Legitimizing the Tampere Deck Arena: Analyzing tension points to identify how a growth coalition legitimized their vision using place making strategies

Abstract

The Tampere Deck Arena serves as an example of the large-scale growth oriented urban development projects that are increasingly encouraged by global neoliberal processes, such as inter-urban competition and commodification of places. This thesis examines the motivations to build the Tampere Deck Arena and the way the vision of it was legitimized within its political-economic context. I employ Molotch’s growth machine theory to showcase the motivations behind the Deck Arena by comparing the case of Tampere to two contemporary growth machine cases in Europe. To understand how it was legitimized, I use the concept of place making to identify what meanings the key actors of the project wanted the Deck Arena to have. The objects of the analysis are tension points in a feedback compilation from the early planning phases of the arena project. By applying the method of Flyvbjerg et al., I identify problematic power relations apparent in the responses to the feedback and derive four place making strategies revealed in them. My discussion finds that the Deck Arena project was motivated by its perceived growth potential that the growth coalition behind its development – and in their interpretation the whole city – stood to gain benefits from and that the Deck Arena was legitimized with a problematic value-free perception of it. The findings also suggest that the global relevance of urban development projects is an important way to for contemporary growth coalitions to legitimize their projects.