Kaupungin ja maaseudun vuorovaikutus alueellisessa kehittämispolitiikassa

In Finland, European Union membership and economic globalisation have changed the position of regions from closed territorial systems to nodes of open international networks. The increasing complexity of cities as globalised knowledge centres and functionally specialised and diversified rural areas, and on the other hand growing disparities between prosperous urban cores and lagging peripheral areas are also essential features in contemporary regional development. These trends have produced new needs to promote mutual dialogue between cities and the countryside in western market economies. Urban-rural interaction is an idea which was developed in the late 1990s within regional policy to pull together these new challenges to regional development and handle cities and the countryside as a whole. The aim of my study is to conceptualise the idea of urban-rural interaction, explain the phenomenon theoretically, clarify past and present urban and rural development and analyse regional policies from the interaction angle. The ultimate purpose is to illustrate the existence and nature of particular interaction policy in a globalising society. The general method is discourse analysis, which I use in three cases: Central Finland, South-Ostrobothnia and South-West Finland. Theoretically I have a two-dimensional approach. On the first hand I use World-System theory to explain how the global economy is moulding urban and rural structures at the regional level. On the other hand I use regime theory to explain local political actions and practises between cities and the countryside under the overlapping pressures deriving from reformulated regional structures and policies.

Adaptation to globalisation in Finland has been carried out by strengthening urban centres. The stress in regional policy has been in urban development. The development of the countryside has mostly been implemented by a separate rural policy. At the end of the 1990s and early 2000s Finnish cities have actually shown themselves to be competitive in global markets. The drawbacks of the new growth centre policy have been the sparse network of prosperous cities and their weak spreading effects, which have hindered comprehensive regional development. Tensions between urban and rural areas have also deepened. In this situation the interaction policy is used as a way of balancing development and moderate conflicts within the regions. From this point of view urban-rural interaction can be seen as a way of tackling the challenges of globalisation.

On the other hand the results emphasise that actors involved in regional development still believe, although the hegemonic discourse is on urban policy, that there are opportunities to stimulate progress in the countryside as well. In the situation where regional authorities control development resources, rural development can be successful only if rural actors manage to establish fruitful relationships with their urban partners. This is also the weakness of the programme-based regional policy. If rural municipalities or other actors are for any reason incapable of building development regimes with cities, the offers of interaction policy will be useless.

The problem of the interaction policy is that the focus and methods of it have so far been rather underdeveloped. In order to improve the efficiency of the interaction policy, further research should concentrate on the social processes which define the position of cities and the countryside as partners of interaction, and practises which promote or prohibit the possibilities of developing the interaction policy. The efforts to define different contents of urban-rural interaction or promote interaction projects should not have such an important role in the future as they have had so far. Instead, the focus of interaction policy should be on questions such as how to manage the political tensions between town and country and how to create a positive atmosphere for regional policy where the needs of urban and rural development are promoted equally.

Characteristics of urban heat island (UHI) in a high latitude coastal city - a case study of Turku, SW Finland

The term urban heat island (UHI) refers to the common situation in which the city is warmer than its rural surroundings. In this dissertation, the local climate, and especially the UHI, of the coastal city of Turku (182,000 inh.), SW Finland, was studied in different spatial and temporal scales. The crucial aim was to sort out the urban, topographical and water body impact on temperatures at different seasons and times of the day. In addition, the impact of weather on spatiotemporal temperature differences was studied. The relative importance of environmental factors was estimated with different modelling approaches and a large number of explanatory variables with various spatial scales. The city centre is the warmest place in the Turku area. Temperature excess relative to the coldest sites, i.e. rural areas about 10 kilometers to the NE from the centre, is on average 2 °C. Occasionally, the UHI intensity can be even 10 °C. The UHI does not prevail continuously in the Turku area, but occasionally the city centre can be colder than its surroundings. Then the term urban cool island or urban cold island (UCI) is used. The UCI is most common in daytime in spring and in summer, whereas during winter the UHI prevails throughout the day. On average, the spatial temperature differences are largest in summer, whereas the single extreme values are often observed in winter. The seasonally varying sea temperature causes the shift of relatively warm areas towards the coast in autumn and inland in spring. In the long term, urban land use was concluded to be the most important factor causing spatial temperature differences in the Turku area. The impact was mainly a warming one. The impact of water bodies was emphasised in spring and autumn, when the water temperature was relatively cold and warm, respectively. The impact of topography was on average the weakest, and was seen mainly in proneness of relatively low-lying places for cold air drainage during night-time. During inversions, however, the impact of topography was emphasised, occasionally outperforming those of urban land use and water bodies.

Animals in an Urban Context. A Zooarchaeological study of the Medieval and Post-Medieval town of Turku

The aim of this study is to explore the role and importance of different animal species in Turku through an analysis of osteological data and documentary evidence. The osteological material used in this study is derived from two town plots in Turku dating from the 13th century to the 19th century. The osteological material deposited in Turku represents animals bred both in the town and in the surrounding landscape. Animal husbandry in SW-Finland can also be examined through a number of historical documents. The importance of animals in Turku and its hinterland are closely connected and therefore the roles of the animals in both urban and rural settings are examined. The study has revealed the complexity of the depositional patterns in medieval and post-medieval Turku. In the different areas of Turku, characteristic patterns in the osteological material and different deposit types were evident. These patterns are reflections of the activities and therefore of the lifestyles practiced in Turku. The results emphasise the importance of context- awareness in the study of material culture from archaeological sites. Both the zooarchaeological and historical sources indicate that cattle were important in animal husbandry in Turku from the Middle Ages up to the 19th century. Sheep were the second most common species. When taking into consideration the larger size of cattle, the dominance of these animals when it come to meat consumption seems clear even in those phases where sheep bones are more abundant. Pig is less abundant in the material than either cattle or sheep and their importance for subsistence was probably fairly modest, albeit constant. Goats were not abundant in the material. Most of the identified goat bones came from low utility body parts (e.g. skulls and lower extremities), but some amount of goat meat was also consumed. Wild species were of minor importance when it came to consumption practices in Turku. The changes in Turku’s animal husbandry patterns between the medieval and post medieval periods is reflected in the change in age of the animals slaughtered, which was part of a wider pattern seen in North- and Central Europe. More mature animals are also present in the assemblages. This pattern is related to the more pronounced importance of cattle as a manure producer and a draught animal as a result of the intensification of crop cultivation. This change seems to occur later in Finland than in the more Southerly regions, and indeed it did not necessarily take hold in all parts of the country.

Biogeochemistry in acid sulphate soil landscapes and small urban centres in Western Finland

The overall purpose of this thesis was to increase the knowledge on the biogeochemistry of rural acid sulphate (AS) soil environments and urban forest ecosystems near small towns in Western Finland. In addition, the potential causal relationship between the distribution of AS soils and geographical occurence of multiple sclerosis (MS) disease was assessed based on a review of existing literature and data. Acid sulphate soils, which occupy an area of approximately 17–24 million hectare worldwide, are regarded as the nastiest soils in the world. Independent of the geographical locality of these soils, they pose a great threat to their surrounding environment if disturbed. The abundant metal-rich acid drainage from Finnish AS soils, which is a result of sulphide oxidation due to artificial farmland drainage, has significant but spatially and temporally variable ecotoxicological impacts on biodiversity and community structure of fish, benthic invertebrates and macrophytes. This has resulted in mass fish kills and even eradication of sensitive fish species in affected waters. Moreover, previous investigations demonstrated significantly enriched concentrations of Co, Ni, Mn and Al, metals which are abundantly mobilised in AS soils, in agricultural crops (timothy grass and oats) and approximately 50 times higher concentrations of Al in cow milk originating from AS soils in Western Finland. Nevertheless, the results presented here demonstrate, in general, relatively moderate metal concentrations in oats and cabbage grown on AS soils in Western Finland, although some of the studied fields showed anomalous values of metals (e.g. Co and Ni) in both the soil and target plants (especially oats), similar to that of the previous investigations. The results indicated that the concentrations of Co, Ni, Mn and Zn in oats and Co and Zn in cabbage were governed by soil geochemistry as these metals were correlated with corresponding concentrations extracted from the soil by NH4Ac-EDTA and NH4Ac, respectively. The concentrations of Cu and Fe in oats and cabbage were uncorrelated to that of the easily soluble concentrations in the soils, suggesting that biological processes (e.g. plant-root processes) overshadow geochemical variation. The concentrations of K and Mg in cabbage, which showed a low spread and were strongly correlated to the NH4Ac extractable contents in the soil, were governed by both the bioavailable fractions in the topsoil and plant-uptake mechanisms. The plant´s ability to regulate its uptake of Ca and P (e.g. through root exudates) seemed to be more important than the influence of soil geochemistry. The distribution of P, K, Ca, Mg, Mn and S within humus, moss and needles in and around small towns was to a high degree controlled by biological cycling, which was indicated by the low correlation coefficients for P, K, Ca, Mg and S between humus and moss, and the low spread of these nutrients in moss and needles. The concentration variations of elements in till are mainly due to natural processes (e.g. intrusions, weathering, mineralogical variations in the bedrock). There was a strong spatial pattern for B in humus, moss and needles, which was suggested to be associated with anthropogenic emissions from nearby town centres. Geogenic dust affected the spatial distribution of Fe and Cr in moss, while natural processes governed the Fe anomaly found in the needles. The spatial accumulation patterns of Zn, Cd, Cu, Ni and Pb in humus and moss were strong and diverse, and related to current industry, the former steel industry, coal combustion, and natural geochemical processes. An intriguing Cu anomaly was found in moss. Since it was located close to a main railway line and because the railway line´s electric cables are made of Cu, it was suggested that the reason for the Cu anomaly is corrosion of these cables. In Western Finland, where AS soils are particularly abundant and enrich the metal concentrations of stream waters, cow milk and to some extent crops, an environmental risk assessment would be motivated to elucidate if the metal dispersion affect human health. Within this context, a topic of concern is the distribution of multiple sclerosis as high MS prevalence rates are found in the main area of AS soils. Regionally, the AS soil type in the Seinäjoki area has been demonstrated to be very severe in terms of metal leaching, this area also shows one of the highest MS rates reported worldwide. On a local scale, these severe AS soil types coincide well with the corresponding MS clustering along the Kyrönjoki River in Seinäjoki. There are reasons to suspect that these spatial correlations are causal, as multiple sclerosis has been suggested to result from a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

Elevers läs- och skrivförmåga över tid : en longitudinell kohortstudie av läsförståelse och stavning i årskurs 1-6 i en finlandssvensk skola

Reports have shown that a growing number of students are leaving school without adequate reading and writing skills. At the same time, finnish children have improved in reading lit-eracy over the past decade. The school´s primary mission is to support student´s reading and writing development and follow it over time. Not only individual students´development has to be followd over time, as seen in this study, to be able to plan interventions. The purpose of this licentiate thesis is to study how the results in grades 1–6 exhibit in reading compre-hension and spelling over time in a school for the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland. Even gender differences in reading comprehension and spelling are being examined, as well as students with low performance. The data collection has been done during a period of twelwe years, 1997–2009, where data from practically every two years has been used for this study. Results are reported for the years 1997, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2007 and 2009. The measuring instruments are standardized and normative tests in reading comprehension and spelling. The same instruments were used all of the years. The number of students was 1 037 and when possible, students partici-pated more than once. There was a minimal loss of data. The groups of students mostly came from urban districts, and a smaller number came from rural districts. Students with special needs were included in the group, but none of the students in special units participat-ed. The results show that the skills in reading comprehension and spelling haven´t changed appreciably over time. The trend shows slightly positive or unchanged direction except in spelling in grade 1 and reading comprehension in grade 5 where the trend is slightly nega-tive. The most obvious change can be noticed over time in reading comprehension in grade 2, where performance has improved significantly. Significant differences between boys´and girls´performances occur some years and in favor of the girls, but more often in spelling than in reading comprehension. In grade 4, there are no differences in results between boys and girls in any year, neither in reading comprehension nor in spelling, nor in grade 2 in reading comprehension. When the results shows gender differences, there are always differ-ences in both reading comprehension and spelling. Poor performances are also analyzed over time. Isolated reading comprehension difficulties were common for those who was performing poorly. In grade 2, as the only grade, most common was a double deficit in both reading comprehension and spelling, and in grade 4, most students who performed poorly had isolated difficulties in spelling. The amount of poor results varies over time, and no particular trend can be discerned. In grade 2, however, the poor results decreased over time, especially for the boys. Even in reading comprehension for grade 6 the amount of poor results, especially for the boys (10th percentile), has decreased over time, at least in the later years, while the poor results in-creased in spelling generally. In grade 4 the amount of poor results in spelling (10th perc.) seems to be reduced for the girls.