Greens in Sibbo (Sipoo) will fight this autumn’s municipal election as an independent association according to a report from Radio Vega Östnyland. Most Green activists in Sibbo have cut their link to the national party because of the Greens’ government ministers stance on the annexation of south west Sibbo by Helsinki. When the matter came up in the government, the Green’s ministers supported Helsinki’s forced take-over of an area of south west Sibbo. This was passed in government by a vote of 8-4. The annexation will occur on 1 January 2009. Previously, around 95% of Sibbo’s electorate had voted against the proposal in a referendum organised by the municipal council. The decisions by both the government and later the high court of administration in favour of Helsinki have been seen by many as an attack against municipal democracy and as a victory of the large over the small. In many letters to newspapers, the annexation has been likened to rape.
After the decision, the Greens lost many members in Sibbo who resigned in protest. The same fate also affected Kokoomus (who are the second largest party in Sibbo’s local council), whose government ministers also all supported Helsinki’s forced annexation. The Greens now face a tough municipal election in Sibbo, with 3 of their 4 councillors stating they will not stand for reelection.
Currently, the Swedish peoples party (Sfp) has 20 mandates in Sibbo. The national coalition party Kokoomus have 10. SDP hold 6, the Greens currently have 4 and Centre has 3 councillors.
The image is from one of the several protests against Helsinki’s forced annexation of south west Sibbo that occurred during 2007.
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Saturday 10.5.08 at 0:02
Passer-by
“The decisions by both the government and later the high court of administration in favour of Helsinki have been seen by many as an attack against municipal democracy and as a victory of the large over the small. In many letters to newspapers, the annexation has been likened to rape.”
That is all pretty cute but far removed from reality. The Sipoo people and leaders have been successful in branding this whole thing like some horrible act committed by a big, bad neighbour. In reality, this whole annexation would have been unnecessary had Sipoo been willing to co-operate with Helsinki earlier and plan some residential areas on their zone. Everyone can see on any map or Google Earth etc how the capital area development stops on the Sipoo border like there was an invisible wall. They have been asked to build their share of housing for decades, but with no success.
Why is that? In the end, it’s very simple. Sipoo council has always been dominated by RKP/SFP. They acted rationally from their position, they didn’t want to build housing on their turf, for it would have been inhabitated largely by non-SFP-voting Finnish-speaking people. They just didn’t want to dilute their voter base, and they wanted to preserve the dominance of Swedish language. So I refuse to see Sipoo as some kind of poor, naive victim in this issue. Far from it.
Saturday 10.5.08 at 8:00
Jonas
I don’t understand this strange attempt to bring language matters into it. As far as I am aware, around 60% of the population of Sibbo is today Finnish-speaking. The referendum result in Sibbo was around 95% against the forced annexation of Sibbo. So, it certainly seems that the population of Sibbo was very united in its position regardless of its language background.
Municipal democracy means that individual municipalities decide themselves what happens in their patch. Helsinki has no democratic mandate to tell Sibbo what to do in its own territory. It’s just like bullying by a big kid in the playground against a smaller one. In any case, Sibbo had announced a general plan calling for many more homes than Helsinki itself now plans to build which exposes the reality of Helsinki’s motives - tax income. They realised that the population of south west Sibbo (by the way the to be annexed area is around 70% Finnish speaking) is wealthy and prosperous and would make a rather nice contribution to Helsinki’s suffering budget. Don’t be fooled into buying the line that Helsinki needs space for building. It’s already much much less densely inhabited than e.g. Stockholm. And you could hardly say Stockholm lacks green space. There is no space shortage in the area occupied by today’s Helsinki and certainly it’s not very environmentally friendly to add extra cars to the road by building large individual houses outside of the city centre (it’s good for tax income though!)
All that aside, this is about the Greens. Hardly a bastion of Swedish-speaking influence! Or should only the views of the Swedish-speaking Sibbo residents count?
Sunday 11.5.08 at 14:19
Egan
Interesting point about the cars. Are they planning any extra transport infrastructure here, metro lines or bus terminals or something?
Sunday 11.5.08 at 16:26
Jonas
Helsinki says it wants to extend the metro eastwards - or at least some of its municipal politicians have made statements to this effect. But there’s little substance behind this, it’s essentially just words. We have seen how long it takes to actually deliver such things even when there are concrete plans (just look at the west metro and the railway line to Helsinki-Vantaa, they’ve been talking about it for years even with the plans and construction underway, they still won’t be running for years). Plus, there is a lot of evidence that the sort of houses that Helsinki plans for the occupied part of Sibbo will not be the kind typically inhabitated by enthusiastic public transport users. There are already surveys from parts of Espoo, Drumsö etc on the western metro extension that the ‘wealthier’ house occupiers have no intention of swapping their cars for metro when it opens. I am sure, aside from tax money, Kokoomus realise that creating a wealthy suburb does them no disservice when it comes to votes too.
Also, it’s been reported that Helsinki wants new bus routes to take everyone to Itäkeskus and make them change there, whilst it’s likely existing links to Söderkulla/Nickby (i.e. bits of Sibbo that shall remain Sibbo) will get worse. So, often people will have to travel further to visit the doctor or supermarket if they rely on public transport (as ever, this will disproportionately effect families with young children and the pensioners - many of whom may have lived their whole life as Sibbo residents). One of Sibbo’s main graveyards is also in the area to be occupied by Helsinki, and until recently Helsinki was also making it clear that Sibbo residents who will remain in Sibbo-controlled Sibbo will be declined access to be buried there! I believe that have backtracked on that one though, after a lot of outcry.
If it wants to be green, Helsinki should be concentrating on building higher density properties nearer its core where all of its services are located. Turning the whole of Uusimaa/Nyland into some kind of LA-inspired urban sprawl of motorways and traffic jams is hardly a good plan - and ultimately the capital’s residents will suffer from it too, having to travel even further to find the countryside when they want to escape the city.
We need to learn, as a country, that centring all of us in Uusimaa is no sustainable plan for the future. It must make some Green voters sad that their party is increasingly Green only in name.
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Here’s one of the more amusing (but not to deny illegal) protests that took place:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRmdtPZ1cQw
Sibbo annexes Helsinki!
Sunday 11.5.08 at 19:31
Passer-by
“I don’t understand this strange attempt to bring language matters into it. As far as I am aware, around 60% of the population of Sibbo is today Finnish-speaking. The referendum result in Sibbo was around 95% against the forced annexation of Sibbo. So, it certainly seems that the population of Sibbo was very united in its position regardless of its language background.”
Finnish became a majority language in Sipoo only in 2003, so it’s a recent thing. It’s naive to think language wouldn’t have had any significance in things in Sipoo local politics. It’s basically the same phenomenon as when the Karelians had to be evacuated after Second World War. Swedish-speaking counties refused to take any Karelians, why? Because they didn’t want to dilute the numbers of Swedish speakers on their area.
At 1953 Sipoo had only 12% of Finnish speakers. Since then the migration of Finnish speakers has changed those numbers considerably, and that’s why planning became such a sore political topic. RKP wanted to slow down the growth and not plan new residential areas, while parties on the left wanted to have more inhabitants and jobs (no idea what the Greens wanted). Sipoo also resisted planning areas for recreation for other capital area inhabitants. So they have a history of being against the development that would have in the end benefited everyone in the region, and that’s why they mostly have only themselves to blame for this annexation.
“Municipal democracy means that individual municipalities decide themselves what happens in their patch. Helsinki has no democratic mandate to tell Sibbo what to do in its own territory. It’s just like bullying by a big kid in the playground against a smaller one.”
Please, let’s leave the kids in the playground out of this, this is about issues between sovereign counties and government. Helsinki didn’t decide to annex Sipoo, the government of Finland did. It happened because it was thought it would benefit the entire region, as it will. I don’t see municipal sovereignty as the highest of values, it’s much more important to have healthy cities and regions than to respect one county’s right to not co-operate with others.
“In any case, Sibbo had announced a general plan calling for many more homes than Helsinki itself now plans to build which exposes the reality of Helsinki’s motives - tax income. They realised that the population of south west Sibbo (by the way the to be annexed area is around 70% Finnish speaking) is wealthy and prosperous and would make a rather nice contribution to Helsinki’s suffering budget.”
They announced that plan only after they realized Helsinki was serious about annexation. Way to show your dedication to the development of the capital area. And yes, of course Helsinki wants wealthy tax payers too, neither side is innocent here. You know that’s why Sipoo had originally planned the Landbo area and those areas of luxury villas, to lure the wealthy people from Helsinki there. That is exactly the ugly thing Espoo, Kauniainen, Sipoo and even Vantaa like to do: plan areas of big villas with no access to public transportation to lure wealthy people from Helsinki and elsewhere in Finland. It leads to LA style of urban sprawl, which is truly a cancer of the cities.
“Don’t be fooled into buying the line that Helsinki needs space for building. It’s already much much less densely inhabited than e.g. Stockholm. And you could hardly say Stockholm lacks green space. There is no space shortage in the area occupied by today’s Helsinki and certainly it’s not very environmentally friendly to add extra cars to the road by building large individual houses outside of the city centre (it’s good for tax income though!)”
They plan to extend the metro line there, that’s more than Sipoo has ever done. Yeah there is room in Helsinki to build more densely, and that will be done in the future, and there will be a lot of space for housing in Jätkäsaari and Kalasatama etc. But it’s important to have the city continue eastwards too with access to public transportation. If you look at any map, currently the developments continues from the centre of Helsinki like two big fingers, one northwards along the rail track and other westwards along the Länsiväylä to Espoo (which will thankfully be served by metro in the future). There is room for one finger to the east, and if it’s served by metro and buses, it’s good development.
Sunday 11.5.08 at 20:08
Jonas
The idea came from Helsinki and especially from within Kokoomus (they heard the wallets full of money in SW Sipoo). Then the government took it up. Kokoomus’ ministers for obvious reasons. Almost all of Centres because they are busy courting the Helsinki electorate in part of their scheme to become a party of the town as well as countryside - you can see that the reaction in many parts of core KePu land was quite harsh towards this (where the right of smaller municipalities is obviously rightly seen as something that should be respected). The Greens are also a strong party in Helsinki, so they clearly wouldn’t want to be scene to not take Helsinki’s side despite the view of their local Green membership in Sibbo. Sfp was the only party with a united view at all levels.
Why should Sibbo want the metro line there? It’s meant to be a countryside, largely rural municipality. You’re absolutely right, they did mainly only increase massively their general plan due to the threat of annexation by their neighbour. You can hardly blame for doing everything to try and stop having their very existence undermined. After all, by taking away the population that Helsinki is doing, 2009’s Sibbo doesn’t technically have enough people to remain independent according to the municipality reform process provisions of the interior and justice ministries. So, Helsinki is not only annexing a part of Sibbo, it is actually threatening the entire existence of Sibbo as a municipality. Even some Helsinki politicians have been talking about taking more of Sibbo openly. Quite disturbing.
There is no need for this extension and it comes at the expense of the countryside and more disturbingly, of democracy and the right of each municipality to be treated fairly and like for like.
Helsinki (3 060 pers/sq km) is an entire ONE THOUSAND people per sq km less densely populated than Stockholm (4 163)! Even I am surprised it is so much. Rather exposes their motives even more; tax income and Kokoomus voters.
I still don’t think this is a language matter. As for 2003, that’s when Sibbo became officially a Finnish language majority. That’s only because the languages of municipalities are set once every ten years. They must have just scraped through as a Swedish majority in around 1992-93 when it would have been set before that. That things can change so fast, just shows you that there is nothing to stop Finnish speaking people moving to Sibbo. Bringing Karelian war refugees into this 21st century matter rather suggests you are from the hardline end of the language political spectrum.
Sunday 11.5.08 at 21:37
Jari Toivonen
Hello. I live in Sipoo and can tell you it is not a language question at all. It is disgusting way that Helsinki thinks because it is 400000 people it can tell its neighbors how they run their affairs. I voted for Kokoomus most of my life. For national and local. Now I feel a little sad that they did this here because they want to support the economy in Helsinki even though I think it is good Helsinki has Kok government. They did not even listened when we voted no in the extra vote by Sipoo government on the takeover. In the fall,I have not decided yet how I will vote. But I was impressed by Christel Liljeström who is RKP but she campaigned for all Sipoo - also lots in Finnish and not talking down like some RKP bättre folk-parti people here. It is for sure that Kokoomus, Green, Centerparty and also SDP will not win many seats this time because of this. I think many of Finnish speaking people in Sipoo will vote for the new one, Sipoon puolesta.
Monday 12.5.08 at 9:47
Egan
Is there some kind of overall Helsinki metropolitan area authority, something like the GLA in London? Would Sipoo, Vantaa, Espoo, Kauniainen, Kirkkonummi (and Porvoo?) be amenable to some kind of infrastructure planning authority? It might be preferable to letting Helsinki eat up chunks and plan things according to what might turn out to be fairly narrow criteria.
Monday 12.5.08 at 12:24
Jonas
There is YTV (SAD) which is a cooperation body between Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen. http://www.ytv.fi
I also think you are on the right track here too. It seems to be a very Finnish thing of late that a municipality “must” incorporate others if it needs to expand/plan in a coordinated way. But if you look to London or Stockholm, there is not one municipality. All this talk of merging Helsinki with Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen again seems to lack respect for democracy.
It’s worth remembering that Sibbo is in fact part of Östra Nyland / Itä-Uusimaa and not Uusimaa / Nyland like those others.
I think a good thing for us to take from London would be the concept of a strong green belt where building is forbidden. I don’t think today’s London would be allowed to eat up its neighbours in the way Helsinki wants to.