Conservation and Maintenance as a Means of Sustainable Development - Finnish Perspective Available to Purchase

The article deals with the environmental consciousness emerged from the 1970's onwards, and with subsequent change in the ideology of city planning. The focus is on the development of urban conservation methods and on the maintenance of the built environment, which have marked a decisive shift away from the CIAM theses that dominated urban thinking during half-a-century. The decision to take the existing built environment as the starting point for all actions of city planning and design has been a radical stand for a new approach, corresponding to and paralleling the idea of sustainable development that crystallized in the 1980's up to the 1992 UN Conference. Grassroots-level strategies are considered important for all actions towards a sustainable way of life. The case of Finland is studied in some detail, with the conservation atlas of the historic milieu as an example of teaching a sustainable approach to environmental planning and design.