Beyond MALPE coordination: Integrative Envisioning (BEMINE)

Public description of the goals at the beginning of the project

In Finnish urban regions, integrated land use, housing, transport, services and economic development (MALPE) has become a new practice to encompass key planning sectors, in cooperation between the state and municipalities. Progressing upon this framework, the project aims at: 1) comprehending Finnish urbanization processes and agglomeration dynamics in an international comparative context, and their implications to sustainability, functionality and economic livelihood; 2) gaining analytical insight of ambiguities in political agency formation, knowledge management and policy-making in the current MALPE work; and 3) providing normative solutions for coping with these processes and ambiguities. With insights gained from the above, the project aims at 4) incorporating qualitatively new knowledge in the co-coordination of policy sectors and scales, and 5) generating, in a co-creative fashion, policy and planning recommendations for the Finnish city regions involved in the MALPE work.

Public description of the results at the end of the project

The project has sought to add information on the interdependencies and new pathways of MALPE work in city regions towards more sustainable resolutions. In support of this, knowledge of the urbanization trends was gathered, as well as inter-relationships between mobility, migration and urbanization. New models and conceptualizations of phenomena related to urbanity and urbanization dynamics were also produced, and tangible tools for planning and decision making. Insights were also gained on how challenges of political legitimation and participation could be resolved in the governance of MALPE work. The city-region is necessarily a collaborative structure that is never ‘finalized’, yet even temporary resolutions require abilities to tolerate both uncertainty and differences. The governance of city-regional uncertainties needs visionary, continuous and synergizing strategy work, one in which short-term coordinative resolutions and operational contracts are based on long-term sustainability visions that proactively anticipates the possible development paths arising from futures scanning of possible trends and creative scenario work.