The Use of Tne Notion Culture in Transforming Industrial Spaces

Don’t Plan! The Use of the Notionof ‘Culture’ in TransformingObsolete Industrial Space

MAROŠ KRIVÝ

AbstractHow is the notion of ‘culture’ understood and used in planning the transformation ofobsolete industrial space? This article analyses the evidence from a current planningproject in Suvilahti, Helsinki. It shows that ‘culture’ is imagined and employed as aninstrument capable of producing difference in urban space. The transformation of theCable Factory in Helsinki and the subsequent consensus on the importance of ‘culture’are shown to have influenced the planning of Suvilahti. On the one hand, planning isbeing carried out with a deliberate minimization of planning interventions and thepromotion of the spontaneous, non-planned practices of cultural producers: the futureSuvilahti is imagined as a ‘cultural enclave’ and its community is characterized as a‘living organism’. On the other, ‘culture’ is planned in terms of its supposedly positiveeffects on urban space. Planners do not want to interfere with the non-planned characterof ‘cultural production’, yet at the same time they express certainty about culturalproduction’s positive spatial and socioeconomic effects. The transformation of Suvilahtiis playing an important part in the large-scale planning project to redevelop the oldindustrial harbour in Kalasatama, Helsinki. The changes in the nature of planning areanalysed under the concept of cultural governmentality.

The object of the following article is to analyse the way in which the notion of culture isunderstood in local decision-making institutions and used in planning the transformationof obsolete industrial spaces. It will be shown that ‘culture’ is valued as a planninginstrument capable of producing difference in urban space. This assumed instrumentalcapacity of ‘culture’ constitutes what I call a regime of cultural governmentality, inwhich the paradoxical role of urban planning is to promote spontaneous, ‘non-planned’practices. However, this does not mean that planning disappears. On the contrary, whatis planned is the projected identity of something that might be described as a culturefactory — a former industrial building, in which so-called ‘cultural activities’ areconcentrated. Hence, my aim in the study is to analyse how the instrumental idea ofculture (Horkheimer and Adorno, 2002) has been developed and used in the specificcontext of regenerating an obsolete industrial built environment.

My case study will focus on the transformation of Suvilahti, industrial premises inHelsinki, Finland, to a ‘cultural use’. Suvilahti was used for electricity and gasproduction until it was abandoned in the 1990s. It is situated on the eastern limits of theHelsinki city centre and adjoins a former industrial harbour in the so-called Kalasatamaarea (see Figure 1).

I would like to thank Anne Haila for her guidance in writing the paper. I would like to express my thanksalso to Chiara Rabbiosi, Tahl Kaminer, Agata Marzecova and two IJURR referees for their helpfulcomments given at different stages of the article.

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International Journal of Urban and Regional Research10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01178.x

© 2012 Urban Research Publications Limited. Published by Blackwell Publishing. 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX42DQ, UK and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA

My research is based on an analysis of planning documents and strategies, and oninterviews with the city planners and managers. In my study, I will first compare theSuvilahti project with the case of the Cable Factory — another ‘culture factory’ inHelsinki — and discuss the possible influence of the latter on the former. I will thenanalyse the way the planning of Suvilahti has been shaped by the fact that it is a part ofa waterfront redevelopment of the old industrial harbour in Kalasatama, the largestHelsinki planning project in years. In this context, I will ask what it means to envision thefuture Suvilahti as a ‘living organism’ and a ‘cultural enclave’. Finally, I will discussthe concept of cultural governmentality in the light of the Suvilahti case and analysethe specific form of planning and managing ‘culture’ embodied in Suvilahti’stransformation.

BackgroundIn recent years, ‘culture’, ‘creativity’ and the transformation of obsolete industrial spaceshave been intertwined in the minds, practices and projects of urban planners and decisionmakers. Bilbao, Sheffield and Pittsburgh may serve as examples: the notions ‘culturalquarter’ and ‘creative city’ were formulated in industrial cities that had large amounts ofobsolete space and whose local economies were in a bleak state. As Hesmondhalgh andPratt (2005: 4) put it, ‘an almost missionary zeal seems to have attached itself to thesestrategies for the remaking of cities in the name of culture and creativity’.

While the implementation of policies that support ‘culture’ and ‘creativity’ is fuelledby a desire to resolve local economic and social crises, the urbanistic focus of suchactivities lies in the abandoned industrial environment itself. For example, the TallinnCultural Capital 2011 project has a special focus on the industrial and working-classdistricts of Kalamaja and Kopli and the post-industrial wasteland waterfront. The mainoffice of the project organization is located in an abandoned factory nicknamed theKultuurikatel (Cultural Boiler), which identifies itself as an ‘incubator for creativeeconomy’ (Lassur et al., 2010: 69).

Obsolete factories, warehouses, and industrial wastelands are often identified asspaces where the commodification of cities can be resisted (Doron, 2000; Wilson, 2000;Armstrong, 2006). A critic explains as follows:

Figure 1 Location of the projects discussed in the article within Helsinki (source: map ©OpenStreetMap contributors, CC BY-SA)

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International Journal of Urban and Regional Research© 2012 Urban Research Publications Limited

Cities are being turned into products, something that can be easily bought, sold and exchanged.Wastelands remain beyond this logic — for the time being. Wasteland is something that youcan experience, something with which you can gradually build a relationship, something whichyou can hug, a place where you can dance (Lehtovuori, 2010: 220).

However, the critique misses the point that building a relationship, hugging and dancingcannot be taken as acts of resistance as such. On the contrary, planning of such‘spontaneous’ and ‘resisting’ activities is constitutive of what I call the regime of culturalgovernmentality. For example, one of the objectives on the cultural agenda of the city ofLille is to ‘encourage people to dance and sing together . . . by setting up initiatives . . .and awareness-raising workshops’ (Cullen, 2009: 44). In this context, dancing (takenhere as a wider metaphor for spontaneous, non-planned activities) loses its transgressivefunction. Instead, it simply becomes an instance of ‘culture’ that can be employed as apolicy instrument.

Two concepts of cultureThis article studies ‘culture’ in the context of planning the transformation of obsoleteindustrial space. However, let me first situate the discussion of ‘culture’ within thebroader framework in which this notion has been historically developed. A particularlyimportant role is played here by two concepts of ‘culture’ that have been variouslycontrasted as axiological/anthropological (Soukup, 2000), humanistic/anthropological(Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1952; Jaeger and Selznick, 1964), normative/descriptive(Jaeger and Selznick, 1964; Geertz, 2000), or as a dichotomy of Bildung and customs(Jurist, 2000) or ‘Culture’ and ‘cultures’ (Gupta and Ferguson, 2001). In these concepts,the distinction has been made between culture as an ideal to be pursued and culture as adescription of existing differences.

The notion of ‘culture’ analysed in this study has to be distinguished from these twounderstandings, but it can also be characterized as their synthesis. Within the context ofplanning the transformation of obsolete industrial space, the notion of ‘culture’juxtaposes the two meanings: culture as an ideal and culture as difference. What isspecific in the concept of ‘culture’ that I analyse is that difference itself becomes an idealto be pursued. The employment of ‘culture’ in regenerating obsolete industrial space isgrounded in an emphasis on culture-as-difference and in the belief that ‘culture’ iscapable of generating social, economic and spatial difference.

The two conceptualizations of culture are underpinned by a wealth and depth ofarguments. Some critiques question the validity of this conceptual dichotomy (e.g.Yengoyan, 1986). My interest regarding the two notions is purely heuristic: they enableme to characterize more aptly the notion of culture that is central in planning thetransformation of obsolete industrial spaces and in my case study.

Hence, in the axiological or normative conceptualization, culture is understoodas an ideal to be pursued. The notion of culture stands for an ideal realization of asocio-historical process. The origins of the concept can be traced back to Cicero(2007) and his definition of culture as a cultivation of social mind. Regarding thedevelopment of the notion in the nineteenth century, philosophers as opposed as Hegeland Nietzsche agreed on its basic premise (see Jurist, 2000, on this agreement). Hegelsays that culture is:

. . . construed in terms of universal properties. A cultured man is one who knows how toimpress the stamp of universality upon all his actions, who has renounced his particularity, andwho acts in accordance with universal principles (Hegel, 1975: 56–7).

Culture forms itself in a dialectical process of overcoming customs and realization of theIdeal. Nietzsche describes the product of culture in a similar fashion:

The use of culture in transforming industrial space in Finland 3


If we place ourselves at the end of this tremendous process, where the tree at last brings forthfruit, where society and the morality of customs at last reveal what they have simply been themeans to: then we discover that the ripest fruit is the sovereign individual . . . liberated againfrom morality of customs (Nietzsche, quoted in Deleuze, 2002: 136–7).

Both Hegel and Nietzsche theorize culture in relation to its status as an ideal to bepursued. Like Nietzsche, Georg Simmel has compared the notion of culture to a fruit tree.In the hands of a gardener, a tree with sour and inedible fruit is transformed into a richresource of sweet fruit that graces our tables. In the words of Simmel (1982: 446) ‘thevalues of life . . . appear as developments of a basis that we call nature and whose powerand intellectual content they surpass in so far as they become culture’.

Within the anthropological conceptualization, contrariwise, the notion of culturedescribes a way of life of a specifically delimited social group. E.B. Tylor defines cultureas a ‘complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and anyother capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’ (Tylor, 1903: 1).Despite his pronounced evolutionism, Tylor conceptualizes culture not as a future ideal,but as a presently existing ‘complex whole’. One can talk about the normativity ofcultural values only from the perspective of one’s own particular culture. And since everygroup has its own culture, the concept of culture necessarily recognizes the plurality ofdifferent cultures. In the words of Franz Boas (1938: 159): ‘Culture may be defined as thetotality of the mental and physical reactions and activities that characterize the behaviorof individuals composing a social group . . . in relation . . . to other groups’. CliffordGeertz’s theory of ‘thick description’ aims to understand the web of subjective meaningsunderlying every instance of ‘culture’. It is clear, nonetheless, that such an approachitself presupposes the existence of a plurality of particular cultures: ‘Understanding apeople’s culture exposes their normalness without reducing their particularity’ (Geertz,2000: 14). The key role of difference in the anthropological concept of culture isdescribed by Fredric Jameson as follows:

No group ‘has’ a culture all by itself: culture is the nimbus perceived by one group when itcomes into contact with and observes another one (Jameson, 1993: 33).

In relation to the present inquiry, I am then interested in the notion of culture thatjuxtaposes the two previously mentioned concepts. In such a notion, which emergesin the practice of transforming obsolete space and which can be traced in planningdocuments and planners’ rhetoric, the ideal and the descriptive element of the twonotions of culture are combined. Cultural difference per se is now recognized as an idealto be pursued, instead of merely being described. As Terry Eagleton puts it (2000: 14):‘Simply being a culture of some kind [is] a value in itself’.

Culture, planning and urban spaceIn recent years, there has been intensive discussion of the role of ‘culture’ in thedevelopment of urban economies (Judd and Fainstein, 1999; Scott, 2000; 2006; Pratt,2008). However, my objective is to study how ‘culture’ becomes such an instrument andhow it is used in the transformation of obsolete spaces. My aim is to analyse ‘culture’ asa differing notion. In other words, I will ask how the role of culture is defined in relationto urban regeneration and what the concrete manifestation of ‘cultural’ difference anddiversity is in relation to obsolete urban space? How do planning authorities design thefuture identity of a ‘culture factory’ and why do they understand the ‘culture factory’ asa different space?

Emphasizing cultural diversity as an ideal to be pursued has developed into a specificargumentational trope. This trope can be traced across a wide range of strategy andpolicy documents. For example, in the Agenda 21 for Culture (adopted in 2004 by UnitedCities and Local Governments, a global umbrella organization for local municipalities),we read the following:

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Cultural diversity is the main heritage of humanity. It is the product of thousands of years ofhistory, the fruit of the collective contribution of all peoples through their languages,imaginations, technologies, practices and creations. Culture takes on different forms . . .Cultural diversity . . . is one of the essential elements in the transformation of urban and socialreality (Agenda 21 for Culture, 2004).

UNESCO makes a similar statement on cultural diversity, which is, in its words,perceived as ‘a means to achieve a more satisfactory intellectual, emotional, moral, andspiritual existence’ (UNESCO, 2001: article 3). The same trope is referenced also instrategic policy documents of the city of Helsinki:

Interculturalism goes beyond equal opportunities and respect for existing differences. Citiesneed to develop policies which prioritise funding for projects where different cultures intersect,‘contaminate’ each other and hybridise. City governments should promote cross-fertilisationacross all boundaries, between ‘majority’ and ‘minorities’, ‘dominant’ and ‘sub’ cultures,localities, classes, faiths, disciplines and genres (Comedia, 2010: 28).

In such statements, the ideal of the proliferation of differences between culturesis pursued. Here, culture is understood neither in the axiological sense, as an ideal tobe pursued, nor in the anthropological sense, as a description of existing differences.Rather, cultural difference and cultural diversity are themselves posited as ideals tobe pursued. If we now employed Simmel’s fruit tree metaphor, it would imply atautology: a particular form of life is to be cultivated by another particular formof life.

Culture as an instrumentToday, culture is often justified in instrumental terms. As a typical example states, ‘weclaim that culture is important for society, economics, education, urban development’(Heinrich, 2009: 88). Let me distinguish this form of justifying culture from the previoustwo.

Within the axiological vocabulary, the claim that culture is ‘important for something’cannot arise. Culture is not differentiated from a society as its specific subsystem. Rather,it represents an ideal realization of this society. We can say that cherries are important forcherry trees, but this means only that a plentiful cherry crop is the ideal realization of acherry tree. The concept of a cherry is inherent in the concept of a cherry tree. It issomething different to claim that cherries are important for the economic viability of alocal farm, for example. Here, two different entities are compared and the claim about theimportance of the former for the latter is made.

The situation is similar within anthropological vocabulary. The statement that culture(in a general sense) is ‘important’ would be problematic. As an anthropological notion,culture is a description of existing differences. The anthropological notion of culturecontains by definition the idea of different cultures. Without doubt, individual culturescan claim the normativity and superiority of their own values and enter into conflict witheach other. However, to make a claim about the importance of culture from theperspective of anthropology would mean to claim the importance of cultural differencesas such — and this would be in contradiction with the understanding of culture as adescription of existing differences.

The instrumentalization of ‘culture’ is, then, parallel with the shift of emphasis fromdescription of differences to positing culture-as-difference as an ideal to be pursued.‘Culture’ becomes an instrument when it is itself understood as a difference (specificsubsystem, specific type of social activity) and from this position it is capable ofproducing difference (having a variety of social, economic or spatial effects). AsHorkheimer and Adorno (2002: 104) put it:



‘The general designation “culture” already contains, virtually, the process ofidentifying, cataloging, and classifying which imports culture into the realm ofadministration’. The motivation behind claims about the ‘importance of culture’, suchas the one presented at the beginning of this section, is to be found in administrativepractices employing culture as a tool in realizing specific administrative objectives.

Richard Florida has formulated some archetypal statements on cultural diversity, forexample that:

Diversity plays a central and crucial role in attracting . . . human capital . . . diversity isimportant to regional economic performance . . . diversity plays a key role in the attraction andretention of the kinds of talent required to support high-technology industry and generateregional growth (Florida, 2005: 91).

Today, Florida’s writings (2005; 2008) are probably the best-known celebrations of thenotion of cultural diversity as a strategic instrument. Typically, ‘culture’ is justifiedas important for something (urban development, regional growth) and plays a key rolein something (economic performance, attracting human capital). Whence comes theimportance of identifying, measuring and assessing the performance of ‘culture’:

A city’s or region’s cultural performance can thus be classed as outstanding if it depends on theutilization of its cultural potential as part of its overall development strategy and makes culturecentral to all areas of life and policy (Schneider, 2010: 23).

In studying how ‘culture’ is operationalized as an instrument, two further notions playa key role: creativity and art. Both are important to understanding how ‘culture’ assumesa connotation of diversity and difference and how this differing notion of culture is thenimported into the realm of transforming obsolete space.

Creativity and cultureIt is again Florida who is the main strategic proponent of the discourse on creativity andof its specific elaboration in the context of urban development. He tells us that ‘the . . .single most important . . . element of my theory is the idea that every human being iscreative’ (Florida, 2005: 3–4, emphasis added). However, such a ‘theory’ is unable tounderstand the concrete and historic function of ‘creativity’. Instead, it becomes astrategic discourse that imports ‘creativity’ into the realm of administration.

Historically, creativity as a notion has its origins in Kant’s concept of genius, whichis defined as ‘the innate mental aptitude . . . through which nature gives the rule to art . . .genius is a talent for producing that for which no definite rule can be given’ (Kant, 2000,section 46: 307). For Kant, genius is a medium for an indirect manifestation of nature.Kant’s notion was developed by the Romantic movement, in which the image of a lonelyartist struggling against and outside established institutions was attached to genius. ForRomantics, creative artistic work was regarded as a promise of free, non-alienated lifeand harboured an implicit social critique (Groys, 2005; Peters, 2009). A ‘democratized’version of creativity was formulated in the 1968 movement’s critique of the sterile,monotonous and dull forms of labour under capitalism. Here too, creativity harboured ahope of self-realization and authentic life, thwarted otherwise under oppressive andalienated labour conditions (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005).

In such instances, appeals to creativity were formulated as attempts to create adifferent kind of society or at least difference ‘within a society’. Arguing for differencemeant to question the existing organization of a society. However, as Boltanski andChiapello (2005) argue, during the 1990s the use of creativity and the meaning ofdifference changed. Creativity becomes instrumental in mobilizing a population towardsproduction of economic values:

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The creativity thesis . . . argues that the role of culture is . . . expansive, that human beings havelimitless potential, and that the key to economic growth is to enable and unleash that potential.This unleashing requires an open culture — one that does not discriminate, does notforce people into boxes, allows us to be ourselves, and validates various forms of . . . humanidentity . . . [C]ulture operates not by constraining the range of human creative possibilitiesbut by facilitating and mobilizing them (Florida, 2005: 5–6).

When ‘creativity’ becomes a strategic tool in economic growth, its role as a socialcritique is rendered powerless. Provided that the difference that it is called upon togenerate is simply a difference in economic value, the role of ‘creativity’ corresponds tothe instrumental role of ‘culture’.

Art and cultureThe relation between art and culture is paradoxical — culture seems to contain art and,at one and the same time, to be equal with art. There is a parallel between, on one hand,the two previously characterized notions of culture and, on the other, two ways in whichart and culture relate to each other (Williams, referenced in Habermas, 1991: 258, 21n).Hence, we can distinguish a relation of non-differentiation, in which there is noseparation between art and culture, from the relation, in which art is differentiated fromculture as a specific social activity. As Raymond Williams writes:

After the very earliest period of relative non-differentiation of functions, in which the . . .‘artistic’ had not or not fully separated out from the more generally ‘cultural’, there had beenthis phase of specifically instituted artists, . . . [when] the social position of this kind of culturalproducer was instituted as such (Williams, 1981: 38, emphasis in original).

Following the situation Williams describes, there are two possible roles that art canplay — and these roles are crucial for my comparison of the Suvilahti and Cable Factorycases. On one side, art’s relative separation from culture opens up its potentiallyemancipatory role. In Jacques Rancière’s words, this moment of ‘dismantl[ing]correlation between subject matter and mode of representation’ is described as anaesthetic regime (Rancière, 2006: 32). The emancipatory role of art lies in its potentialityof dis-identification (Rancière, 1992: 61). In other words, art can challenge a culturallyestablished identity between a represented object and a form of this representation. Onlyfrom a position that is relatively separate from culture and society can art reflect backupon cultural and social forms.

On the other side, this relative separation of art and culture can be dismantled throughpractices that put an equality sign between the two. This, however, does not mean that wereturn to the original non-differentiated function of art described by Williams. Rather, theemancipatory act of dis-identification is hereby subsumed under a cultural identity. Inthis case, art is called for simply to produce difference in the form of diversity anddiversion. Art and artists are called upon to create an enjoyable difference and — at theurban level — to rejuvenate and beautify city space. The following is a typical exampleof how art is called upon to create difference and project ‘identity’ in spaces which areperceived as being without identity. The exhibition of student paintings is staged at theairport in order to enhance its atmosphere:

Finavia and the Aalto University School of Art and Design are co-hosting an exhibition ofstudent paintings at Helsinki Airport . . . The motifs for the ARTPORT pieces are drawn fromthe airport. There will be approximately 70 paintings done by 20 different students. AirportDirector Juha-Pekka Pystynen of Finavia believes that the exhibition will pique the interest ofpassengers. The exhibitions are part of Helsinki Airport’s passenger services and our desire toenhance the airport’s atmosphere. It also allows us to showcase up and coming Finnish artists.After all, nearly 40,000 passengers pass through the airport every day’ (Finavia, 2010).



Once identified with ‘culture’ as such, the emancipatory, non-identitarian potential of artevaporates. Such absolute identification of art and culture also plays an important role inthe instrumentalization of ‘culture’. I will now analyse a specific form of using ‘culture’as an instrument of urban planning.

Cultural governmentalityIn my analysis of Suvilahti, I suggest using the concept of cultural governmentality todescribe a specific form of planning and managing that employs ‘culture’ and ‘creativity’to shape the transformation of obsolete industrial space. The paradoxical nature ofsuch planning and managing, in which the notions of culture and creativity playan instrumental role, is a self-imposed limitation that public authorities place on theirown exercise of power. ‘Culture’ and ‘creativity’, as supposedly voluntary forms ofself-conduct, are themselves employed as instruments in planning by ‘non-planning’ andmanaging by ‘non-managing’.

Foucault characterizes governmentality as ‘the way in which one conducts theconduct of men’ (Foucault, 2008: 186). In governmentality, one does not directly conductthe practice of men, but rather what precedes their practice — i.e. their conduct. In thewords of Margo Huxley, the method of governmentality is to establish ‘taken-for-grantedconceptions of what is appropriate, which subjects should engage in what sort ofactivities, where and when’ (Huxley, 2002: 145). Importantly, governmentality proceedsby producing certain ideas of self, of what is good and what is valuable:‘Governmentality is a coalescence of various tactics and strategies for the ‘conduct ofconduct’ — practices that define, shape or have effects in creating particular behavioursand identities within a given space or territory’ (ibid.: 142). At a political level, Foucaultdescribes governmentality as a paradox of politics defined by an objective to abolishpolitics (see Foucault, 2008: 185–238). It is the method of governing in which individualfreedoms are pitched against state bureaucracy, but it is from this bureaucracy itself thatinitiatives promoting individual freedoms originate.

Since the 1990s, the concept of governance has been commonly used in urban studiesto describe new entrepreneurial, processual, project-based, multi-actor, multi-level andmulti-scalar forms of city governing (Harvey, 1989; Goodwin and Painter, 1996; LeGalès, 1998; Pierre, 1999; Brenner, 2004). However, the concept of governmentalityemphasizes that this informal, inclusive, decentralized and participatory model ofgoverning is not simply based on having ‘more responsibilities’ and ‘more freedom’ —the connotation that ‘governance’ has increasingly acquired as it has passed intostrategies of corporate governance and EU policy documents — but rather describes anew form through which power is channelled in society.

In the regime of governmentality, the notion of planning refers to renewed role of stateand public administration:

planning . . . is the practice of shaping human conduct and acts by material and discursivemeans. . . . Planning . . . is not only about developing control and steering of processes, but alsoof shaping the public discourse, its schemes of signification, ways of communication, and onwhat to communicate about. It is also a matter of dispersing discursive and political power andmaking interests powerless through tactics, strategies, situations or unchangeable politicalend-goals (Pløger, 2004: 80).

The concept of governmentality enables us to see the projected, functional andinstrumental role of the very dispersal of power (see Law-Yone, 2007: 319–20) — i.e.something that I suggest should be characterized as planning by non-planning. Thus, thecritique of ‘too much planning’, which was originally put forward by actors from outsideof official planning institutions, stems today from these institutions themselves.

The concept of governmentality has been employed in diverse contexts: both as aheuristic tool in analysing transformation of specific social spheres, such as housing

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(Murdoch, 2004; Cheshire et al., 2009), education (Simons, 2002) or security (De Lintand Virta, 2004), and as an overarching concept of transnational governmentalitycharacterizing rescaling of forms of governing and power organization at a global level(Ferguson and Gupta, 2002). I use the concept cultural governmentality to describe aregime of governmentality in which the notions of culture and creativity are instrumentalin planning and projecting social reality. Under cultural governmentality, these notionsare not simply used to describe social reality, they are endowed with a ‘performativepower’ and a structure of a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 2001).Used as instruments for transforming obsolete urban space, the concepts of culture andcreativity are ‘above all . . . project[s] that endeavor to create a social reality that [theseprojects themselves] suggest already exists’ (Lemke, 2002: 13). Thus, on the one hand,it is said that we live in times of ‘culture’ and ‘creativity’, while, on the other, there is anadministrative and planning agenda for ‘culture’ and ‘creativity’. In other words,something that is being promoted is at the same time described as already existing. Theproblem can be illustrated by the following statement, which attempts to characterize theAgenda 21 for culture:

We live in the age of creativity. Creativity is the core of capability in culture. Traditional modelsare not feasible any more. Creativity in any sense is an important part of the Agenda 21 forculture in the current post-industrial world which is virtually impacted by the changes in theglobal culture where top positions are given to the creative industry innovators andrepresentatives. Agenda 21 for culture has to inform a broad range of activities for the strategicdevelopment of a city and consolidate a stronger worldwide network of partners (Mickov,2009: 135).

The unquestioned fact that ‘culture’ and ‘creativity’ define our age is at the same time aresult of active discourse that presents this fact as unquestioned. The concept of culturalgovernmentality describes the form of governing that operates by conflating what is andwhat should be. The discourse that grounds cultural governmentality is not ‘merely adiscourse’. It is through urban planning that ‘mere words’ are materialized in specifichistorical situations and specific places. Through planning, specific concepts — such as‘culture’ and ‘creativity’ — are put into practice in order to attract a wide range ofindependent, autonomous and voluntary actors into the process of governing; at the sametime, however, a taken-for-granted and unquestioned framework for this governing isreinforced. As Murdoch says:

The governmentality approach indicates that there is more to governmental discourse than onlydiscursive elements: discourses must be ‘materialized’ in time and space and this process ofmaterialization inevitably requires the assembling of heterogeneous resources in ways thatfacilitate the dissemination of specific governmentalities (Murdoch, 2004: 52).

Before proceeding further, I should like to clarify my position vis-à-vis two scholarswhose investigations lie on the intersection of culture and governmentality. Tony Bennettwrites specifically about ‘culture and governmentality’ in a book chapter of the samename (Bennett, 2002). He is worried that, as the concept of governmentality extends theanalysis of governing towards the socially normalized forms of seeing, thinking andbeing, it may simply overlap with ‘culture’. Nonetheless, in his text the notion of cultureis limited to its anthropological meaning; the question of how ‘culture’ becomes aninstrument is left untouched.

Sharon Zukin, for her part, offers precisely this kind of analysis of ‘culture’. Her work(Zukin, 1982; 1995) focuses on various strategies through which ‘culture’ is understoodand utilized as an effective tool of urban development. Although she does not use theterm ‘governmentality’, her famous notion of culture as a framing process is inspired byFoucault’s turning around of the relation between vision and power:

The common element in . . . [cultural] strategies [of economic development] is that they reducethe multiple dimensions and conflicts of culture to a coherent visual representation . . .



Historically, power over a space . . . determines the ability to impose a vision of that space.Many of Michel Foucault’s historical speculations reverse that relation — and it is thatstandpoint that I have adopted . . . Often the power to impose a coherent vision of a spaceenables a group to claim that space. This is a framing process (Zukin, 1995: 271, 279).

However, in contrast to Zukin’s notion of culture, which is always constituted as aconflict between different cultural visions, I understand ‘culture’ in urban developmentas being itself a policy instrument that is supposed to produce difference. In the presentcontext, I see Zukin’s reading of Foucault as inaccurate in two points. First, the visionthat ‘frames’ is not aimed at producing a ‘coherent culture’. Rather, it operates throughencouraging an ethos of creativity that ultimately results in the production of differenceand diversity, not of coherence or sameness. Second, Zukin’s conflict between differentvisions of space seems to be nonexistent in the face of general acceptance of statementssuch as ‘we live in the age of creativity’. Moreover, there is no questioning of the fact thatan obsolete industrial environment should be transformed into ‘cultural use’ — at leastnot in the case of Suvilahti, which I am now going to analyse.

SuvilahtiThe industrial premises of Suvilahti consist of 11 two- to three-storey buildings with anoverall floor area of 12,500 m2 (see Figures 2 and 3). Most of the buildings were plannedby the architect Selim A. Lindqvist and the engineer Jalmar Castrén and were erectedduring the years 1909–11. The two most distinctive buildings in Suvilahti — the electricpower plant and the gas tower — were built at that time. Over the course of the twentiethcentury continuous transformations, adjustments and additions took place. From the late1960s, as a consequence of the construction of a new and more powerful power plant atnearby Hanasaari Island (1967–74), the Suvilahti power plant slowly decreased itsoperations. It eventually ceased production in 1974. Subsequently, the power plant waspartly restored and used for other functions (e.g. as a furniture store). Gas productioncontinued well into the 1990s. As late as 1971 two new gas holders were constructed. Theend of industrial production in the Suvilahti area then dates to 1994, when the two gas

Figure 2 Layout of Suvilahti (source: http//:www.suvilahti.fi/info/, adapted by the author)

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holders were torn down only 20 years or so after their construction (see Schulman et al.,2009). Around the same time, in 1993, the Finnish National Board of Antiquitiesdeclared the premises at Suvilahti to be ‘nationally significant cultural built environment’(Suvilahti Työryhmä, 2007: 6, my translation).

Mikael Sundman, the head planner of the Kalasatama project points to 1996 as theyear when the City of Helsinki started to look for a new function for the former industrialarea of Suvilahti. In 2001 the City Planning Department, with the cooperation ofarchitectural office Schulman Oy, drew up a proposal in which the following three useswere suggested for the premises:

• ‘physical culture’ — halls for football, gymnastics and fitness, swimming pool locatedin the gas tower;

• ‘cultural production park’ — studios for film production and toy manufacturing;• ‘cultural park’ — space for small ‘creative’ industries and regular festivals (interview

with Mikael Sundman, 15 September 2009; see also Schulman et al., 1999: 22).

In the Helsinki Master Plan published in 2002, the premises of Suvilahti were zoned forpublic services, higher education, environment-friendly activities, housing, and recreation(City of Helsinki Planning Department, 2003a). However, such use was limited by twofactors. First, in terms of its architecture and urbanscape, Suvilahti was marked as aculturally and historically significant area. Accordingly, the development had to ‘protectthe value and distinctive features of the area’ (Suvilahti Työryhmä, 2007: 7, mytranslation). Second, the Master Plan took note of the polluted soil of Suvilahti and itslimiting effect on future land use there (City of Helsinki Planning Department, 2003b).

In the mid-2000s, after the city refused to grant Helsinki Energy permission toconstruct a new power plant at the Hanasaari location, several individual members of theHelsinki City Planning Board proposed that the existing Hanasaari power plant should beused for ‘cultural purposes’. In 2005 and 2006, Sundman opposed the idea and arguedthat Suvilahti was more suitable for ‘cultural use’. Soon, the new mayor Pajunen (electedin 2005) came to support Sundman as he took an active role in promoting the project ofa culture factory in Suvilahti. The two agreed that ‘locating the culture’ in the Hanasaaripower plant would mean having an empty building 50 metres tall solely for ‘culturalpurposes’ — and, they asked, ‘what’s the point of that?’ (interview with Sundman, 2009).They argued that the reuse of Hanasaari would be complicated and lead to economic

Figure 3 Aerial view of Suvilahti (source: photograph by Timo Noko)



catastrophe. According to Sundman, Pajunen repeatedly stated in the Helsinki CityCouncil that using the Hanasaari plant for culture would be ‘idiotic’ because, in hisopinion, culture would be much better placed in Suvilahti (ibid.).

Very soon after the Suvilahti project was pushed through the City Council (decisionof 21 March 2007), the mayor founded the Suvilahti working group (SuvilahtiTyöryhmä), whose task was to prepare a study of how the transformation of the Suvilahtiarea might be organized, financed and managed. The working group also commissionedthe architectural office Schulman Oy to prepare a report on the architectural history andcurrent status of the buildings in Suvilahti. An extremely detailed and well-informed, butpurely technical document was published in 2009 (Schulman et al., 2009).

The working group’s final report, published on 31 October 2007, recommended‘cultural use’ as the most desirable strategy for Suvilahti’s transformation (SuvilahtiTyöryhmä, 2007). ‘Cultural use’ was also supported by the Helsinki City Board.Moreover, according to the Suvilahti working group’s final report, it is in line with theHelsinki Economic Development Strategy of 2007 (Yritysmyönteiseksi, 2007) and itsidentification of ‘creativity’ as one of the three poles of economic growth (SuvilahtiTyöryhmä, 2007: 8). At the same time, the heritage value of Suvilahti is emphasized inthe Partial Master Plan of 2007 (Helsinki City Planning Department, 2007: 44, 56).

There was no major conflict in the transformation of Suvilahti to ‘cultural use’.Marjatta Raunila, a member of the Suvilahti working group, stated that the process oftransition ‘went very smoothly’ (interview, 15 October 2009). Given the history of thetransformation of the Cable Factory, the lack of conflict and absence of competing claimsfor the space of Suvilahti are surprising.

Influence of the Cable Factory

What is the Cable Factory and did it influence the planning of Suvilahti? Let me firstbriefly describe it and the process of its transformation (a detailed analysis can be foundin Krivy, 2010).

The factory is a single building located in the western part of the Helsinki inner cityin the Ruoholahti city district (see Figure 1). It was built in four stages between 1941 and1954 by the Finnish Cable Factory, which later merged with Nokia. During the 1980s,the city of Helsinki made a decision to shift industrial production away from the citycentre. As a consequence, the Cable Factory became obsolete. In the original contractbetween the city and Nokia, the Cable Factory was to be transferred to the city’sownership and the company was to be compensated. The immense building — the CableFactory’s floor area of 49,300 m2 made it one of the largest buildings in Finland at thetime — was to be divided into smaller units to house public services for the inhabitantsof Ruoholahti. In 1989, partly in order to cover costs during the transitional period,Nokia started to rent its spaces to artists and architects. In 1990 tenants organizedthemselves into the Pro Kaapeli (‘For the Cable Factory’) movement and later resistedcity administration plans for the dissection and redevelopment of the factory space. Atthe centre of the dispute was the factory’s largest open space, the 110-metre-long andthree-storey-high Sea Cable Hall. While the movement wanted to keep this placeundivided, the city argued that there was no practical use for such a large space. Therewas a lengthy dispute about the future of the factory with Pro Kaapeli and its supporterson one side and the city administration on the other, which led to city leaders’ eventual‘acceptance’ of Pro Kaapeli’s proposal to keep the building undivided and functioning asa venue for artistic production. In 1992, the real estate organization Kaapelikiinteistö wascreated and put in charge of the Cable Factory management.

Soon, the Cable Factory gained a reputation as a success story (Pennanen, 2002:124; Eurocult21, 2004: 19–20; interview with Raunila, 2009). Suvilahti policydocuments and interviews I conducted made frequent references to the Cable Factoryas an inspiration and powerful model (e.g. interviews with Simo Freese, architectresponsible for the renovation of the Suvilahti buildings, 24 November 2009 and with

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Birgitta Rickman, head of the Economic Planning Division, the Economic andPlanning Centre, City of Helsinki, and member of the Suvilahti working group, 30September 2009). The mayor of Helsinki described Suvilahti as a Cable Factory of theEast (interview with Pekka Timonen, cultural director of the City of Helsinki andmember of the Suvilahti working group, 3 December 2009), and the Suvilahti workinggroup report states: ‘the Cable Factory brand is widely known’ (Suvilahti Työryhmä,2007: 13, my translation). The Partial Master Plan of 2007 specifies that Suvilahti is‘particularly suitable for cultural activities in the style of the Cable Factory’ (City ofHelsinki Planning Department, 2007: 41, my translation). Since 2008 Suvilahti’smanagement has been included under the umbrella of Kaapelikiinteistö, the samemanaging organization that runs the Cable Factory. Hence, the planning of Suvilahtiappears to be an attempt to imitate the Cable Factory model. When I asked the plannerMikael Sundman to compare the Cable Factory and the Suvilahti, he told me ‘that’sthe same story’ (interview, 2009).

But the nature of the influence of the former on the latter is more complex. When Ifurther asked Mikael Sundman to specify the form of the influence of the Cable Factoryon the Suvilahti project, he replied ‘no, no, no, no, [there was] no impact at all’. I thoughtthere might have been some misunderstanding, so I asked him again, and he again repliedthat ‘we didn’t need any inspiration from the Cable Factory’, ‘I didn’t mention the CableFactory during the process’ and that he ‘didn’t think it should have been similar’(interview, 2009). How can we explain this apparent confusion?

I suggest that the Suvilahti project was structured not simply by the direct influence ofthe Cable Factory as a ‘success story’, but by its indirect influence on the understanding of‘culture’ within the city administration. In particular, the unintended consequence of ProKaapeli’s struggle to preserve the Cable Factory was an objectivation of ‘culture’ as aviable instrument for the regeneration of obsolete urban spaces.

If the interpretation of the Cable Factory case as a ‘success story’ contributed to theestablishment of a pro-‘culture’ climate, the planning of Suvilahti as a ‘culture factory’was strongly positioned within this climate. Apropos the idea of ‘culturalizing’ Suvilahti,Pekka Timonen, the head of the Cultural Department of the city of Helsinki, stated thathe ‘arrived independently at this idea, but talked openly to people and realized that otherpeople had been thinking along the same lines’ (interview, 2009). Among them werepeople from the Department of Urban Planning (including Mikael Sundman) and themayor Pajunen: ‘These discussions were coming to his ears too . . . and he liked the ideaas well’ (ibid.).

The case of the Cable Factory might be only one amongst many factors through which‘culture’ has been instrumentalized in the context of Helsinki urban planning. We couldalso mention the opening of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, the HelsinkiCultural CapitalYear in 2000, the city’s status as the World Capital of Design in 2012, notto mention the global boom in ‘creative-city’ consultants who have repeatedly visited andlectured in Helsinki during recent decades. But the specificity of the Cable Factory that Iwant to stress in the present analysis is twofold. On one hand, in the context of Helsinki,it was the first significant case of transforming obsolete built environment by means ofsomething that was later interpreted as a ‘cultural use’. On the other, the transformation didnot start as a planning project or an urban development strategy, but as a gradual, piecemealand bottom-up process whose objectives and outcomes were uncertain at that time.

In the case of the Cable Factory, the emancipation of obsolete space from its culturallyaccepted mode of representation defined the political role of the Pro Kaapeli artists’movement in the factory’s transformation. I have argued elsewhere (Krivy, 2010) thatthis transformation did not proceed by reclaiming an identity for the place. Rather, themovement worked with the idea of empty obsolete space. Whereas there was unanimousagreement on the need to redevelop the Cable Factory towards a new ‘post-industrial’use, Pro Kaapeli ‘dismantled’ this form of representation by saying that the empty spacedid not have to be redeveloped. Rather than redevelopment and the establishment of aprojected new identity as a ‘culture factory’, the collective work of the Pro Kaapeli could



be characterized as alteration preserving the non-identity of the empty, obsolete space ofthe factory. In the practice of alteration, empty, obsolete space undergoes piecemeal,gradual, and continuous change, but no definite identity is projected for the place.Alteration is never finished and there is a great deal of uncertainty about its outcomes(Scott, 2008).

Whereas uncertainty characterized the practice of the Pro Kaapeli movement duringthe years 1989–91, the Suvilahti project is grounded in the certainty of its ‘culturaleffects’, i.e. in its projected identity: ‘Suvilahti will become a well-known and respectedcultural community and a pleasant place to visit’ (Suvilahti Työryhmä, 2007: 10, mytranslation). There is a significant difference between the uncertain interventions of thePro Kaapeli movement in the Cable Factory and the Suvilahti project, where ‘culture’ hasbeen employed as a planning instrument and the certainty of its positive effects is proudlyannounced. The conflict between the Pro Kaapeli movement and the city authoritieswould not happen nowadays — the alternative proposals formulated by the Pro Kaapeliare now praised and recognized as ‘culture’ by the city authorities themselves.

Significantly, whereas the Cable Factory was listed as a heritage monument onlyafter — or, ‘as a consequence of’ (interview with Simo Freese, 2009) — the involvementof the Pro Kaapeli movement and the transfer of the ownership of the Cable Factory toKaapelikiinteistö, the National Board of Antiquities had already declared the premises ofSuvilahti to be a ‘nationally significant cultural built environment’ (Suvilahti Työryhmä,2007: 6, my translation) in 1993, that is, before the project for Suvilahti’s transformation.Hence, in terms of the built environment, the project is largely restorative — as SimoFreese, the head architect in charge of the transformation of Suvilahti, put it: ‘functionshave to fit the buildings, not the other way around, because the buildings are protected’(interview, 2009). This is the tone of the arguments behind the ‘cultural’ transformationof Suvilahti: ‘Cultural use is justified from the point of view of the conservation ofbuildings, because the basic standards can be achieved without drastic modifications’(Suvilahti Työryhmä, 2007: 9, my translation).

The emergence of a regime in which ‘culture’ is recognized as an instrument of urbanplanning was an unintended consequence of the Pro Kaapeli movement’s fight for thepreservation of the Cable Factory and of its eventual success. The influence of the CableFactory is not manifested simply as case-to-case influence, but as influence through theproduction of a consensus — of people ‘thinking along the same lines’ — that ‘culture’is good, important and useful. The instrumental role of the ‘culturalization’ of obsoleteindustrial spaces lies in the planned nature of the effects that ‘culture’ is expected tomobilize.

Later in the article, I shall analyse this ‘culturalization’ using the notion of culturalgovernmentality. However, prior to doing so, I would like to show how the planning of‘culture’ in Suvilahti is related to the planning of the surrounding areas. On one side, therole of ‘culture is . . . to keep [the original] architecture’ (interview with Freese, 2009),that is, ‘cultural use’ is embraced because it can be easily accommodated withrequirements to restore Suvilahti into its original condition. On the other side, ‘culturaluse’ valorizes Suvilahti premises by giving them a specific sociospatial function withinthe wider urban context and, in particular, in the context of the planning project for thetransformation of Kalasatama.

Suvilahti as a part of Kalasatama redevelopment and as an ‘enclave’

The ‘cultural’ function, which was envisaged as being provided by Suvilahti, wasconceived by the City Planning Department as an integral part of the Kalasatamaredevelopment, covering a former industrial harbour and adjoining areas. The planningcompetition began in 2011 and the project is timetabled to last until 2035. The area ofland to be redeveloped is 177 ha, bordering 5 km of the shoreline. The overall plannedfloor area is 1,350,000 m2 and the new district is expected to attract 18,000 newinhabitants and 10,000 new workplaces.

14 Maroš Krivý


Kalasatama is one of the largest urban planning projects in Helsinki in recent decades,and it has started with the transformation of Suvilahti: ‘When we build new areas, we . . .come there with culture’ (interview with Birgitta Rickman, 2009). The working groupreport compares the future effects of Suvilahti on the district of Kalasatama to theinfluence of Cable Factory on the district of Ruoholahti (Suvilahti Työryhmä, 2007: 4).However little sense the reference to the Cable Factory makes — it is precisely the lackof any alleged effect of the Cable Factory on Ruoholahti that is often mentioned (e.g. ininterviews with Marjatta Raunila, 30 September 2009 and with Pia Ilonen, head architectand founding member of the Pro Kaapeli movement, 11 July 2007) — the valuation of‘culture’ in Suvilahti is defined in terms of its external effects on Kalasatama, which it issupposed to affect in a positive way. Strong ‘cultural forces’ are supposed to ‘radiate’from Suvilahti to Kalasatama, having a variety of influences ranging from environmentalart to construction development (interview with Sundman, 2009).

At the same time, documents and interviews present Suvilahti as a differentialenclave. What is being staged here is a contrast between an ordinary city and ‘culturalspace’ that is different. Pekka Timonen says of Suvilahti: ‘It’s a very nice area. When thecity gets built around it, it will be like a village inside the city. It’s got a nice texture’(interview, 2009). Similarly, Simo Freese states: ‘There is a big road through Sörnainenand over the bridge to Kulosaari [see Figure 3]. It is not so nice, it is windy and there arelots of cars. Suvilahti is in the middle of this boring road and when you pass through it,it is like going through a village’ (interview, 2009).

Celebration of the beauty of Suvilahti is a significant rhetorical strategy in the projectfor its transformation. Simo Freese stresses the restorative dimension of the project byrepeatedly pointing out the uniqueness and specificity of the original architecture ofSelim A. Lindqvist and Jalmar Castrén. The ‘very good architecture’, ‘beautifulJugendstil’, and ‘very beautiful vaulted ceilings’ are emphasized (interview with Freese,2009). The interviewees also stress that the gasholders make this one of only tworemaining locations with gasholders in Finland, and that the buildings represent the firstexample in Finland of the Hennebique system of reinforced-concrete construction(interviews with Sundman, 2009, Timonen, 2009, Freese, 2009). The uniqueness andvalue of the factory buildings is further asserted by claiming that they contribute to theinternational prestige of Helsinki (‘you could easily find those buildings in Vienna; it isa very similar style to Otto Wagner or Josef Olbrich’, interview with Freese, 2009) oreven their international primacy (‘you won’t find any industrial buildings in Europe ofthe same quality from that particular time’, interview with Sundman, 2009).

Such statements about the beauty and architectural uniqueness of Suvilahti elevateit into a different space, ‘a nice texture’ ‘in the middle of a boring road’. This is onedimension of the metaphor of Suvilahti as a ‘village’ or an enclave. Its other aspect isthe idea of the future community of Suvilahti as a living organism, an autonomous,creative, diverse and self-managed community of cultural producers: ‘Suvilahti will bea living organism, it has to be that kind of structure, it is not governed by the city. . . .Big architects often forget the idea of a living organism . . . [that] people can reallycreate and influence themselves’ (interview with Timonen, 2009). It is said that the cityshould not interfere with a ‘living organism’ — the notion contrasts rigid, bureaucratic,top-down planning with the idea of a spontaneous and bottom-up-organizedcommunity of users defined simply by their unencumbered individual creativity: ‘Thegoal is to create an inspiring, creative community in the area whose membershipneither obligates nor binds, but instead offers the opportunity of working together withothers at Suvilahti’ (quoted in ENCATC, 2011: 7). ‘And this concept [of the livingorganism] is important for all spaces linked to the arts, culture and creativity’(interview with Timonen, 2009).

Hence, on one side, Suvilahti is portrayed as an enclave of beautiful and uniquearchitecture housing a unique cultural and creative community — a ‘village’ and a ‘livingorganism’. On the other, Suvilahti is as an integral part of the massive planning projectfor Kalasatama redevelopment. How do these two aspects of Suvilahti match up?



Pekka Timonen (interview, 2009) states: ‘The area needs character, it needs culture, itneeds this kind of buzz. New developed areas need to have character and depth. This kindof function for [Suvilahti] also brings and creates value for the whole area around’.Hence, Suvilahti is conceived as an enclave of difference, yet the function of this enclaveis to radiate difference around itself and influence the surrounding ordinary, or evenboring, city:

[Suvilahti] is an asset . . . it must be a bonus, something that creates a bonus for the whole area.When it is developed and functioning, I think people will find it an oasis, an island, which isa bit different from the things around it, which is always good. The cultural resources for thearea are provided by Suvilahti — a cultural dynamo (interview with Timonen, 2009).

For the city, it is very good; for people, the citizens, it is much better. It will be a really niceplace and a phenomenon for Helsinki. It is already now . . . but it will be much more in thefuture . . . I hope it will serve people from Kalasatama, I hope it will be very popular. WithoutSuvilahti, Kalasatama would be a quite boring place’ (interview with Freese, 2009).

This tells us lot about the relation between planning and non-planning. With regard toSuvilahti, paradoxically, planners present themselves as not really planning and citymanagers as not really managing. At the same time, the traditional role of planning doesnot disappear — the planning of Kalasatama can be compared to the non-planning ofSuvilahti, the traffic around Suvilahti is well-planned (the good accessibility of the siteis repeatedly praised, see e.g. Suvilahti Työryhmä, 2007: 9), even the heritage protectionof Suvilahti can be taken as a form of planning. How should we then understand thenon-planning of Suvilahti? My thesis is that the non-planning is a specific form ofplanning for the cultural transformation of obsolete industrial spaces. Planners andmanagers value the non-planned character of ‘culture’ for its potential to generatedifference — that is, difference in heritage value (the regeneration and conservation ofthe original Suvilahti architecture), economic value (the valorization of land inconnection to the Kalasatama project), and societal wellbeing (diversion and enjoymentfor visitors and for future inhabitants of Kalasatama). In the next subsection I analyse thisprocess as cultural governmentality.

Cultural governmentality

During the interview with Mikael Sundman (15 September 2009), after I inadvertentlyrevealed that I was not professionally trained in architecture, he explained in a patronizingway that I ‘must’ (sic!) understand that things do not go from A to B to C as planned, thaturban planning is extremely complex and that everything constantly changes. He furtherstated that ‘there was no real logic or real planning in transforming Suvilahti for culturalpurposes; it was only that one thing happened and another thing happened and then,suddenly and without real planning, it was converted into cultural purpose’.

However, the two things should not be confused. The fact that things do not proceedas planned, means neither that they are not planned, nor that there is no logic behindthem. In spite of everything, what is planned, or at least expected, is the effects of‘culture’. In Sundman’s words:

We do not really have any clear idea what the influence of that area [Suvilahti] will be in theend. But, at the same time, we are confident that it will have a huge impact — because we arestarting a new area with 18,000 inhabitants, starting with a metro station and cultural centre, weknow the impact will be huge — we don’t want to give any answer, we know there are strongforces in Suvilahti that should radiate and influence, but we don’t know how . . . In Suvilahti,there would certainly, certainly, certainly be an impact on Kalasatama (interview, 2009).

In what sense will ‘culture’ be employed in the Suvilahti transformation? For example,Sundman says that they ‘think about how to give a building process provisional streets,shelters, cranes and how they should have artistic quality, how to give that artistic quality

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to the whole building process of the area, which should be a part of the mental map ofHelsinki inhabitants’ (interview, 2009). Hence, there is planning qua planning of thisimpact, that is, planning for cultural diversity and diversion, as well as for the artisticquality of the cranes.

In other words, the planners say that there is no real logic behind planning and themanagers say they do not really manage and rather ‘let things happen’. The imperative is‘don’t plan too much’ (interview with Timonen, 2009). The role of the city is ‘enabling, itonly enables things to happen . . . it does not interfere as a structure too much’ (ibid.).Hence, the task of an urban manager is to keep interventions at a minimum: ‘I don’t callthe City Hall and they don’t call me and that keeps everyone happy’ (ibid.). The role of thecity’s bureaucratic structure is to govern in a non-bureaucratic way, delegatingmanagement to organizations such as the Kaapelikiinteistö, which ‘is not bureaucratic, itis not an extension of a bureaucratic system, it is an independent body that works veryclosely with people and its customers. And the city has to enable it’ (ibid.).

The position and role of the Kaapelikiinteistö as the managing organization ofSuvilahti is crucial in understanding the planning of the transformation of this obsoletespace. The organization is a city-owned, non-profit, real estate company, in whichthe board of directors consists mostly of established and well-regarded artists. Thecompany’s operating profit fluctuates around zero. Kaapelikiinteistö’s revenues comefrom rents on long-term and short-term leases to artists, independent culturalorganizations, event organizers and private companies. There are specific rates of rent forspecific types of tenants — individual artists and startup companies pay the lowest rents(interview with Rickman, 2009; interview with Timo Härmälä, head of the Real EstateDepartment, City of Helsinki, member of the Suvilahti working group, 29 September2009). As a major operational strategy, the revenues from rents are more or less fullyreinvested in renovations to the buildings — the investment outlook for the followingyears is around €1 million annually (Suvilahti Työryhmä, 2007: 13). There is no externalfunding from the city. The involvement of public money is limited to the initial soilcleaning and HVAC renovation financed by the Helsinki City Real Estate Department.

Kaapelikiinteistö and its specific model of managing a ‘culture factory’ was born in1991 out of the struggle between the Pro Kaapeli movement and city institutions over theCable Factory. In the present case, it was the advice of the working group to transfer theownership and management of Suvilahti to Kaapelikiinteistö. The working group chosethis course of action after considering at least two other options — to sell the buildingsto an independent private body or to keep them in the ownership of the city. The workinggroup based its recommendation on Kaapelikiinteistö’s 16 years of know-how inrenovation and self-operating cultural management, its capacity for an immediateinvestment and comparative cost-efficiency of this solution (Suvilahti Työryhmä, 2007:12–13). The recommendation of the working group came into effect on 1 January 2008,with an increase of Kaapelikiinteistö’s turnover from €3.5 million in 2007 to €4.3 millionin 2008.

The absence of direct cultural programming in Suvilahti is a key aspect in its planningby ‘non-planning’. Instead, programming is done by way of careful consideration andselection of long-term tenants and short-term events. Necessarily, their contribution tothe ‘spirit of the place’ thus plays a key role in the process of selection: ‘It is importantto enhance the “spirit of neighbourhood” so that the tenants might find ways toco-operate and also look at their activity from the viewpoint of a customer coming to . . .Suvilahti’ (Creative Metropoles, 2011: 106) and also: ‘Finding the right users and theability to reconcile the wishes of a larger whole are essential factors for success.Diversity of user profiles enables active use in all seasons and throughout the wholeweek’ (Suvilahti Työryhmä, 2007: 10, my translation). As the demand for space inSuvilahti is three times higher than the amount available (interview with Stuba Nikula,managing director of the Kaapelikiinteistö Oy, 11 September 2009), there is no need toattract new actors — they come by themselves. Although the role of the Helsinki CityCultural Department is important due to the fact that many of the Suvilahti tenants are



supported by its grants, it has no direct influence on the cultural programming ofSuvilahti — this is fully dependent on the expected ‘creativity’ of Suvilahti’s tenants andan ‘indefiniteness . . . that needs to be maintained’ (Creative Metropoles, 2011: 106).

Cultural governmentality and the planning instrument of temporary use

The institutional arrangement that underlies the planning of Suvilahti’s transformation— strategic self-limitation on the part of planning authorities, the ‘outsourcing’ ofdevelopment, uncertainty and indefiniteness of use — shares many similarities with therecently popularized planning arrangement for interim or temporary use (Hentilä andLindborg, 2003; Blumner, 2006; Overmeyer, 2007). Similarities exist also insofar as‘culture’ is the predominant type of use involved where use is interim or temporary(Hentilä and Lindborg, 2003).

Interim use is defined as ‘the temporary activation of vacant land or buildings with noforeseeable development demand . . . use of a site is, by agreement with the owner,time-limited . . . interim use is permitted until an investor emerges. Interim use does notchange the long-term zoning or land use for a site’ (Blumner, 2006). The instrument oftemporary use is similarly defined by the fact that ‘the use is limited in time’ (Hentilä andLindborg, 2003: 3).

Interim and temporary uses have been understood as harbouring social, cultural andpolitical alternatives (Doron, 2000; Wilson, 2000; Lehtovuori, 2010) to speculative urbandevelopments. More recent claims, however, undermine such a view. The advocates oftemporary and interim uses themselves claim that ‘city officials perceive interim use asa means to attract residents and businesses to the city by enhancing its image as a creativecenter’ (Blumner, 2006, my emphasis) and that ‘the additional value connected withtemporary uses is the potential of forming innovative milieus . . ., creating synergy . . .and therefore improving the competition capacity of a city’ (Hentilä and Lindborg, 2003:x, my emphasis).

By this means non-planned, temporary use as an end in itself — as exemplified in thecase of the Pro Kaapeli movement and the Cable Factory — is transformed into a strategy(‘means’) to obtain a specific objective (‘additional value’). But the deep contradiction atthe heart of the temporary uses — do they stand for an alternative to speculativeboosterism or for a new form of speculative boosterism? (see e.g. Shaw, 2005) — pointsstill to an uncertainty (‘potential’) regarding the immediate translation of temporary usesinto economic growth.

In fact, the perceived ‘additional value’ of temporary uses does not lie in theirtemporariness per se but in the diversity, spontaneity and indeterminacy of the ‘culturalactivities’ that tend to be generated by their temporariness — something that WalterBenjamin characterized as a ‘diversion in the tedium of urban life’ (Benjamin, 1983: 11n).

The solution that is attempted in the planning of Suvilahti, then, is to make the activitiesgenerated by temporary uses permanent — the change of the local land use plan isexpected in the near future (Freese, 2009). The planning objective is to stimulate Suvilahtiinto a place of creative uncertainty, but without any uncertainty about its socio-urbanfunction — there is a certainty about the added value and positive effects of Suvilahti.

Once again, the crucial difference to the Cable Factory should be stressed. Thetransformation of the Cable Factory started as a ‘temporary use’ and only a conflict ledto the change of the local land use plan of the site and a making permanent of the‘interim’ use. In Suvilahti, the transformation mimics the content generated by interim/temporary uses, but the use is made permanent and changes in local land use plan areanticipated from the start.

Cultural governmentality and ‘cultivation’

The lack of conflict, and thus also the possibility of employing non-planned culturalpractices as a planning instrument, can be explained by the ‘performative power’ of thenotion of culture. The situation is merely described, but, at the same time, the importance

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accorded to the fact that things should be as they are provides the ground for its actualplanning: ‘The rise of the creative industries and culture in Helsinki is now clear foreverybody — people see from the economic point of view, from the cultural point ofview, from the city development point of view, that it is very important now for the cityof Helsinki, and the wellbeing and the success of Helsinki, so we want to encourage thismovement’ (interview with Timonen, 2009). Besides the tautological statement that‘culture is important from the cultural point of view’, it is further claimed that ‘cultureis accepted [sic!] by the people to a very large extent, people see culture as a vital elementin the city. This is very culture-oriented city . . . Helsinki’s lifestyle, wellbeing andeconomic development are all related to cultural creativity’ (ibid.).

If there is general agreement about the positive effects of ‘culture’, ‘culture’ canbe immediately translated into a planning instrument without planning the ‘culture’itself. Employing ‘culture’ as an instrument in generating wellbeing and economicdevelopment can go hand in hand with the spontaneity and autonomy of cultural actors.Pekka Timonen characterizes Suvilahti’s managing organization Kaapelikiinteistö as‘only a gardener who makes sure that the sun is shining [sic!], that grass is growing andthat weeds are taken out’ (interview, 2009). At the risk of overinterpreting, I think thisslip of the tongue is quite revealing. Extending the parallel, while the Simmel’saxiological gardener cultivated the tree of culture and the anthropological gardenersmight have developed a variety of different understandings of a cultivated tree, thepresent gardener actually harbours hopes of cultivating the sun itself.

This gardener does not want to plan his garden — he only enables everything to growby itself, ensuring that every single plant has enough space for its personal developmentand that there is a rich diversity of plants — but he does aim to plan the wider ecosystem.As far as ‘culture’ is concerned, the planner and administrator do not want to define whatit is, they only want to enable the creativity of individual cultural producers. Yet this‘retreat’ from a definition of culture goes hand in hand with a conception of culture as aninstrument capable of influencing the external environment at the social and urban levels.

Thus, the cultivating role of ‘culture’ in Suvilahti can be understood as follows. Onthe one hand, the autonomy of cultural producers is granted through the delegationof Suvilahti’s management to non-profit, city-owned real estate organization(Kaapelikiinteistö), in which artists dominate the board of directors. The organization‘cultivates’ the built environment of Suvilahti — it carries out renovations in line with theheritage protection required by the National Board of Antiquities. The ‘cultural output’of Suvilahti is regulated only by careful selection of tenants, governed by an ideal of a‘diverse’ community.

On the other hand, the decision to hand cultural planning over to Kaapelikiinteistö isbased on a firm belief that the diversity of ‘cultural output’ generated by Suvilahti tenantswill ‘cultivate’ the surrounding space of the planned district of Kalasatama. Theautonomy given to Suvilahti’s artists and cultural producers is perceived as a ‘non-plan’solution that will secure thriving cultural spontaneity and diversity. This is what planningauthorities understand as ‘culture’ and it is within this notion of culture that we canunderstand the strategy of planning Suvilahti as a ‘cultivating agent’ for Kalasatama.

ConclusionThroughout the Suvilahti-related documents, plans, decisions, and decision-makers’rhetoric, ‘culture’ is shaped as a powerful instrument capable of moulding its social andspatial environment. In urban planning, the instrumental role of ‘culture’ lies in itscapacity to produce a difference in urban space. What does this mean?

On one side, the projected identity of Suvilahti, that of a ‘culture factory’, is itselfimagined as constituting an enclave of ‘difference’. The selection of tenants by theKaapelikiinteistö real estate organization, the owner and the manager of Suvilahti’s



transformation, is governed by the idea of diversity and mixture: ‘they think about thesemixtures of different kind of users’ (interview with Freese, 2009). The future communityof Suvilahti is characterized as a ‘living organism’ — a spontaneous community ofindependent artists and cultural producers creating ‘buzz’. Suvilahti is also perceived asdifferent from the surrounding city. Suvilahti, which is ‘in the middle of [a] boring road’(ibid.) is praised for its beautiful industrial architecture. Suvilahti has received a heritageprotection since 1993 and ‘culture’ is understood as the best instrument of regeneratingand conserving the perceived ‘uniqueness’ of Suvilahti.

On the other side, Suvilahti, as a ‘cultural enclave’, is expected to radiate positivedifference to the surrounding areas. Suvilahti plays a key role in planning andtransformation of the old industrial harbour in Kalasatama into a modern waterfront. Itis expected that Suvilahti’s ‘culture’ will generate difference in the form of asocioeconomic value for the surrounding areas: ‘without Suvilahti, Kalasatama could bequite a boring place’ (ibid.).

In this sense, ‘culture’ as an urban planning instrument can be characterized by aspecific combination of the axiological and anthropological notions of culture. Withregard to the former, culture is grasped as an ideal to be pursued; with regard to the latter,it is understood as a description of existing differences. The instrumentalization of‘culture’, as analysed in the case of Suvilahti, can be then defined as a process in whichculture-as-difference becomes an ideal to be pursued and employed in planning forsocial, economic and spatial difference.

A shaping influence on Suvilahti has been traced back to the transformation of theCable Factory and its subsequent presentation as a ‘success story’, which created aconsensus that ‘culture is good’ and that it is the best instrument for transformingobsolete industrial space. The Pro Kaapeli movement never proposed any ‘culturalidentity’ for the factory, but operated by gradual and uncertain alterations without adefinite plan. However, the growing subsequent fame of the building as a culture factoryled to urban planners’ and managers’ recognition of ‘culture’ as an instrument of urbanplanning and managing. This instrument is now being employed in the planning ofSuvilahti’s transformation.

In the concept of cultural governmentality I have described a specific form ofgoverning the transformation of Suvilahti, in which urban planners and managers presentthemselves as deliberately minimizing their measures and interventions. I have shownthat, in spite of this rhetoric, planning does not disappear; it only changes its objective:the promotion of non-planned practices becomes itself a new form of planning. What areplanned in the case of Suvilahti are the instrumental effects of voluntary and non-plannedcultural practices on obsolete urban space.

Maroš Krivý ([email protected]), Department of Social Research, Faculty of SocialSciences, University of Helsinki, Snellmaninkatu 10, Helsinki 00014, Finland.

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