Statistical localities in Finland A need for a development work? Ulla-Maarit Saarinen Planning...

Statistical localities in Finland A need for a development work?

Ulla-Maarit SaarinenPlanning OfficerStatistics FinlandTyöpajankatu 13FI-00022 STATISTICS FINLANDTel : +358 9 1734 3544 Fax : +358 9 1734 3251E-mail : Ulla-Maarit.Saarinen@stat.fi

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Locality

Built-up area, densely populated area, urban area, population agglomeration, population cluster

Definitions: population density, building density, land use, business/industrial activities, ”urban-like”, ...

In the legislation: Finnish Road Traffic Act, Land Use and Building Act, Public Order Act talk about ’localities’,

but these localities are not defined as statistical localities.

Term ’locality’ and ’statistical locality’

Who needs and why?

The Act on State Subsidiesthe statistical locality population as the basis for payment of the locality supplement to municipalities

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Statistical locality

Clusters of buildings with at least 200 inhabitants and the distance between buildings should not exceed 200 metres.

The Nordic definition of locality: since 1960 (1950) takes into account the sparse population in Nordic

countriesonly 20-30 % of localities in Finland could be

characterised as urban area in a European sense

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Delimitation of statistical localities in Finland

Years 1960 - 1985: manual delimitation

Years 1990 and 1995: automatic delimitation with manual ’restoration’

Census 2000: a new delimitation method: grid buffering method

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Grid-buffer methodBuilding groups

Other building

Residential building

A grid of 100 m x 100 m formed over whole Finland

Grids are categorized asunbuilt gridsresidential gridsother building grids

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Grid to polygons

A buffer zone of 50 m is formed to residential building grids.

A buffer zone of 75 m is formed to other building grids.

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The preform of localities and their ’satellites’

Areas with at least 200 inhabitants are selected.

A buffer zone of 100 metres Jointing the ’pre-localities’ and

’satellites’ to one coverage

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The final statistical localities

jointing polygons with 100 m’s buffer

returning to original size (-100 m)

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’By-products’

’holes’, ’gaps’ built-up area

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The delimitation of statistical localities 2005

Delimitition will be carried out this year with the grid buffering delimitation method that was developed in 2000

But … there is still a question who needs and what

for delimitation and statistics of statistical localities are made for,

… and is there a need for developing the definition and delimatition?

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The Act on State Subsidiesthe statistical locality population as the basis for

payment of the locality supplement to municipalities

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Need for development?Critics and user needs

Densely built-up areas with low population densityWhy industrial areas or work place areas with less than 200

residents are not localities?

Different sized localities: small villages, big citiesNeed for classification of localities?

The definition has been based merely on morphological definition.Should it be more functional ?

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Researchers, planners: Statistical locality = urban area?

Statistical localities = morphological locality, not functional locality takes into account only population/settlementcf. urban area

- buildings, built-up area- populated, population density- land use- functions -

economic/business/industry activities - etc.

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Development of locality definition in Nordic countries

Statistics Norway has redefined locality definition to better correspond to Norwegian circumstances and has defined and delimited free-time residential areas.

Statistics Sweden has defined and delimited workplace and free-time residential areas.

The Finnish Environment Institute has come up with its own locality definitions for monitoring urban structure in Finland.

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Examples of comparison of statistical localities and localities defined by Environment Institute

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Locality definition of Environment Institute differs from statistical localities

the objective: monitoring the urban structurethe data is based on gridsdifferent criterias

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Peräseinäjoki

statistical locality

locality (Env. Inst.)

building

sq. km grid with population

sq. km grid with building(s)

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HATTULA

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HELSINKI

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Questions to be answered and development work to be done in the near future

More than one locality definition in Finland?Different needs and aspects -> different locality

definitions?Statistical locality is (only) one definition among

others?

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A need for new locality definitions?Work place areas outside statistical localities? Free-time residential areas outside statistical localities?Tourism areas outside statistical localities?Shopping areas outside statistical localities?… or inside statistical localities?

Zones/classification of localities?Big cities’ localities, suburban localities, …?CBD?

Small villages (with less than 500 or 200 inhabitants)?

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Examples of some first experiments to define new free-time residential ’localities’

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Delimiting free-time residential ’localities’

At least 30 or 50 residences

Distance between residences not exceeding 150 metres

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Free-time residence(summer cottage)

Free-time residential ’locality’

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Archipelago in Turku region

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Ski resort of Saariselkä,Lapland

Free-time residential buildingResidential building

Free-time residential ’locality’

Statistical localityEnv. Inst. locality

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Ski resort of Levi, Lapland

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-> Discussions with interest groups (Env. Inst., ministries etc.) in 2006 …2007

-> The study on development needs in 2006…2007

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Development of the Nordic (European) co-operation

Possibility for common locality statistics?E.g. degree of locality population