Election day in #Helsinki 🇫🇮
It's a beautiful day - but take a closer look 🧐
That green building is one of several empty office blocks in #ItaPasila during the housing crisis. On the bottom right is a shelter - bread qeues have been getting longer while our government shows disdain for the poor. And while public transport works well if you can afford it, it's much too expensive, to which the only response is more ticket inspections.
Time for a change - @elina!
(Which building is which? Don't really have the best of colour visions.)
I'm curious - what's happening inside the green one? Both the brown and the green towers never have any lights on, and they aren't the only ones apparently empty or at least highly underused in Itäpasila.
One point I didn't raise is that it's completely unsustainable that we've allowed the construction of lots of new office space - largely from concrete - right next to office space that stands empty.
I wouldn't go as far as to call empty buildings, as such, a crisis. Sometimes it's just capitalism working as hoped (as with the empty apartments and buildings in Katajannokka, Bulevardi, Eira, etc.), and sometimes the buildings are simply not suitable for the needs. Houses, even villages, have been abandoned before capitalism.
Crisis in capitalism (as in, it's crisis FOR capitalism) is when new buildings aren't sold, or development of a district gets halted.
It should be remembered that part of capitalism is even in the best of times a failure. Part of that failure is office buildings that aren't able to adapt with times.
Indeed, that such things are possible is one of the better examples FOR capitalism (or at least: for landlords).
On the other hand, we can argue that empty buildings are a failure for democracy, or for society. Which are very much an antithesis for capitalism!
Well, I'm not convinced of that either.
But in either case, I just wanted an opportunity to write a smallish essay. No slight was meant!
If capitalism demands new buildings instead of renovating old ones, that's OK - but it's not something we have to accept, and something city planning can prevent. Apparently, capitalism also demanded lots of new malls in Helsinki, and now that shops in the centre are struggling, capitalism demands we make it easier to drive there...
Other European cities have realised that they need to work for the people who live there, not only four investors. Helsinki could, too.
Till Sawala
Ylönën
Juho Mäntysalo