The Renewal of the Finnish Planning Legislation as a Strategy of Urban Planning and Development

Abstract

Due to global eco-social and technological challenges, a new strategy of planning adopted as the Land Use and Building Act in Finland (2000) will be renewed after 23 years of implementation. Will the forthcoming law recognise the complex relationships and consequences of self-organised processes, the digital empowerment of citizens, and the eco-social content of planning and development? This article examines and discusses the renewal of the Finnish Land Use and Building Act and the forthcoming planning system from an ontological perspective. Methodologically it is based on an assessment of the draft of and comments on the new Act, as well as on a comparative analysis of two case studies that illustrate the potential consequences of the renewal in the Finnish context. The results reveal that the planning system will become more complex. Despite the adoption of a new digital methodology, the Act ignores civil society’s self-organisation and digital empowerment; also, the definition of the eco-social substance is vague. However, the Finnish reform serves as an example of the difficulties that planning systems encounter in the current context of complex problems concerning sustainability transitions all over the world.