An Utopian Dystopia
Swedish Models in Finnish Debates on Suburbs in the 1950s-1980s
Abstract
I examine debates about Swedish suburbs in the Finnish public sphere during a transition period in suburban planning from the 1950s to the 1980s. The main source material consists of digitised newspaper articles from the Finnish National Library’s newspaper archive on the innovative ABC towns (A = arbete, work; B = bostad, residence; C = centrum, centre) of Vällingby and Farsta in Stockholm. Although Sweden was not the only source of inspiration for Finnish suburban planning innovation, positive and negative images of Swedish suburbs were prominent in the Finnish press. The ABC towns were designed to be self-sufficient, but soon began to resemble conventional suburbs, portrayed in the press as breeding grounds for real or imagined social and psychological problems. Initially, the utopian nanny state was identified as the underlying factor in the pathology of ‘suburban anxiety’. From the 1970s onwards, newly built suburbs became heavily populated by immigrants. Since then, their image has been linked to the problem of ethnic segregation. The ABC towns of earlier decades became objects of welfare state nostalgia, and their reputation may even be exploited commercially.
Keywords: ABC towns, suburban planning, urban planning, suburban anxiety, welfare state, nostalgia, dystopia, utopia, Farsta, Tapiola, Vällingby
