Well, the Siwa is quite obviously temporary... would be a ridiculous arrangement otherwise. ;>biscayne wrote:I have to say I really dislike Suurpelto. It is being built into a really high-density residential area, and while there is a lot of forested area with trails and a park close by, there are absolutely no facilities apart from a tiny SIWA which is supposedly temporary, ie. it is in a pre-fab. It seems to be a mix of social and private, the park already seems to be attracting youths hanging around. I just can't understand how they can build such a huge place with no facilities.
They're going to build a 14,000 m² mall:
http://www.ncc.fi/en/vacant-premises/se ... to-centre/
Check out the plans here:
http://www.ncc.fi/contentassets/bd58066 ... pohjat.pdf
Come see Ylä-Olari or Kuitinmäki; they tried that here already in the 1970s. Things are now in a rather sad shape, though. You can still see the architects' original idea - how they tried their earnest to make it lively here, deliberately blending the businesses and services among the apartment blocks and creating these communities with local services just around the corner, or in the same building - and for a while, that apparently worked, too. But those days seem to have passed. I guess the Iso Omena mall took the steam out of that and now it's pretty quiet here.biscayne wrote:In Slovenia for example (and Finns would think themselves far above Slovenia...) whenever they build new blocks of flats, there are almost never ground floor flats if in an urban area, the ground floor is usually a cafe, shops and some other business areas. I really miss the cafe culture in Slovenia, because they sell both coffee and alcohol, so the youth have somewhere to go and have coffee, soft drinks etc.,the adults can drink beer or wine etc. if they want. You rarely see gangs of youth hanging around, they go to the cafes and sit there for a few hours over a coffee.
Now the malls are basically where all the action is. Or if that is not good enough, people go downtown. Which is downtown Helsinki, of course. Despite the name "Espoon keskus", Espoo does not really have a city center.