Tallinn's wealthy live in isolated luxury

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By Raija Kaikkonen
     
      The tall iron gate opens to let a car in. The stylish woman driving the car glances at those milling by the fence and drives in before the gate slowly slides shut. Behind the fence one can see small castles, but closer inspection is not possible. The message is clear: no outsiders. The guard sitting in the booth next to the main gate makes sure of that.
      Tiskre in the northwest of Tallinn is one of the "enclosed paradises" of the city’s rich and beautiful. Another such area can be found near the Pirita district. However, the streets of Puk, Kuusinõmme, and Andres are open to pedestrians to walk around on - if they dare.
     
A guard dog lunges forward in the yard of a house, bearing his teeth at a passer-by. Fortunately a strong fence is in the way.
      There are guard dogs in other houses as well. Finally the whole street is alive with the sound of howling and barking. The noise could wake the dead, but nobody even bothers to look out of the windows of their little houses.
      Helsinki has no "enclosed paradises". The wealthy protect their privacy with high walls or fences around individual buildings. There certainly are wealthier neighbourhoods in Finland, but no private cities.
     
The construction of fenced-off suburbs has been made possible by the fact that the city does not especially want to guide construction through zoning regulations or housing policy, preferring instead to rely on private ownership, while encouraging the market economy.
      Setting up a gated community does not always work even in Tallinn. Failures are usually attributable to poor marketing.
      Movsum Mehtiyev, a businessman from Azerbaijan, was recently forced to give up his idea of buying a separate community for 100 rich families. He bought land in Merirahu and tried to sell it to wealthy Estonians, Finns, and Swedes.
      After going bankrupt, he sold the waterfront properties to five investors, who are now building and selling the houses there at a lower price than originally intended. Nevertheless, the neighbourhood cannot be considered cheap.
     
As a major landowner, the city of Helsinki can exercise  considerable clout in town planning and construction in the Finnish capital. In Helsinki, 65% of the land is owned by the city itself, while in Tallinn the figure is just five percent.
      In Helsinki, zoning and construction regulations, and enforcement, are tough. The city has a say in who is granted permission to build.
      In Tallinn, meanwhile, terms for zoning are largely dictated by real estate investors. When it became independent, Estonia gave buildings, apartments, and land back to those who owned them before the Soviet occupation.
      Former owners who had their property restored would sell their holdings to housing developers, who hired architects to design homes and to carve the land into smaller properties.
     
Tallinn has a city development plan, as well as regulations for planning and construction, but enforcement is weak. Some officials have said that the city would need a separate building police force.
      The city has, among other things, an architectural council which assesses new neighbourhoods, but the real estate developers also have experienced architects. This leads to an aesthetic and architectural arm-wrestle in situations in which no advance limits have been set on the right to build.
     
The key word in Helsinki town planning is "profiling". The idea is that new neighbourhoods should have a "soul". One example of this, which is mentioned often, is the Viikki district.
      In Tallinn it is more chaotic. The medieval Old Town and nine other areas have been officially protected from development, but the chaotic tendencies can be seen in other parts of the city, from where it is spreading to new suburbs.
      Tallinn has established an electronic zoning registry, which architects can access to see the buildings that already exist in an area. It has not yet had the intended impact. For instance, right next to the Aaviku suburb, a number of single-family houses of a completely different style are going up - "the kind that people want to live in".
     
Uncontrolled construction can even lead to a demolition order. This is what happened to St. Petersburg businessman Alekhan Albokhdaziyev, who was supposed to build a single-family house in the village of Lepiko, covering 200 square metres, and ended up starting to build a palatial structure with several stories, and incorporating 800 square metres of living space. A neighbour complained when the building began to block the sun from view.
      The city ordered a halt to the construction, and demanded that it be torn down. The unfinished building has been standing empty for two years, as the businessman tries to persuade the neighbours to accept the building. Many believe that in two or three years he will succeed.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 16.9.2005

More on this subject:
 Estonian middle class moves to new residential suburbs

RAIJA KAIKKONEN / Helsingin Sanomat
raija.kaikkonen@hs.fi