Case Kontula: Why Kontula Mall? Why the entrepreneurs of the mall?

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 Helsinki issued a development reservation for the property owners of the mall. The aim is to increase the amount of commercial space and to accommodate 70 000 km2 of housing in the area. In practice, this largely means demolishing the existing mall.

More than 30% of Kontula’s 15,000 inhabitants are non-native speakers. Almost half of the 80 entrepreneurs in the mall are of immigrant background. They – like all of the mall’s entrepreneurs – are a key group of actors at the mall. However, immigrant entrepreneurs in particular have remained on the margins in urban planning. Although the property owners have informed their tenants and the city has organised a wide range of interactions in the area, the message we have received directly from entrepreneurs in the mall is that they have not received understandable and clear information about the mall’s redevelopment.

The problem our project aims to solve is complex. Firstly, the problem is that marginalised groups in the area may not be aware of urban planning processes and their impact on their lives, nor have real opportunities to participate in urban planning. Mistrust of administrative processes can also be a challenge for some stakeholders. On the other hand, the problem is that urban planning does not have the capacity to reach out to people’s involvement in the area.

Our experiment seeks to find a bottom-up solution to participatory data collection, focusing on the mediation of the perspective of one of the key, but from a planning perspective challenging, stakeholder groups in a place: immigrant entrepreneurs. On the other hand, our aim is to provide understandable information on urban planning and participation.

Why now?

The future of the existing buildings in the Kontula shopping mall is still open. It is estimated that changes in the mall will not be visible until after the mid-2020s at the earliest. The current land lease agreement for the plots is valid until 2025.

This is an early stage in the planning process, where it should still be possible to influence the plans.

For more information on the planning and redevelopment of the Kontula Mall: https://www.uuttahelsinkia.fi/en/mellunkyla/palvelut-0