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Studies on post-World War II housing estates have largely focused on problematic neighbourhoods, and there is a scarcity of literature on housing estates across their entire social scale. Moreover, there is insufficient evidence on the extent to which tenure structure differentiates estates from each other in terms of social disorder. Using a large cluster sample of Finnish estates representing a wide variety of estate neighbourhoods, we examined the implications of tenure structure in terms of social disadvantage and perceived social disorder. We also studied how social interaction and normative regulation mediate the impact of structural estate characteristics. We found that rental domination is associated with social disadvantage, which exposes residents to social disorder, in line with social disorganisation theory. Differences in normative regulation partly explain this association. In contrast, social interaction in the neighbourhood is not associated with the level of perceived social disorder. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of urban fabrics is outlined showing how different types of cities are combinations of walking, transit/public transport and automobile/motor car fabrics based on their transport systems and the universal travel-time budget. The distances/transport speeds that generate these urban fabrics and their associated elements, functions and qualities are outlined, emphasising, for the irst time, how tasks of statutory planning and transport planning are different in the three urban fabrics. The theory is demon- strated in the Finnish city of Kuopio and with data from the authors' Global Cities Database, concluding with three different statutory and strategic planning approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine spatiality of transitions by combining aspects of urban form to policy analysis. It aims to increase understanding of how urban form relates to potential effects of transport policies on urban mobility transitions. Design/methodology/approach – Novel analytical framework combines concepts of path dependence, path creation and path destabilisation to three urban fabrics (walking, transit and car cities), to study the transition potential of recent transport policy measures influencing the Helsinki region in Finland. Findings – Analysis showed that the potential effects of single policy measures often reach over all three urban fabrics. A policy measure may simultaneously contain elements of both path dependence, i.e. support for fossil-fuel based private motoring in the car city and path creation, i.e. stimulation of innovations in transit or walking cities. Policy outcomes are often conditional on implementation of other policy measures. For transition governance, this indicates that policy mixes should both destabilise car cities and enforce path creation in walking and transit cities. Research limitations/implications – Findings are based on potential rather than evaluated impacts and a limited sample of policies. Practical implications – Findings support previous research on the importance of policy coherence: multiple policies and coherence across domains are important. They demonstrate the usefulness of analysing recent or planned policies from the transition perspective. Originality/value – The paper provides novel insights by combining policy analysis to the spatial model of overlapping urban fabrics. In addition, it applies the concepts of path dependence, path creation and path destabilisation in a new way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Traffic congestion is rapidly becoming the most important obstacle to urban development. In addition, traffic creates major health, environmental, and economical problems. Nonetheless, automobiles are crucial for the functions of the modern society. Most proposals for sustainable traffic solutions face major political opposition, economical consequences, or technical problems. Methods: We performed a decision analysis in a poorly studied area, trip aggregation, and studied decisions from the perspective of two different stakeholders, the passenger and society. We modelled the impact and potential of composite traffic, a hypothetical large-scale demand-responsive public transport system for the Helsinki metropolitan area, where a centralised system would collect the information on all trip demands online, would merge the trips with the same origin and destination into public vehicles with eight or four seats, and then would transmit the trip instructions to the passengers' mobile phones. Results: We show here that in an urban area with one million inhabitants, trip aggregation could reduce the health, environmental, and other detrimental impacts of car traffic typically by 50-70%, and if implemented could attract about half of the car passengers, and within a broad operational range would require no public subsidies. Conclusion: Composite traffic provides new degrees of freedom in urban decision-making in identifying novel solutions to the problems of urban traffic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The changes in income distribution ensuing from industrialisation constituted subject of lively interest towards the end of the 19th century. We might say that the main problem in the discussions at the time was whether Marx was right in maintaining that industrialisation would make the condition of the working class even more miserable, or whether Bernstein was right in maintaining the opposite. These discussions took place mostly in Germany. The distribution of income was again taken up as a subject for discussion on a larger scale in the 1950s, when Simon Kuznets suggested that industrialisation first increases the concentration of income which will, however, even out later on. In literature on economic growth, reference is also often made to the importance of income inequality for the accumulation of capital necessary for economic expansion. The former tradition was in Finland represented by Heikki Renvall through his studies on changes in income distribution in the largest cities. Adherents of the latter tradition are Riitta Hjerppe and John Lefgren who have written an article on features of the long-term development of income distribution in Finland.1 During the last ten years, historical research into income distribution have again gained in popularity, inspired especially by the studies carried out by Peter H. Lindert and Jeffrey G. Williamson.2 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]