Helsingin Sanomat newspaper reports on the Finnish government’s announcement on Friday that they will strengthen urban policy by establishing a strategic alliance with Finland’s largest cities Helsinki, Espoo, Tampere, Vantaa, Oulu and Turku. Its purpose is to more efficiently solve challenges that concern the work of both the state and large cities, such as the availability of skilled labor, the green transition, crime activity, mental health of young people and immigration.
For the alliance of large cities, the government ended up defining that only the mentioned are the big cities in Finland (cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants), while Jyväskylä, Lahti and Kuopio were excluded from the alliance by being too small with their over 100,000 inhabitants. But, as the excluded cities state, in this way Finland would be left with a big gaping hole in the development of urban policy, because without Jyväskylä, Lahti and Kuopio the alliance would be very south and west oriented.
For these excluded cities, it is very confusing why government want to create such a new group, where only those six cities would be involved, even though they have the same challenges as all other big cities in Finland. So the excluded cities suggest to them that instead of six, the nine largest urban areas would cover more than half of Finns, so a broader perspective would be much more justified in that sense, i.e. with Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Tampere, Oulu, Turku, Jyväskylä, Kuopio and Lahti.
The chairpersons of the excluded cities say that they are still trying to influence the policy, and in addition to making a statement, they plan to hold further discussions with the government and ministers and remind them that they are also major cities.
https://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/art-2000009831078.html
by DaMn96XD