“Planning beyond words: Power, discourse, and the making of a stigmatised suburb in Helsinki”

Abstract

Urban redevelopment is increasingly shaped through discursive systems in which language and representation frame neighbourhoods as declining, obsolete, or requiring intervention. This article examines how planning documents, architectural competition materials, and mass media discourses co-produce the social image and redevelopment trajectory of the Kontula strip mall in Helsinki. Drawing on discourse theory, framing analysis, territorial stigmatisation, and the rent gap concept, it examines how redevelopment is shaped not only by material and economic conditions but also by discursive practices through which legitimacy, visibility, and urban futures are organised. The study employs qualitative desk research analysing planning documents, architectural competition materials, and mass media texts. Findings show that planning discourse operates through abstraction and selective omission, marginalising immigrant-led retail and everyday socio-spatial infrastructures. Media discourse reproduces, while also occasionally challenging, territorial stigma through competing frames of decline, insecurity, and renewal. Architectural representations translate these framings into spatial visions that privilege demolition and large-scale redevelopment. The article argues that redevelopment is shaped through discursive infrastructures that organise visibility, authority, and legitimacy, enabling anti-segregation and urban renewal strategies that may align with rent-gap dynamics and contribute to future socio-spatial restructuring.