Die innere Differenzierung der Stadt Rauma

Abstract

The question or how formal and functional differences in a town are reflected in the socio‑economic structure of the population has been studied in Rauma, a town with 23 000 inhabitants situated on the coast of western Finland. Rauma was founded in the Middle Ages; the stages of its development are still quite visible in the town plan, as it has been spared from large fires. The quarter in the very centre of the town with old wooden houses is of particular interest.

Functional differences were studied through plotting land use taking into account as many factors as possible. The influence of the hetero­geneity of the buildings on the structure of the CBD and its spatial extent was treated as a special problem.

Socio‑economic differences were studied mainly through sampling. The age and type of the buildings were found to exert the greatest influence on the socio‑economic differentiation of the population. Dis­tance, on the other hand, proved to be of only small significance.

The functional concentration and variety in the centre of the town are intensive. In the same area the structural intensity and social activity of the population also reach their peak. As distance from the centre increases, so the degree of functional concentration decreases. The nearer one approaches the edges of the town, the newer are the buildings. The age of the buildings has an inverse effect on the functional intensity of the population; newer buildings attract wealthy and socially active inhabitants. This tendency is also observable in the centre of the town where nearly all the buildings have been renewed. For this reason both the age of the buildings in the centre and the tendency to a high level of functional intensity have the same effect, as a result of which there is an extremely clearly marked differentiation of population in the centre. People living in large blocks of flats on the outskirts of the town are, as a group, similar in many respects to those who live in the centre of the town.

The basic pattern of the structure of Rauma is circular, the circles spreading outwards eccentrically towards the sea. Because the land is rising there is a functionally empty area continually being formed on the sea side of the town.