Strategic planning harnessing urban policy mobilities : the gradual development of local sustainability fix

The aim of our article is to follow how global policy models affect local policy making. Each city has unique local challenges in promoting development, e.g. economic growth, but also needs to find a balance between these targets and demands for sustainable city solutions. In our empirical study, we follow how ideas of waterfront development - to attract new inhabitants and promote economic growth - and global demands of carbon control were used interactively in a strategic spatial planning process in the city of Tampere, Finland. During the six-year planning process, these two policy targets became interdependent, created a new policy-making domain, and led to a combinatorial development of sustainability elements arising from this domain. These findings demonstrate the serial use of global policy models in the creation of a local urban sustainability fix'. To conclude, the intertwinement of diverse global policy models in a city planning process creates easily a recursive cycle that redefines urban sustainability within cities and intercity networks. This perspective makes local policy narratives and strategic planning highly important in urban sustainability research as promoting urban sustainability becomes an inherently ambivalent practice.Peer reviewe

Informational Privacy in the Recovery Room-Patients' Perspective

Purpose: To describe patients' perceptions of informational privacy and factors promoting it in the recovery room. Design: A descriptive semistructured qualitative interview study. Methods: The study was conducted in 2013, and the data were analyzed with inductive content analysis. Adult surgical recovery room patients (n = 17) were recruited with purposive sampling at the Department of Ear, Nose and Throat diseases in a university hospital in Finland. Findings: Informational privacy was described as control of patients' health information maintained by the health care professionals and the patients. Informational privacy was especially important in relation to other patients. Health care professionals and patients' attitude, behavior, and knowledge of informational privacy, barriers of hearing and seeing, societal rules, and the electronic patient data system promoted informational privacy. Conclusions: Informational privacy in relation to other patients could be improved in the recovery room, for example, by developing patient health information transmission and architectural solutions.Peer reviewe

Ethical climate and nurse competence - newly graduated nurses' perceptions

Background: Nursing practice takes place in a social framework, in which environmental elements and interpersonal relations interact. Ethical climate of the work unit is an important element affecting nurses' professional and ethical practice. Nevertheless, whatever the environmental circumstances, nurses are expected to be professionally competent providing high-quality care ethically and clinically. Aim: This study examined newly graduated nurses' perception of the ethical climate of their work environment and its association with their self-assessed professional competence, turnover intentions and job satisfaction. Method: Descriptive, cross-sectional, correlational research design was applied. Participants consisted of 318 newly graduated nurses. Data were collected electronically and analysed statistically. Ethical considerations: Ethical approval and permissions to use instruments and conduct the study were obtained according to required procedures. Data were rendered anonymous to protect participant confidentiality. Completing the questionnaire was interpreted as consent to participate. Findings: Nurses' overall perception of the ethical climate was positive. More positive perceptions related to peers, patients and physicians, and less positive to hospitals and managers. Strong associations were found between perceived ethical climate and self-assessed competence, turnover intentions in terms of changing job, and job satisfaction in terms of quality of care. Nurses at a higher competence level with positive views of job satisfaction and low turnover intentions perceived the climate significantly more positively. Conclusion: Nursing management responsible for and having the power to implement changes should understand their contribution in ethical leadership, as well as the multidimensional nature of nurses' work environment and the interaction between work-related factors in planning developmental measures. Future research should focus on issues in nurse managers' ethical leadership in creating ethical work environments. There is also a need for knowledge of newly graduated nurses' views of factors which act as enhancers or barriers to positive ethical climates to develop. Interventions, continuing education courses, and discussions designed to promote positive ethical climates should be developed for managers, nurses, and multi-professional teams.Peer reviewe

Maximum Market Price of Longevity Risk under Solvency Regimes: The Case of Solvency II.

Longevity risk constitutes an important risk factor for life insurance companies, and it can be managed through longevity-linked securities. The market of longevity-linked securities is at present far from being complete and does not allow finding a unique pricing measure. We propose a method to estimate the maximum market price of longevity risk depending on the risk margin implicit within the calculation of the technical provisions as defined by Solvency II. The maximum price of longevity risk is determined for a survivor forward (S-forward), an agreement between two counterparties to exchange at maturity a fixed survival-dependent payment for a payment depending on the realized survival of a given cohort of individuals. The maximum prices determined for the S-forwards can be used to price other longevity-linked securities, such as q-forwards. The Cairns–Blake–Dowd model is used to represent the evolution of mortality over time that combined with the information on the risk margin, enables us to calculate upper limits for the risk-adjusted survival probabilities, the market price of longevity risk and the S-forward prices. Numerical results can be extended for the pricing of other longevity-linked securities

Ekogentrifikaatio suomalaisessa kaupunkikehityksessä: Havaintoja Tampereelta

The politics of sustainable development has integrated as a part of Finnish urban development. Sustainable urban development measures, such as brownfield regeneration, public transit investments, urban greening and environmental protection are widely supported. Yet, these efforts unintentionally or sometimes intentionally cause social implications. Sustainable urban development sometimes goes hand-in-hand with gentrification, and may thus result to a sustainable city in which only affluent people can afford to live in. We analyse eco-gentrification in the Finnish context. Eco-gentrification means spatial socio-economic enhancement that is intentionally or unintentionally carried out by symbolic and/or material ecological improvements. We focus on three different examples of eco-gentrification in Tampere: eco-friendly urban densification, brownfield regeneration and green and historical neighborhood. We illustrate how central location, wide range of services, good public transit and environmental and scenic amenities cause residential differentiation. This dynamic increases the uniform social structure of distinguished neighbourhoods and decreases opportunities for social diversification in urban planning. Kestävän kehityksen politiikka on nivoutunut vauhdilla osaksi suomalaista kaupunkikehittämistä. Pääsääntöisesti kaupunkien kestävyys- ja vihertämistoimia kannatetaan, mutta kansainvälinen kirjallisuus osoittaa, että niillä on myös ennakoimattomia ja joskus tietoisiakin epätasa-arvoistavia sosiaalisia vaikutuksia. Samaan aikaan kun kaupunkikehittämisen argumenttina käytetään ilmastonmuutoksen tuomien ongelmien ratkaisemista, on tärkeää kiinnittää huomiota siihen, kenelle kestävää kaupunkia tehdään. Vähähiilinen kaupunkikehitys voi tahattomasti luoda epätasa-arvoista asuntopolitiikkaa, ainakin kiihkeimmin kasvavilla kaupunkiseuduillamme. Analyysimme perustuu ekologisen gentrifikaation (ekogentrifikaatio) lähtökohtaan, joka tarkoittaa kaupungin vihertämis- ja kestävyystoimien aiheuttamaa asuinalueen tahatonta tai tahallista sosioekonomisen rakenteen muuttumista. Tarkastelemme kolmea Tampereen asuinaluetta, jotka ilmentävät erilaisia ekogentrifikaation muotoja. Näitä ovat 1) alueen täydennysrakentaminen, joka tuottaa alueelle lisää asukkaita, palveluja sekä ekotehokkuutta, 2) entisen teollisuusalueen puhdistaminen ja muuttaminen asuin- ja liikekäyttöön, sekä 3) asuinalueen arvostuksen korostuminen sen hyvin säilyneen viherympäristön ja historiallisen miljöön ansiosta. Pohdimme tekstissä, miten vihertämis- ja kestävyystoimet vaikuttavat suomalaisten asuinalueiden eriytymiseen kaupungin kasvaessa ja miten haasteellista asuinalueen sosiaalista sekoittamista on toteuttaa jälkeenpäin

A Polyphonic Story of Urban Densification

Urban strategies, representing stories of possible futures, often intervene in already established local communities and therefore call for a considerate urban intervention. This article utilises the ideas of Henri Lefebvre's socially produced space and of literature on stories involved in planning. Our empirical example tells a story of urban densification aspirations for an inner-city neighbourhood in Tampere, Finland. By combining the interviews of local people and planners with policy documents, we argue that planners' stories pay too little attention to the place and to local stories. Planners' abstract visions of the future and local stories building on lived experiences both draw meanings from the same place but have very different intentions. In our case, the consultation of the project started out wrong because the planners neglected a neighbourhood thick in symbolic meanings and the local stories' power in resistance. By understanding the place as polyphonic in its foundation, planners could learn about the symbolic elements and reasons for people's place attachment, and thus end up re-writing the place together. Urban interventions such as urban densification should connect to the place as part of its polyphonic historical continuum and acknowledge the residents' place attachments.Peer reviewe

Researchers as knowledge brokers: translating knowledge or co-producing legitimacy? An urban infill case from Finland.

Knowledge brokering is on the rise in various spheres of knowledge societies. The aim has been to improve the interaction between knowledge production and use. This paper analyses knowledge brokering activities in the context of urban densification. In an institutionally ambiguous situation we organised a new kind of participatory event for enabling the public discussion on densification to grow. We interpret the event as a boundary interaction, wherein we acted as knowledge brokers. However, the question remains as to what were we actually co-producing: brokered knowledge, novel collaborative partnerships or political legitimacy for a vague planning process?</p