for the open lands between the two islands of Lasname leading to the cliffs and the abandoned quarry next to it and the abandoned part of extreme natural beauty west of Kopli beach. Both would be in direct neighbourhood to densely populated areas such as Lasnamae, Mustamae and Vaike Oismae and bear the potentials of real improvement for life conditions in these districts when sensitively developed into recreational areas than building plots. From an inner qualification of urban islands with landscape elements should especially benefit areas with weak structures and a lack of identity such as Kopli and Tallinn’s inner areas. Punctual programmatic interventions would use transformation processes in industrial areas to create stepping stones between open space facilities and would temporarily use abandoned spaces indoor and outdoor to widen urban programs and serve as breeding grounds for future inventions. In three zooms into Lasnamae, Kopli and the Harbour area a possible step by step development process using landscape as leading element are sketched out. On an abstract level one can read the proposed new structure of the city as an archipelago of distinctive characteristic islands intersected with big bands and dots of natural or recreational areas and stepping stones of public open space between several units.

Two case of studies

Harbour (Sadama)
Based on the archipelago model of the city structure, the project focused on a singular fragment of the urban form, the Tallinn Harbour (Sadama). A zone where the cross-border effects plays out physically and transitions are taking place due to past and current happenings. The Sadama currently a topic of discourse is undergoing transformations, due to growing economies, dynamicities and requirements of a more open water front development. Presently the welcome gate to the city via the sea for 2 million passengers yearly who are greeted by spas, cheap shopping malls, industrial land, parking lots against the silhouette of a beautiful old city. [//] Over the course of the last years the gaining importance of this piece of the city remains in the custody of multiple owners each with their own agenda for the course of development. The idea of potential development is seen more as a marketing strategy than one of solving the city’s need of an operational shoreline, remaining a brown field between the city and the coast. In this project we explored the possibility of reconnecting a single fragment back to daily city life experimenting with the feasibility of having non-hierarchal structure and not taking into the preconceived notion of a master plan. To see development along lines of different ownership criteria, needs and relation to the city centre, under the light of changing social, political and economic conditions. It is an attempt to extend and re-configure the relationship between the city, the harbour and its user. Dividing the factors making the space into Ownership differences, Un-used spaces, Existing infrastructural lines and Centres of Activity, we decided not to look at them in isolation but overlapped them to give us a probable solution. Putting these elements on the same plane in an abstract manner lead to a possible redefinition of the space by generating a new fabric for the area in question, leaving our interventions to specific points. With effective and strategic development in certain zones of the harbour such as: green spaces for daily usages, public harbour activities along the shore, informal and formal cultural spaces and possible area for mixed housing usages, provided a partial solution to probable rehabilitation of the shore front.

Railway
The project OF ISLANDS AND BORDERS is a strategy for development and protection of areas in Tallinn using the city’s own characteristics. It essentially consists in assuming the “archipelago” structure as an existing quality of the city and taking its advantages to make urban planning, using its elements to work for the city, instead of against. The city’s train station area is the chosen case of study, where big transformations are suppose to take place in few years. This scenario leads to a rapid changing of the railway as an essential way of transportation for the city, and with it, the main train station and the area around it, where the pressure for development is going to be bigger than it is already starting to be now. Next to the train station, we find the Balti Jaam popular market and four small blocks of mixed area. Due to the lack of space, there will be no other option to the transnational space than invading and transforming Kalamaja´s urban fabric. To prepare Kalamaja for this transnational challenge, this project chooses to strength these two in-between areas – the Balti Jaam market and the four blocks, making of them two new islands and using them as buffer zones. These two buffer zones will block the natural way of development and push them into a big and empty rail yard area, where the new transnational space is now going to take place.

Transit. This Too Shall Pass
This project concerns two case studies of urban transformation: Makasiinit in Helsinki and Baltijaam market in Tallinn. These are spaces of transition, emerging in the 1990s during a period of rupture and shifting value in urban form. Located near rail stations, the post-industrial landscape offered great potential for experimentation and appropriation. The Makasiinit district in Helsinki was a warehouse area occupied by cultural producers as a production, exhibition and community space. Markets,concerts and other informal activities became increasingly popular here. The Baltijaam Market in Tallinn is home to an informal market, established in the transitional period following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Here various low priced goods and produce are available through market stalls and indoor spaces. Although located within different contexts, and operating with different patterns and users, several commonalities exist. Both areas grew out of local initiative, desire and necessity, and became important sites to enact culture and negotiate transitions. Now new desires and initiatives -if not necessities- have led to new visions for these places. In the case of Makasiinit, attempts by local users to challenge, and propose a new trajectory were unsuccessful to alter official plans, and users have now relocated to a new site. The future of the Baltijaam market is undetermined, but if the experience of Makasiinit is any indication, the shift promises to be very abrupt and distinct from current use patterns. Within these transitions, there is a significant loss of complexity and vitality in these places, one that cannot be easily replicated. This ongoing project seeks to bring together different perspectives of local users, planners and developers, to make the complexity and potential of both sites visible.

Plug&Plan. A New Model For Urban Centers
How long Tallinn will manage its urban growth without a proper dialogue among its stakeholders, is the question that those involved in planning are posing in the last few years. The regime of deregulation started at the eve of the Estonian’s independency has created several opportunities for economic and urban developments. However, this process is leading to a negative impact on the social structure as well as in the urban structure of Tallinn in terms of public space. From this starting point a project, metaphorically named PLUG&PLAN [3], has been developed. PLUG & PLAN consists of a network of Urban Centers (UCs) located in strategic areas around the city. PLUG&PLAN use this already existing ‘energy’ to enable residents to work together with local stakeholders in order to produce that open and shared knowledge essential in a mature metropolis (PLAN). PLUG&PLAN’s UCs are bound, temporary and easy to install. Bound because each UC addresses the problems of the area where it is located on. Temporary because at the beginning of the process a deadline is fixed beyond which the UCs are moved elsewhere. Easy to install because each UC is an inflated structure with a flexible topology which can fit in almost every urban situation. So far, PLUG&PLAN is a project of dialogue aimed to produce open, shared and updated knowledge still missing element in an otherwise competitive and equitable Finnish-Estonian trans-national region.

* this article has been published extensively in Maja (Estonian Architectural Review) n°4-2008 : “Local planning strategies in the frame work of european spatial policy” by Tomas Jonsson, Sukanya Krishnamurthy, Reinhard Micheller, Agatino Rizzo, Ricardo Santacruz, Filipe Santos de Souza.

Forthcoming Italian version in «Urbanistica», edited by Agatino Rizzo

[1] See: http://www.eu-urbanism-bordercities.de/

[2] http://www.rmicheller.net/archipelagocity.html

[3] http://www.cityleft.altervista.org/neworld/plug.htm