A Privately-influenced Economy
Source: www.urbanfinland.com
In todays world, were seeing more and more how the private sector is taking over some of the public one tasks and doing I better, some examples are how Uber is diving into providing an efficient public transport, how private firms like Florida East Coast Industries, ¨United States’ first privately owned and operated intercity passenger rail system¨ as stated in their website, is taking over intercity train transport and how developers like Goldman Properties are privately acquiring neighborhoods and ¨managing¨ them. The basic functions of a city are leaving the hands of the public sector and people are actually being able to directly impact the effectiveness of their hometowns.
A project that really caught my attention was the ¨Pro Helsinki 2.0¨, a DIY re-urbanizing plan of Helsinki, Finland made by the guys at urbanfinland.com and urbanhelsinki.fi. This is an actual urbanistic proposal, an ambitious one entitled to recreate Helsinki to what the authors agree would be the best case scenario; it involves recreating the city with the use of streetscapes that look to put pedestrians as the main element of the design, the project has been successfully finished and is currently on public revision by the local government of the city. The beauty of this project is that it shows that it might not be completely materialized but it will definetly have an impact on some of the elements of current proposals, showing how private firms or regular individuals can impact their cities or countries without having to be part of the actual approval committee and that these projects are made for the residents, not just the knowledgeable PHDs at the city halls. We live in an amazing time where the world can be impacted from the outside, from anywhere at any time.