Two topics today on the future of Finland & the capital area, sort of related but equally good considered independently. The first should not be seen as elitism or accepting the status quo of climate change but rather to point out that if the current self-serving policy line is to be continued, let’s at least do that properly (because a self-serving policy that’s not even good for the country practicing it really is good for nobody).
Supporting the aging population
There’s been an on-and-off discourse about the mid-term future of Finland and how to prepare for it. One of the ugliest facts is that our population is aging at an alarming rate, and in just a couple of decades we’re looking at a massive problem of taking care of that population. By 2030, 25% of the population will be over 65 years old. Tax hikes have already been flashed as being inevitable, but that’s just going to kill the country. Remember, we’re already suffering from one of the highest taxations in the world – much more and many people, including myself, are going to look for a better country to live in. Instead of tax hikes we need people.
Ironically, overpopulation is, on a global scale, a massive problem. But here, in order to sustain an economically (and subsequently physically) healthy society even in the medium term, we need more people. There’s little hope of doing that endogenously (and it really wouldn’t make sense either considering overpopulation really is a huge problem elsewhere), so immigration is the answer. Immigration from everywhere and all kinds of people; obviously highly educated people are better for the receiving end.
So how do you get someone from, say, Spain to move to Finland? As bad as it is in the grand scheme of things, climate change could come with a medium term silver lining for Finland. As other parts of the world become intolerably hot, dry, wet or whatever else, Finland could – and should – actively recruit people from these areas to Finland. If you look at the climate prediction models, Finland may be one of the few winners (again, in medium term – in the long term everyone loses) of climate change so living conditions here ought to stay tolerable or even improve. Finland could, if it wanted to, profile itself as the high-class climate refuge.
Of course, in order to do that with a straight face, we need to become the leaders in renewable energy usage, energy conservation, mass transportation and all that. It’s not even too difficult, it just requires waking up to the realities, tweaking taxation here and there, investing heavily in wind power etc. Thanks to Russia and the upcoming increases in raw wood duties, the energy-consuming paper industry is already on its way out.
Trying to attract the well educated people only is definitely a selfish plan. And I’m not saying we shouldn’t take environmental refugees from less well off countries also (and to a much greater extent than we are doing now – population inequalities need to become more balanced with ecological support capacity anyway), but naturally no country can keep an entirely open door policy for everyone. Also, mention a country that isn’t selfish when it comes to fighting for survival.
Suppose we could attract, say, 10,000 to 50,000 people here yearly, how do we fit all the people here? Well, even if we discount the fact that Finland has nothing but space with a population density of 16 inhabitants per square kilometer (compare that to 31 in the US or 113 in France), we could start building real buildings – see below.
Housing people
In the Helsinki area, housing prices are ridiculously high and still rising. It’s been claimed that one of the main culprits is lack of land for detached houses, but the real problem is really the lack of imagination and the will to act. None of the current zoning plans go where there’s most room to go – up. There are something like two (!) houses that are locally considered something of a high-rise, and they’re a pathetic 20-something stories high. That’s nuts. I’m talking about construction of buildings with 50 to 100 stories.
There’s been some talk of building a little higher in the Pasila area, but the talk has remained just talk. It’s time to start acting instead; zone an area near the current downtown – Pasila is quite okay – for high-rise buildings (both offices and condos/apartments), build a lot of them there, build them fast, make the apartments big, extend the subway line there and I’m sure you’d start to see some positive results like:
- With the availability of thousands of apartments, housing prices would come down or stabilize. If you build with enough scale, the building could be done cost-efficiently so the new spaces need not become absurdly priced at 10,000eur/m2.
- With a new lively and “cool” city neighborhood, the highly desirable good taxpayers might decide to stay in the city instead of escaping to the nearby municipalities.
- With sufficient amount of new housing (Pasila could easily house 100,000 inhabitants), the city and the area would remain on a growth track which would help in a number of ways.
- Traffic would ease (or at least not become a problem) with more people relying on public transportation.
- Massive apartment buildings have the potential of being far more eco-friendly than detached housing, thus easing the environmental load also.
So how about it? How about adding a zero to the population increase visions of Helsinki and Finland?
