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RURAL STRATEGY - IMAGE OF CIVILIZATIONFrom hunters to farmers to citizens is a general development of human civilization. It seems natural that finally all peoples will live in more or less urban areas. If this will be true, nobody knows, but it is possible. It is also possible that more people will choose to live in the countryside, as they find there values which are missing in urbanized regions.
Living in a city is attractive and comfortable, with all kind
of services and work right away. Culture, art, entertainment and sport facilities are
concentrated in urban regions as there are more people taking part
in these programs. In Europe the Nordic countries are sparsely populated with some urban areas near their coasts. Finland is the northernmost country in Europe and has 5.5 million inhabitants and about 1.5 million are living in the countryside, which is over 80% of the country. The average population density is 15.6/km², after Iceland and Norway, the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Moreover, the population is also in another way very unequally distributed: the majority of the population lives in the south of the country, while large parts in Lapland are actual uninhabited with a population density of less than 2 inhabitants per km ² . About one-fifth of the Finnish population is concentrated in the capital region around Helsinki, which is therefore seen as the only real city in the country. In addition to the capital are especially Tampere and Turku urban area of any size. Most other Finnish cities have fewer than 100,000 inhabitants, and are relatively scattered across the southern part of the country. (source Wikipedia) From the past the country is an agriculture society with farms and forests. Some industry like wood and metal are related to what is available in the environment. Some decades ago some cities have started to grow and being attractive for people to live in. The countryside has lost an important part of their population. This process has huge consequences for the government, which has to solve the problem of livability in rural Finland.. One of the answers on this problem is scaling and it has result in disappearing of almost all the little villages as independent administrative units. On paper it is easy to write down perfect sentences about the the
way how to develop rural regions. It sounds easy to close small schools in the countryside, it does
not matter to transport young children from their home to school
during 1/2 to 2 hours a day. Time which they cannot play outside,
time during which they cannot explore their living environment.
Officials are easily thinking that it does not harm children and
when it harms they are at pension. It sounds so easy to close and concentrate health care services.
It is more efficient and cheaper to bring all the services together
and let people travel. It sounds so realistic to close train stops, when a faster speed
can be reached. The time reduce of 5 minutes on a trip of 2 hours
and more is perfect excuse to get rid of all those small stops.
The ministry of agriculture and forestry wrote memorable words:
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