Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2026
This book explored the links between the changing means and goals of land and housing policies and urban inequality in Finland. As discussed at length in Chapter 2, research on urban inequality in Finland has been predominantly focused on the spatial differentiation or segregation of different groups. A descriptive research methodology drawing on the urban ecological notions of succession and concentration of income and ethnic groups, and on the neoclassical economic assumption of rational consumer choice as a guiding dynamic of the urban form, have left the task of explaining urban inequalities unattended. There has been a great deal of description of the differences between neighbourhoods and their residents. The use of unanalytical and even colloquial language to discuss these differences in research publications has been common. Meanwhile analyses of the structural dynamics of urban inequalities have been omitted. Applying Loïc Wacquant's (2008, 2009) sociology of territorial stigmatisation, I illustrated (Chapter 2) how segregation research has contributed to the symbolic devaluing of working-class and immigrant neighbourhoods. Segregation, I suggest, is merely one spatial expression of the deeper inequalities inherent to the urban process under capitalism. In this book I have argued in favour of embracing wider optics on the matter and I have used the concept of urban inequality to allow for discussing various processes of housing dispossession, territorial stigmatisation, residential displacement, gentrification and segregation, to move beyond a narrow focus on the last. I analysed the changing institutional landscape of the Nordic welfare state, the tensions between the state and municipalities after implementation of neoliberal public management practices, and the changing land and housing policies.
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