Do I understand you correctly, that you favor bus transit over trams/trains?

I’m also interested to see the new car tax proposals. I hope they don’t go the hypocritical route of taxing older (polluting) cars more heavily. They’ll simply roll-over to Russia and we’ll get the smoke every time the wind changes our way.

Of course, we can junk the old cars and buy new, more efficient ones. But then the environment would be polluted via the manufacturing process of the new cars.

Taxing new, heavy-polluting cars at higher rates, would make sense though.

In the end, I’m sure they’ll do whatever pulls more money out of our pockets, rather than what makes the most ecological sense.

Houses cost nothing in the middle of nowhere in Finland. I would venture to imagine that there is a price difference between the outback and the suburbs of Sydney down under as well.

Which is not saying that Helsinki isn’t probably the shittiest place in the universe with regard to PPP in this respect, save perhaps London if you don’t happenn to work in the City.

About ten years ago, when Vantaa was still planning Aviapolis, I had an opportunity to visit one of the planning meetings where Helsinki through its mouthpiece YTV lobbied strongly against any plans to commercially develop any subcenters outside Helsinki borders. At that time Helsinki still considered Espoo and Vantaa as its main rivals for taxbase. Now house buyers have leaped over Kehä III and they commute only to Kehä III, where an increasing number of companies are locating. Now Helsinki considers the next ring of counties “Kuuma-kunnat” as their main rival. The situation has dramatically changed in less than 10 years. Helsinki has to actually offer better value for tax money if it wishes to retain its taxbase.

To my understanding it is mainly the sos dem politicians that are interested in joining all the counties as one “Helsinki metropoli”, but — to my disappointment — kokoomus is not far behind. When it comes to situations where a citizen could really benefit from competition, i.e. competition among counties for regular taxpayers, kokoomus prefers to promote the monopoly position of local government.

The idea of heavy transit will keep the prices high because heavy transit has limited access, about 2 km rings around the stations. It provides much less accessible properties than a transport system rolling on rubber tires. Heavy transit also requires a hierarchical hub-and-spoke network, because of the incredibly high infrastructure investment costs compared to lighter transit modes. So sticking to heavy transit will guide a maximum number of transit trips through downtown Helsinki.

Sticking to heavy transit and zoning the land accordingly affects pollution and noise in two ways: a passenger-km of a full train produces less emissions than a passenger-km of a full car, but with heavy transit there are more passenger-km’s due to the circuitous routes through downtown. And the trips take more time. The long travel times are reflected in people’s willingness to pay high prices for the scarce housing with good access. Because housing is pricey, people settle for small quarters. This of course fits the land developer’s interest, because it can get more profit from a piece of land if it builds an apartment building with many small, standardized apartments than if it has to actually please the buyer and build larger, individualized houses.

Most unfortunate for the all Finns is the fact that the modern production system is based on JOT. And JOT needs rubber tires: small, frequent, flexible transport systems for both goods and people. Sticking to rail in transportation is just as progressive as sticking to line phones in communication.

Also, because public transit needs customers, there is a moral mandate to tax cars heavily. Consequently, people drive old and heavily polluting cars, which in turn strengthens the heavenly mandate to tax the cars a bit more.

My personal bet is that the four new car tax models the transportation ministry is about to publish will have one red herring, two fillers, and a planned-to-win proposal, that increases the total tax collected from cars through years to come. And most probably, the new tax is going to be officially presented as if it depended on pollution, but somehow the tax is going to be determined in a way that the car owner can not reduce the tax by additional car maintenance (and actual reduction of the pollutants).

So do I, but KePu’s Manninen, for instance, considers the Sipoo land-grab to be within his jurisdiction.

According to him, the land-grab will facilitate “ordinary Helsinkians” buying seafront property from Sipoo. That remains to be seen.

KePu kusettaa aina.

Helsinki City Council: 85 members, 4 from KePu
Helsinki City Govt.: 15 members, 1 from KePu

I kinda always though that the city itself is in charge of zoning etc., not the national govt.

I wouldn’t actually call it a bubble, if you consider how much catching-up there has been from the post-recession years. The house prices (if measured together with purchase power) of 1987 were reached just 2004 and the property inflation has been pretty modest if you contrast it to other growing EU economies, such as Ireland and Spain.

http://www.stat.fi/tup/suoluk/suoluk_asuminen_en.html
http://www.stat.fi/til/ashi/2004/03/ashi_2004_03_2004-10-29_kat_001.html

Maybe the high (cirka 70) home ownership rate (especially in declining regions?) offers some explanation? If you own a house in Kajaani you can’t pack your stuff and move to Helsinki/Tampere/Oulu that easily, unless you have some savings. So even if the migration to cities has been publically perceived as something rapid, in normal conditions it should have been even faster. So regarding the housing markets, the supply constraint has been somewhat balanced out by another constraint on demand?

And since it’s of my favourite theme, I’d like to point to the change in demography too. When people age they become also less eager to move and buy property -or anything else, for that matter. They simply spend less. And Finland has the 4th highest median age in Europe.

So many of the apartments are in old buildings where there are long hallways that go nowhere, or have strange little rooms that are too small for a bedroom but too big for a closet.

I was living in a 70 sq. meter modern building in downtown Helsinki that was one of the few that was very efficiently laid out. All of my downtown friends thought the place was much larger – even 85 or 90 sq. meters. And even though I was only on the 4th floor, I had open views and sunshine all daylight hours unlike most apartments in downtown Helsinki that face mostly into the neighbouring apartment houses.

I do think some tall modern efficiently laid out apartments just outside the city center would be a help. They will seem so much more attractive than some of the older housing stock in downtown that prices would moderate abit in downtown.

Parks / sea wall (without cars) and you can walk in 20 min. to anywhere in downtown:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaletown
http://www.lestwarog.com/region-1.html

What ever happened to it?