Building a New Town

Download or read book Building a New Town written by Heikki von Hertzen and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 1971 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tapiola, the new town outside Helsinki, Finland, has probably excited more comment, generally favorable, than any other new town built in Europe since the end of World War II. Many of the reasons for this worldwide attention come through clearly in this handsome volume. The quality of the book is enhanced considerably by the extensive number of photographs and planning maps, all reproduced with great care. "Although the book is essentially a case history of the planning and building of a new town, it is more than that. It also sets the Tapiola experience in the context of universal efforts to develop policies to guide urban growth. Toward that end, the authors attempt--successfully--to establish the relevance of Tapiola for other countries' programs and to distill the essential conclusions or lessons of the experiment." --ALA Journal It is especially significant that Tapiola was not a program of Finland's national government but was constructed by a company acting as a private, nonprofit business, Asuntosäätiö. This firm was established in 1951 by six social and trade organizations, which bought an area of 670 acres in the then-rural county of Espoo outside Helsinki to create a new community--a working town in a garden setting that would accommodate a real cross section of the population. The significance of Tapiola is perhaps best summed up by author von Hertzen: "Family well-being is not possible without good housing. Good housing is not possible without good town planning. Good town planning is not possible without good regional planning. And good regional planning is not possible without a national program for urbanization."