Kontula Mall is a strip mall built in the 1960s and 1980s in East Helsinki. It is located in the geographical centre of the Kontula suburb. Kontula Mall is known for its cultural activities and ethnic restaurants, but also for its complex social problems. Now the mall is being renewed. In 2019, the City of…
Participation in the planning of one’s own living environment has long been a fundamental right of citizens under Finnish law. In practice, participation requires a wide range of skills, which many people do not have. For example, a fluent Finnish language, the ability to familiarise oneself with often complex planning information and a wide range…
In our experiment, we asked the entrepreneurs of Kontula Mall what the mall would look like after a successful renovation in 2030? There are calls for both the preservation of the existing mall and a major redevelopment. Some people want a big change and others want the old one to be renovated. The size of…
In November and December 2021, we asked the entrepreneurs of Kontula’s shopping mall what they think is important or worth preserving. This is how they answered: Almost every respondent marked their own business on the map. Many of the businesses have been in the mall for a long time and hope to continue to be…
In November and December 2021, we experimented with various ways to reach the entrepreneurs of Kontula Mall and offered them different participation modes. First, we distributed a leaflet about our pilot and ways to get involved to all the entrepreneurs in the mall. The leaflet was written in five languages: Arabic, Bengali, English, plain Finnish…
Our experiment made it clear that the involvement of our target group in the development of the city goes much deeper than participation in planning. Entrepreneurs understand the surrounding communities, residents and customers. They know what works and what doesn’t work at the mall. Many have dreams of business development and new business ideas based…
Our participatory pilot at Kontula mall particularly highlighted the fact that silent participants are not necessarily participants who do not want to participate. For the entrepreneurs who took part in our experiment, the mall is an important everyday environment, and they participate in its development if they have the opportunity to do so. By opportunity…
From the point of view of foreign-language entrepreneurs, the most essential factors for participation are access to information in their own language and conversational encounters during the mall’s development. It is crucial to consider the target group’s needs when designing interactions. The experiment we conducted was praised in part because the methods were designed with…
In the Kontula Mall pilot project, we developed a multilingual map survey for foreign language respondents using the Maptionnaire tool. Maptionnaire is an e-participation tool widely used in urban planning. It has also been used by the City of Helsinki. We chose this tool precisely because it is a familiar and well-established tool in the…
Our multilingual map questionnaire received 21 responses during the pilot. Most of the respondents were entrepreneurs in Kontula Mall. The majority of respondents were male (72%). Respondents ranged in age from 20 to 60 years old. The most common mother tongues of the respondents were Bengali and Kurdish. There were also a few respondents who…