Urban Sprawl

Estonian Institute
Endrik Mänd
Map A legend tells us that the gray old man who lives in Lake Ülemiste comes out each midsummer night’s eve to ask whether the town of Tallinn has been completed since the last time he asked. If the town is ready, he will release the waters of the lake and drown the town. That is why he has always been told that the town is by no means completed yet.

The boom in the building industry that has accompanied the swift economic growth of the recent decade has dictated rapid development in the field of city planning. Land reform brought undeveloped lands bordering on and surrounding towns into private ownership and the new owners wished to find more profitable use for their lands. Transferring land to municipal ownership proceeded much more slowly; therefore, the majority of detailed plans were drawn up on the initiative of private landowners. The comprehensive plan directing the use of land was completed only in early 2001, when the drawing of detailed plans of individual plots was already in full swing. The efforts of the Tallinn office that was responsible for city planning to keep up with the growing demands in planning and building were hindered by changes in legislation and in the structure of the same office.

In the 1980s, the construction activities in Harju County were mostly located in Tallinn, but by 2000, the construction work in Tallinn and its surroundings was almost in balance and the building of dwellings occupied the largest share of the whole construction work. This period was characterised by differences in the general level of prices in the capital city and its nearest communities, a sharp rise in the number of cars due to the rapid growth of people’s buying capacity, and broadening opportunities for taking out loans, which all logically accelerated the urban sprawl.

Today, the negative effects of the urban sprawl (for instance, a growing number of commuters) on the living space of Tallinn is magnified by the fact that communities around Tallinn are slow in planning compact local centres, designing social infrastructure, and building and developing public transport. Considering statistics, it is quite understandable – local governments are small, their budgets are small, too, and the number of inhabitants of the area around Tallinn is four times smaller than that of Tallinn; the effect of population growth is much more sharply felt there.

Proceeding from a spatial and temporal approach, according to which the greater Tallinn metropolitan area should stretch to a one-hour car trip from the centre of the city, we could consider almost the whole of Harju County with its 18 communes as the greater Tallinn metropolitan area. The planning decisions of these communities, often made on the basis of physical planning (compared with spatial planning), have a direct effect on the quality of the Tallinn public city space. Quite often the local communities lack specialists with the qualifications necessary to evaluate all aspects of such decisions. These are the reasons why such detailed plans come into being where green areas near the city are taken over by mono-functional residential districts, which, due to a lack of infrastructure or weak ties to infrastructure, become parasites on the infrastructure of Tallinn.
At the same time, the development of Tallinn into a conurbation with a strong surrounding area should be a common goal of the area. This goal presupposes the application of unified principles of spatial planning, aimed at the emergence of strong local centres (polycentrism) and at the gradual designing of social and technical infrastructure (coherence). To apply these principles, it is necessary to start with the renewal of county plans, which could, in turn, bring along the need for changing comprehensive plans of several communities. The changing of strategic planning documents in connection with the whole area in order to guarantee sustainable development requires coordinated cooperation. Who should shoulder the task of coordination? Considering the present planning hierarchy, it could be the Harju County Government, whose task is to draw up the county plan. At the same time, the county government’s tasks include the supervision of planning activities of local governments and therefore, its participation in the compilation of comprehensive plans of local communities is not advisable. The lack of a state policy on spatial planning calls into question the motivation of the county government for taking on the role of the coordinator. Logically, motivation should be sought where most of the problems are located. The specification of Tallinn and its surrounding area, and the description of unified principles of sustainable development and spatial planning of the region could be a part of the Law of the Capital, the need for which has, for years, been discussed by all mayors of Tallinn, regardless of their political party membership.

The congestion of Tallinn’s main streets at peak hours already signals the present need to search for structural solutions to relieve the effects of urban sprawl. An office created at the Tallinn City Planning Department at the beginning of 1995, and now subordinated to the chief architect of the city, is responsible for the compilation of thematic and comprehensive plans and solves the problems of city landscaping and planting. The first task of this office was the renewal of the comprehensive plan of Tallinn. In order to make the work easier and more flexible, it was decided to compile regional sub-comprehensive plans aimed at the specification of the centres of city districts, the definition of development areas and the guaranteeing of the preservation of the already existing quality city space. In 2006, the comprehensive plan of the Mustamäe district was adopted; the comprehensive plan of the Pirita district is under public discussion; comprehensive plans of other districts will be completed in 2008–2010. Thematic plans, treating more important problems in guaranteeing the quality of the Tallinn city space – the location of areas of cultural and environmental value and areas of high-rise buildings, and the development of streets and light traffic roads and green areas – will be compiled, together with sub-comprehensive plans. Building regulations and structural plans, describing essential conditions for maintaining the quality of the city structure of the area, were adopted to develop the good practice of city planning.

I believe that the most important strategic goals of city planning are the opening of the city to the sea, the structural condensing of the space of the city centre, the directing of construction activities from the green areas at the margins of the city to the brown areas near the centre, the improvement of the quality of public spaces and the preferential development of public transport. In the districts that are more important to the development of the city, such as North Tallinn, it is more practical to call for the cooperation of representatives of local governments and landowners in the early stages of compiling the plans in order to arrive at unified and quality solutions, where equal attention is paid to the design of public spaces among the buildings and where agreements on the conditions of financing the building of social and technical infrastructure can be reached. Each comprehensive plan has to improve the quality of the urban milieu, but this cannot be achieved only by designing new flats and parking areas. The development of good practice and a rise in the general cultural level of society are the prerequisites for making good planning decisions, with the participation of the general public, which would help to create a modern and high-quality city space.

I am looking forward to my first midsummer night’s eve in my new capacity as the chief architect of Tallinn. And if the old gray man – Ülemiste Vanake – again comes and asks his question, I can answer that Tallinn will never truly be completed.

Endrik Mänd (1972), architect, 1996 MA at Lausanne Technological University and Louvain Catholic University. Since 1998 has been working on different posts in the Tallinn Urban Planning Department, from 2007 Chief Architect of the City of Tallinn.


| Estonian Art 2/07 (21) | Published by the Estonian Institute 2007 | ISSN 1406-5711 (Online) | ISSN 1406-3549 (Printed version) | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 |