Smooth flows, unhurried stays: everyday organizing in a downtown commercial centre

Abstract

This study explores local actors’ participation in everyday organizing and thereby in the production and maintenance of social space in the urban milieu of a downtown commercial centre. By local actors, the study refers to retailers and maintenance workers such as security guards, cleaners and facility managers. The study is based on extensive empirical research being conducted in the Kamppi Centre, located in the heart of the city of Helsinki, Finland. The Kamppi Centre consists of a complex of commercial shops, offices, residential housing and public transportation terminals. It is a hectic urban milieu in a Finnish context and operates 24/7. The study identifies critical locations in the Kamppi Centre, particularly entrances, as well as the central indoor shopping plaza and the corridors where local actors are constantly negotiating the social space with the public. These places provide endless challenges to local actors’ everyday dealings with people and to the material flows and stopovers at the site. The study elaborates on local actors’ careful management of those places and on the organization of both people and material flows and visits as a way of producing and maintaining social space in a complex urban environment.

Introduction

Recent studies have emphasized the importance of commercial centres in urban contexts as important social spaces that are constantly produced and enacted through everyday practices (Stillerman and Salcedo 2012; Hagberg and Styhre 2013). The empirical study on shopping centre development practices by Hagberg and Styhre (2013) shows how different professionals, such as architects, developers, politicians and retail experts, collaborate and balance their various interests in an effort to produce a well-proportioned combination of commercial and public space in a community. Many other studies on shopping centres have likewise demonstrated that shopping malls are not only commercial spaces, but also are often developed and used as welcoming public spaces (e.g., Goss 1993; Abaza 2001). Moreover, the role of such centres can even be fundamental to the development of the city and surrounding region (Lowe 2005). Public transportation routes to the shopping mall play an important role here (Stillerman and Salcedo 2012). Overall, as Hagberg and Styhre (2013) emphasize, the production of social space in urban settings such as shopping malls is a continuous process whereby both material and social arrangements are closely entwined.

The study by Hagberg and Styhre (2013) is an important contribution to the production of social space in an urban environment, particularly in shopping malls, with a focus on the developmental phase of such space. However, more research is required on the production and maintenance of social space in existing urban settings. So far, Smith and Hall (2013), for example, have found that professionals, from street sweepers to police, community support officers and outreach workers, whom the authors call urban patrols, play a fundamental role in maintaining and producing social space at the street level in city centres. Regarding shopping malls, research has shown that consumers play an active role in shaping the social setting there (e.g., Haytko and Baker 2004; Stillerman and Salcedo 2012). Current research also acknowledges that in shopping malls there is constant negotiation of the social space between consumers and mall management (e.g., Lewis 1990; Staeheli and Mitchell 2006). However, what seems to be lacking is research on the participation of a variety of local shopping mall actors beyond the managerial staff in producing and maintaining the social space. It is precisely the interaction of such local actors with the public at the site that is the focus of the present study.

The study thus contributes to the call by Hagberg and Styhre (2013) for more research on the organization and management of urban spaces. The aim here is to explore the ways in which various local actors ‒ in particular, various kinds of maintenance workers such as security guards, cleaners and facility managers, as well as retailers on site in a downtown commercial centre ‒ participate in everyday organization of the space and thereby in the production and maintenance of social space in an urban milieu. The emphasis is on the interaction of the local actors with the public at the site while also taking into account the material arrangements in the built environment.

The study is based on extensive empirical research being conducted in the heart of Helsinki, Finland, at the so-called Kamppi Centre and particularly the commercial part of the centre. The Kamppi Centre consists of a complex of commercial shops, offices, residential housing and public transportation terminals (a metro station and a local and long-distance bus terminal). There is also a freight depot and underground parking facilities. The Kamppi Centre can thus be considered as a hybrid urban space (Perry 2012), one that serves multiple roles including a business establishment, transportation hub, private residence and, thanks to its location in downtown Helsinki, a leisure activity and hang-out site. With some 36 million visitors a year (in 2013), the Centre is a hectic Finnish urban milieu that operates around the clock seven days a week.

The results of the study identify critical locations in the Kamppi Centre where local actors constantly encounter the need to negotiate the social space with the public. Conflicting challenges arise as different local actors try to manage the movements of people and material in the commercial centre. The main aim of the security guards and other maintenance workers is to facilitate a continuous, smooth flow of people in and through the premises while the commercial centre site management and retailers try to organize peaceful spaces for an unhurried stay at the site to promote shopping. The study elaborates on the different local actors’ careful management of the identified critical places and on the organization of both people and material flows as ways of producing and maintaining social space in a complex urban environment.

Urban spaces as sites for social interaction

In order to obtain a greater understanding of everyday life and the production of social spaces in urban contexts, two types of built urban environments have been regarded as particularly relevant. First, commercial or shopping centres have been identified as essential sites for offering spaces for social interaction (Abaza 2001) and cross-class encounters (Stillerman and Salcedo 2012). Commercial centres in cities can even act as places in which identity construction of the city takes place (Lowe 2005). At the same time, the existing research has debated whether commercial centres merely provide an illusion of a social space that is trying to hide its material relation to mass consumption. In this respect Goss (1993, 22) has noted that, ‘in constructing an attractive place image for the shopping center, developers have, with remarkable persistence, exploited a modernist nostalgia for authentic community’. In this regard, as Goss (1993, 23) continues, the interior containing ‘pedestrian walkways, courts, fountains and statuary that referred reassuringly to the traditional urbanism of Southern Europe’ has been important in modern shopping malls. Therefore, the design and construction of commercial centres as attractive public spaces is an important, but challenging endeavour in which various interests are at stake (Hagberg and Styhre 2013). One influential interest related to the construction projects of shopping centres and the public places nearby is related to the promotion of local economies. Here, attracting people flow is an essential driver of economic activity. New types of public spaces with commercial amenities are designed and shaped by private investors once the developers recognize the economic value of public spaces (see Carmona 2014). People seek walkable downtown areas with shopping opportunities and entertainment, and the success of business has a great deal to do with access to these privately owned spaces (Mehta 2014).

Second, various transport infrastructures have been identified as important setups in contributing to the production of social space in urban milieus. Public transportation such as bus and rail connections have been found to be fundamental in urban contexts for offering the means for a wide spectrum of residents to access and use multiple sites in the city, thus contributing to public encounters and facilitating social interactions (Stillerman and Salcedo 2012). Modern transportation terminals such as airports have even been regarded as the suburbs of an invisible border straddling a virtual global city where complex social and material arrangements are closely entwined and in constant flux (Knox et al. 2008).

Indeed, the design of built urban environments matters, since, as noted by Kornberger and Clegg (2004), buildings and other urban architectural structures such as streets (see Munro and Jordan 2013) are not ‘passive containers’ but instead offer various capacities for the production of social space. Kornberger and Clegg (2004, 1106) clarify the importance of architecture by emphasizing that it provides ‘the choreography of movements’. This applies not only to building interiors, but also to all designed environments, thereby suggesting the importance of placing emphasis on places, their peculiarities and their heterogeneities in order to gain an understanding of the distinctiveness and specificities of particular places (see Casey 2003, 2245). Casey’s (2003, 2246) notion, namely that places ‘are not isolated points or spots but interconnected in manifold ways’, underlines the importance of gaining understanding of movements in and between places and of the ways in which these movements participate in either the production or the disruption of social space.

Squares and building lobbies (Raulet-Croset 2013), streets (Jacobs 1958; Munro and Jordan 2013) and building entrances (Goss 1993) are examples of particular places or sites that have been analyzed to gain more understanding of the production of social space through various movements in complex urban settings. Raulet-Croset (2013) has studied urban incivility and particularly loitering and transit at two interesting sites: a square in the midst of a large building complex in a rough neighbourhood and a lobby in a building consisting of both residential housing and work places. Raulet-Croset (2013) showed in her study that squares and lobbies in urban places act as sites of multiple uses and movements such as meeting places, housing, working, loitering and transit. She demonstrates that co-ordination of action to tackle incivilities in such places requires adaptation to the specificities of the places, but at the same time local actors can mobilize space as a resource for such co-ordination. Moreover, she illustrates that specific material arrangements in a place can affect and even direct the movements and flows at the site. Jacobs (1958, 127) has emphasized streets as being ‘the nervous system’ of a city, communicating ‘the flavour, the feel and the sights’ of the downtown area. Munro and Jordan’s (2013) study focused on analyzing the work of street artists during a large arts festival in a city centre. They showed that the use of public spaces such as streets involves constant negotiation among the various users and that those who use the street sites as a workspace actively create temporary spatial boundaries through various material means. Finally, building entrances have been found to have an important meaning in suggesting an experience of a site. Goss (1993) refers to the formal entrances to shopping malls, which can even have theatrical aspects, thereby suggesting the existence, for example, of an oasis inside. Overall, however, the management of site entrances that are overrun with a continuous flow of people can be a challenging endeavour, requiring constant attention to complex socio-material arrangements (Heath, Hindmarsh, and Luff 1999).

Moving and staying as spatial practices in complex urban settings

Spatial practices such as moving play an important role in the production of spatiality (Lefebvre 1991). Castells (2010, 442) speaks of ‘flows’ by which he means ‘purposeful, repetitive, programmable sequences of exchange and interaction between physically disjointed positions held by social actors’. Castells (2010) argues that modern societies are constructed around flows: flows of social and organizational interaction, flows of technology, flows of information, flows of capital, flows of images, sounds and symbols. Shopping malls and airports, for example, represent examples of complex settings wherein a space of flows occurs (Knox et al. 2008; Stillerman and Salcedo 2012).

Walking is an important spatial practice. So far, walking has largely been considered as a predefined, self-evident function of moving without acknowledging the diversity of pedestrians’ associated experiences (Middleton 2010). As Roberts (2012) has observed, shopping centres, airports and even hospitals are increasingly designed to contain economically desirable activities. A demanding challenge for urban planners and local actors in urban settings is to maintain the flow of walking in these environments. An important question here is how to configure spaces that stimulate people and organize their walking practices and rhythms.

There is a great deal of evidence of the importance of walking to the vitality of everyday urban life. An influential concept for urban walking has been the flȃneur, a popular figure of a man in a crowd who strolls idly through city streets and passages (Benjamin 1999). Falk and Campbell (1997) have made clear that a contemporary shopping flȃneur is a consumer searching for stimuli and for the appealing sensations of urban spaces while enjoying the pleasures of the goods on offer. The flȃneur is thus a symbol of modernity and consumption, a figure who ambles along with the crowd and looks like part of the crowd, yet individually and eagerly absorbs novelties and creates art from the experience (Featherstone 1998). Therefore, the flȃneur is a phenomenon of increasing urbanization who, by means of walking, moves through the city and the crowds and thereby experiences the surroundings. Almost at the opposite end of the discussion on walking is the perspective that focuses on habits and habitual behaviours. This view is stressed as a key aspect of attempts to understand mobility. Studies of everyday life have focused on the flow of repetitions, relating walking to the co-ordination of such flows. For example, Middleton (2011) has argued that little attention has been paid to the practicalities of walking, which needs to be understood as an unfolding journey on foot.

Significantly, various modes of walking can be meaningful for the production and maintenance of social space in commercial centres. Wunderlich (2008) has suggested that there are three different types of walking practices enacted by people in urban contexts, namely purposive, discursive and conceptual. In purposive walking the task is to walk to and towards; purposive walking is performed at a rapid pace. Discursive walking is a mode of walking in which pace and rhythm are responsive to the walker′s own bodily rhythms and in which the walker is aware of the external environment. This type can be performed without a destination. The third mode, conceptual walking, is a creative response to a walker’s interpretation of place. In referring to these walking practices, Wunderlich (2008, 133) notes that ‘purposive walking is habitual, a recurrent activity that fosters a sense of order and continuity. In contrast, discursive and conceptual walking promote encounter and discovery in urban places’.

The role of managers and security guards has been found to be important in attempts to manage and organize movements and flows in shopping malls. Here, efforts to control people entering, moving and occupying the malls play an important role. It has been due to particular social groups and individuals, such as ‘the homeless, beggars, groups of young people and ethnic minorities that are characterized as threatening and disorderly’, that increasing control, for example, through surveillance technologies and codes of conduct and enforcement, has been enacted (Raco 2003, 1871). The owners and management of shopping malls have been found to discourage groups they regard in some respects as threatening from entering the mall, and sometimes they even expel such groups (e.g., Lewis 1990; Staeheli and Mitchell 2006). Security guards are also used in such situations (Goss 1993). Overall, the role of security guards has been found to be essential in shopping malls for border control, which relies mostly on preventative measures intended to keep the threats outside the mall (Franzén 2001). Here, surveillance technologies have an important function (Staeheli and Mitchell 2006).

A 24-hour city: The Kamppi Centre

The development of the Kamppi Centre in Helsinki was begun as early as 1994. The area used to be a large outdoor bus station connecting Helsinki with its neighbouring cities, mainly Espoo, by means of public transportation. The project manager for the city of Helsinki described the aims of the Kamppi area development in a seminar given in November 2000:

The area is unattractive and in bad weather it is just rotten. In its current state, no one is attracted to public transportation … The aim is to develop a Kamppi Centre that will form a lively and functional business centre embedded in an urban context and considered as part of a distinctive and comfortable city by local actors and visitors, as well as by users of public transportation terminals. (Project manager, City of Helsinki)

After a long planning phase, the approximately four-year construction project to build the centre represented one of the largest single construction sites not only in downtown Helsinki, but also in Finnish history. The public transportation terminal, a new entrance to the Kamppi metro station and the first retail stores on the street level were opened to the public in June 2005, and, in March 2006, the commercial complex, the offices and residential housing buildings were finally opened. The gross area of the Kamppi Centre is approximately 135,000 square metres. Its commercial complex consists of six floors, including the street level, with a gross leasable area of approximately 44,000 square metres. Currently, the commercial hub is owned by an international real estate investment company. Inside the building are public pedestrian walkways that essentially cut through the commercial centre on three floors. Particularly on the street level, there is a constant flow of people from the local bus terminal and metro station along the pedestrian passageways that lead in various directions into and outside the building. This design feature is challenging from the perspective of the management and the organization of the centre (see Figure 1).

There are so many people here walking with their cell phone cameras that if there are any bigger problems that are a bit unusual they will end up in the newspapers. (Managing director, Kamppi Centre facilities management)

An additional challenge is that the opening times of the Kamppi Centre are long (weekdays from 5 am to 2:30 am and weekends from 5 am to 4:20 am), mainly due to the bus terminal being located at the site. Even though the retail stores are not open at night, as they are required to conform to the general opening hours of retail stores in Finland, the Kamppi Centre can still be called a 24-hour city (see Bianchini 1995). Several restaurants, bars and nightclubs are open until late at night. Security guards and cleaners are present around the clock, seven days a week.

Figure 1. A spatial layout of the ground level.

Source: The Kamppi Commercial Centre (Courtesy of the site manager for the commercial complex).

Methods

The present research is a case study (Yin 2003; Gillham 2010) on the everyday management and organization of a commercial centre in a downtown area. As Hagberg and Styhre (2013, 361) have noted, ‘case studies seek to examine social processes or events that are not reducible to individual elements but must be understood within a specific field of practice’. The present study seeks to understand everyday organizing and thereby the production and maintenance of social space in a complex urban milieu in which multiple local actors participate in this social practice. A variety of methods have been applied to generate data about everyday management and the organizing of local actors at the research site, the Kamppi Centre, and particularly the commercial part of the centre in Helsinki, including interviews (Gillham 2010), fieldwork (Ybema et al. 2009), and documents and archival records (Yin 2003).

The data collection began in September 2014 with in-depth interviews. By April 2015 a total of 27 such interviews had been conducted. Specifically, 10 interviews with local actors were carried out at the site, including with the commercial centre site manager, retailers operating on different floors of the centre and maintenance workers, such as security guards, cleaners and facilities management personnel. In addition, 11 interviews were conducted with architects and contractors to obtain knowledge about the development phase of the Kamppi Centre and thereby of both the material dimensions and the planned functions of the building. These 11 interviews included architects, City of Helsinki officials, representatives from the construction company and a consultant who had been involved in the design and construction of the Kamppi Centre. The interviews were complemented with an interview with a director of retail concepts in a construction firm in order to gain an understanding of current trends in the design of future commercial centres. Finally, five interviews were conducted with important actors in cultural and youth affairs whose institutional premises are located close to the Kamppi Centre. These interviewees included three museum representatives, a movie theatre director and a director of youth affairs in the City of Helsinki. The aim here was to increase our understanding of urban life and particularly of people’s activities and movements in the whole Kamppi area.

Each interview lasted one to two hours. To carry out the interviews, a protocol was developed to guide the questions. The interviewees were first asked to give a description of their daily jobs, and they were also asked their views on the dimensions and production of an attractive urban space. Here, the focus was kept on the Kamppi Centre. The architects, contractors and City of Helsinki officials were asked about the details of the development and construction of the Centre. The interviews focused on and deepened the questions about issues that were particularly important to each interviewee. The use of ‘natural’ conversation (Gillham 2010) played an important role in the interviews, which were recorded. In total, the interviews produced approximately 32 hours of recorded material, which has been transcribed verbatim. Table 1 summarizes the interviews conducted.

Table 1. In-depth interviews conducted from September 2014 to April 2015.

Interviewees	Number of interviewees
Site and Facilities Management	3
Site manager for the commercial complex Associate Director, Commercial centre facilities management Managing director, Kamppi Centre facilities management
Security guards	2
Security expert Site manager
Cleaner	1
Service manager
Retailers	4
Two retailers on the ground floor One retailer on the first floor One retailer on the fourth floor
Architects	5
Responsible architects for the design of the Kamppi Centre in five architectural offices
Construction company representatives	3
Planning director Project manager Director of retail concepts
City of Helsinki officials	4
Head of Real Estate Department Two project managers from the City Planning Department Head of Youth Department
Consultant	1
Managing director of a real estate development company and a consultant office
Museum management	3
Two museum directors Communications officer of an art museum
Movie theatre management	1
Cinema manager
Total	27

The interviews were complemented with fieldwork carried out in the Kamppi Centre. The fieldwork consisted of two different parts. First, ethnographic interviews were conducted (O’Reilly 2012; Spradley 1979) with four security guards in the control room of the Kamppi Centre. According to Spradley (1979, 9), the ‘ethnographic interview is one strategy for getting people to talk about what they know’, and the ethnographer ‘must then make inferences about what people know by listening carefully to what they say, by observing their behavior, and by studying artifacts and their use’. For this study, the security guards were observed in the control room while they were using various kinds of equipment to carry out their tasks; as they worked, they were asked what they were doing and why. The authors were allowed to spend a total of four hours in the control room on two Saturdays in November 2014. The first visit was scheduled for a Saturday afternoon (1 pm to 3 pm), and the second visit was a Saturday evening (6 pm to 8 pm). During the first visit, three security guards were interviewed and observed, and on the second visit, one security guard.

Besides ethnographic interviews and observations in the control room, field notes were also made on local actors and visitors’ activities in and around the Kamppi Centre. In addition, the authors participated in various events which were organized for the public in the centre’s central indoor plaza and took photographs of the site. The photographs helped not only to document the study (e.g., Harper 2003), but also to zoom in (Nicolini 2009) to the material arrangements of the places emphasized by the interviewees. Finally, records on the number of people flowing into and out of the Kamppi Centre and documents related to its development phase supplemented the empirical material.

To analyze the data, the authors first carefully read through the interview transcriptions and field notes several times in order to gain an understanding of what local actors, particularly security guards, cleaners, facility management and retailers, do in a downtown commercial centre in general and how they interact with the public in particular. The first rounds of reading suggested that particular places in the Kamppi Centre play an important role in the everyday life of organizing local actors. The data were then coded, first by indicating the critical places in the Centre. The next round of data analysis investigated the interaction of the local actors with the public at the identified sites. The analysis was complemented by recognition of material arrangements, specifically the design and construction by architects and contractors, in the key identified locations. The data analysis was highly iterative; the empirical data guided the analysis, and the emerging results were constantly interpreted and compared with the existing theoretical concepts (Spradley 1979; Eriksson and Kovalainen 2008; O’Reilly 2012).

Everyday organizing in a downtown commercial centre

The entrances, particularly the main entrance, and the central plaza at the Kamppi Centre are critical locations where local actors constantly have to negotiate the social space in a commercial setting. Significantly, however, the social space is also constantly being managed in corridors and on the various floors and even on the boundaries of the Kamppi premises. Physical distances as well as people and material flows and stopovers at the Centre appear to be essential to local actors’ practices and thereby to the ways in which the social space is maintained (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. The Kamppi Centre in downtown Helsinki. (a) The Entrance to the Kamppi Centre and Sewer Lids; (b) The Indoor Shopping Plaza; (c) Long Corridor on the Ground Floor of the Kamppi Centre; (d) Different Floors in the Kamppi Commercial Centre.

Source: Photographs by the authors, 2014.

Entrances as sites of contesting people and material flows

There are 11 street-level entrances to the Kamppi Centre. The busiest is the main entrance on the market square, where over 8.3 million people enter each year. In the Centre’s completed building complex, there are several hundred surveillance cameras through which the security guards attempt to monitor the people and materials entering the property. In the control room the security guards are able to follow the human and material movements on dozens of screens simultaneously. Here, the entrances to the Kamppi Centre and particularly the main entrance are under constant surveillance.

The entrance to the market square is the place where people go to smoke a cigarette and drink alcohol. Then they bump against the doors, fall over and just about anything … Sometimes the main entrance just gets packed, which makes people angry. Not everybody wants to walk through cigarette smoke. (Security guard #1)

The entrances are critical sites from the perspective of the smooth movement of people in and out of the building. Therefore, the security guards endeavour to keep the entrances clear and prevent them from getting too crowded. They monitor the entrances not only to prevent possible congestion, but also to prevent emerging problems and potentially dangerous situations from arising.

A couple of years ago somebody threw a small smoke bomb on New Year’s Eve. He threw it just next to the entrance. [The ventilation system] sucked all the smoke into [the building], causing a fire alarm to go off. We caught him, and he was judged liable for the damage. (Security guard #2)

Potential problems close to the entrance may arise not only outside, but also inside the building. Therefore, entrances are observed from both outside and inside, where entrance halls are under the security guards’ constant surveillance. The main entrance hall may become crowded, as it is used as a popular meeting point. Besides the main entrance hall, the entrance at the other end of the Kamppi Centre is also regularly monitored. The reason is that this entrance hall serves as a comfortable site, particularly on cold, rainy or windy days. Many people use this hall for various purposes; some of them wait for a short time for a tram or a bus, while others might be homeless people looking for shelter.

In the type of climate we have it’s very important to be able to be indoors in the winter. (Architect #1)

In observing the hall, the security guards are constantly considering whether loitering could be interpreted as causing a disturbance in the Centre. Loud and disorderly behaviour is considered as disturbing to the public order, particularly when it threatens to block movement in and out of the Centre. Time is also an essential factor here.

[The entrance hall] is a comfortable place for waiting when it is not reserved for long-term encampment. (Security guard #3)

Besides the security guards, the retailers also consider entrance halls to be problematic to manage. Some of the stores in the Centre are located close to the entrance halls, a location that is not always favourable to retailers because from this position it can be difficult to attract people into a store. One retailer calls the sites close to the entrances ‘draught lobbies’ ‒ places that are neither really inside nor outside the commercial centre and essentially serve as transit areas.

Our business is not in the best possible location because the entrance is too close to our premises. People are either about to leave the Kamppi Centre, ready to put on their hats and gloves just three steps from our store, meaning that they do not want anything anymore and they are not open to looking for anything. And, when they enter the Kamppi Centre, it is only after passing our store that they start taking off their hats and gloves and looking around. We are sort of in a draught lobby. It’s not a good site for a business. (Retailer #1)

The interviewed retailer represents a global, well-known brand, but she considers her ability to attract people into the store to be limited. Therefore, she has decided to move to a new, more centrally located place in the Centre with the idea of making her business more visible and apparent to passers-by and visitors, i.e., possible customers. Another difficulty with a location in the entrance hall is that, when the site does attract people to come in, it is not to shop, but to ask directions.

My first eight customers today have just asked for directions. Where is the health centre? Where is the travel agency? Where is Clas Ohlson? Where is it? We are so close to the entrance that even if there is an information board, people prefer to come in and ask someone. (Retailer #1)

The retailers close to the entrance halls thus constantly face the challenge of how to get customers into their store for the right reason, namely to shop.

A central plaza as a site for negotiating people and material flows

Besides the main entrance, the nearby central plaza is also under constant surveillance by the security guards. The indoor shopping plaza is centrally located on the ground floor of the commercial building. People entering the commercial centre through the main entrance have to cross the plaza, for example, to reach the local and long-distance bus terminals, the metro or the stores on the upper floors. Architecturally, the plaza was originally designed to be a kind of a courtyard inside the building.

Such a massive building needs a place for taking a breath and orientation. (Architect #2)

Today, people use the plaza similar to the way they use the entrance hall close to the marketplace: as a public meeting place where people wait for their dates. The central plaza is also where most of the action takes place in the Kamppi Centre. It is a place where event organizers can reach most passers-by, travellers or visitors, and therefore the plaza can be leased for organized events. The use of the plaza for various events, either commercial or non-commercial, is not, however, unproblematic from the perspective of the flow of people into the Kamppi Centre, as the events may take place in the middle of key walking routes inside the building and thus block movement.

Every time there is a bigger event at the plaza, those who don’t stay around to stand and watch just pass by looking [irritated] that they need to get away from here quickly. [The events] will make the place really narrow. (Retailer #2)

The events organized in the plaza also cause additional work both for the cleaners and the security guards. The cleaners try to manage the material flow in the area.

Refreshments keep us busy because people spill things. There are drinks containers everywhere. (Cleaner)

Events that last more than a day require putting up a temporary fence around the event area after the daily show time. Since the Kamppi Centre is open to the public almost around the clock, a security guard stays inside the fenced-in area from the close of the event in the evening until the beginning of the next show in the morning in order to keep an eye on the materials, often various kinds of electronic equipment, brought to the site by the event organizer.

We seal off the whole plaza to make it easier for the security guard. So that people do not move unnecessarily in the area. [It is important] particularly now when they start to be in a party mode … The first shift [for guard duty] today is from six to eleven pm. (Security guard #3)

The absence of an information desk on the central plaza causes additional challenges to the flow of people inside the Centre. Because of this lack, there is a constant need for all local actors, from security guards to retailers and maintenance workers such as cleaners, to help people orientate themselves in the building and get directions. People get lost and sometimes cannot find, for example, the way back to their cars in underground parking garages. They also might want information, for example, about the opening times of key tourist attractions in and around the Helsinki area. Retailers, security guards and various maintenance workers are regarded as reliable and knowledgeable local experts who can help navigate a complex urban environment such as the Kamppi Centre and points beyond.

At one point, we kept statistics on the number of times directions were given. It was more than one hundred times every day. (Security guard #1)

One of the top questions that people often ask us is, excuse me, how do I find my car? (Security guard #4)

Once there was an old woman who was completely lost over there … I told her to follow me. I carried her bags and took her to the long-distance bus terminal [where she was heading]. She said that I had saved her day … She simply had no idea where she was. (Cleaner)

The lack of an information desk on the central shopping plaza is particularly problematic for retailers whose stores are located there. The retailers are interrupted several times a day with a variety of questions that may have nothing to do with anything at the Kamppi Centre.

One of the funniest questions so far is that at what time ‘The Apprentice’ begins today on television. I have a feeling that people can ask us just about anything. (Retailer #2)

A retailer on the upper floor calls the retailer cited above a ‘news agency’, as she has to deal with most of the visitors’ inquiries. Retailers on the central plaza are regarded as information points or desks, and these retailers face a persistent demand to negotiate with people who attempt to find help navigating the Centre and beyond.

When I am talking with a customer, someone may come in and yell at me ‘excuse me, excuse me’; and it may happen 20 times a day. I have decided not to pay attention to these people. I first finish the conversation [with the customer], and then I ask what it is that the person wants. And this is not about something like there is fire or anything, but where is a particular store located … We do have an information desk here … [but] it’s so hidden that nobody finds it unless they ask where the information desk is. (Retailer #2)

As the quotation above shows, retailers have even developed their own ways of dealing with constant interruptions by non-customers.

Corridors and floors on the upper floors as sites for controlling people and material flows

The commercial centre of the Kamppi complex consists of a total of six floors. Most people enter on the ground floor, which is by far the busiest due to its direct access to the local bus terminal and the escalators leading to the long-distance bus terminal and the metro station located underground. Thus, the long corridor on the ground floor is a busy indoor passageway where the challenge to retailers is to attract customers into the stores. While many retailers struggle with the question of how to serve busy customers, there are some retailers, for example, the supermarket shopkeeper, who try to take advantage of the constant, hectic flow of people.

Our idea is to get the customer in and out quickly because she is in a hurry to catch the next metro or the bus, and she is on the way to somewhere else … This is a bit contradictory to the desires of stores selling such things as fashion. (Retailer #3)

Besides the busy ground floor, there are also entrances into the Centre on the first and second floors.

The whole starting point was that the streets would pass through the building and there would be shortcuts in this city block. (Architect #3)

Yet one of the site manager’s key challenges is how to increase the people flow vertically, thereby facilitating the visitors’ shopping intentions.

Our problem is not customer flow. We have 36 million visitors per year and it is enough … But we need people to make a stop here in Kamppi. The longer the customers spend time here, the more money they spend here and the more they remember [what they need to buy] … Therefore, our most important job is to get people to stay here. (Site manager for the commercial complex)

One of the strategies for increasing people flow vertically as well as for increasing the number of stopovers in local stores is to organize various events on different floors and in the corridors of the commercial complex. Corridors and floors provide possible sites for smaller-scale organized action, both commercial and non-commercial. The manager of the commercial centre says that, besides leasing the premises for commercial activities, she frequently receives direct requests from the public to carry out non-commercial activities or to stage performances ranging from art school lessons to fashion shows in corners of corridors or in open areas on different floors of the complex. The manager has decided on a strategy which permits all activities except those which might contain elements of violence and therefore would be potentially frightening to the public.

Isn’t it so that in the current situation the commercial complex ought to act as a sort of facilitator, offering a place where people can come and do different things if they want to. We didn’t invent this, but people did. Every week I receive requests via email or people call me … Two weeks ago an art teacher called from the university. She wants to bring thirty students here to draw pictures of urban life … Of course, they can come. We have large corridors here, and together we searched for good spots. I said that here and there [would be good possibilities], and we walked around the Kamppi commercial complex, and [I showed her] all the places where they could come. (Site manager for the Kamppi commercial complex)

The management of the commercial complex has opened these privately-owned premises to the public for non-commercial purposes; this is considered an important way of marketing the Centre. In particular, the management sees that providing premises free for non-commercial activities is a trade-off; the Centre considers offering an audience for the organizers of such activities as a way to receive interesting content in return and attract customers to visit the site and ultimately use the commercial services. Significantly, however, the placement of such public action or small-scale shows is carefully selected and controlled by the management, with permissible sites specifically designated for those who want to organize events or actions.

With regard to the corridors and floors, the security guards have blocked public access to some parts of the Centre. One of the key aims of the security guards is to keep the premises constantly manageable and under control. The continuous observation of the premises via several hundred surveillance cameras and the constant patrolling of the site, however, may not be sufficient. Therefore, the guards sometimes need to close certain sites either temporarily, for example, with fences, or permanently, by locking potentially problematic areas.

We had to add a few doors here in the building because there were a couple of popular corridors where some antisocial people tried to enter [loitering]. So we sort of tried to eliminate these kinds of small hotbeds. (Security guard #1)

Places where a large group of antisocial people can loiter may potentially be problematic sites, and therefore, the security guards try to eliminate these places in advance, which is not necessarily easy. Young people seem constantly to find new places in the Kamppi Centre for getting together. With regard to young people, attempts to prevent loitering by removing seats or sealing off areas has not proved to be a successful strategy. Therefore, the representatives of the commercial centre together with the youth workers and youths themselves have formulated rules regarding appropriate behaviour.

[The rules] are things that you need to consider, to keep the passages open and not to block [them]; these types of things. The key issue is to understand the needs of the other party and try to find a common solution. (Head of the Youth Department, City of Helsinki)

The head of the Youth Department believes that the rules are helpful not only for young people, but also for the security guards in their daily attempts to manage the premises and make decisions about whether or not to interfere with loitering.

Managing the boundaries

In the Kamppi Centre there are several boundaries, both visible and invisible, which the security guards try to manage. One of the key questions is whether any activities are taking place in the area for which the guards are responsible and how to react if the actions potentially endanger the security of that area. One important way to manage the boundaries is to anticipate danger and prevent its entering an area in advance. Here, the entrances act as critical sites for eliminating problems. The security guards monitor people’s movements well beyond the borders of the Kamppi property. People walking in groups who approach the Centre talking loudly and apparently drunk catch the guards’ attention. The guards try to prevent such groups from even entering the premises.

If there is a group of people close to the Kamppi Chapel and clearly heading towards us [in the Kamppi Centre] … we can send a reception committee to the main entrance to meet them. If the group behaves in a way that is not appropriate, we don’t have to wait for them to enter the premises. Instead, we may ask them to catch a bus on the street or take the metro somewhere else. So if it’s just terrible shouting and a racket [we try to stop them from entering the premises. And, this is particularly the case] if they carry spirits with them, and usually they do. (Security guard #1)

The security guards also stay in close communication with guards in a neighbouring commercial centre in order to monitor potential problem situations ‒ an additional means of keeping an eye on troublemakers and preventing them from entering the premises. However, danger may come from within the building rather than from outside, and anticipating and preventing problems in advance is nearly impossible. Troublemakers may enter the Centre through the public transportation systems.

On Friday evenings, lots of people go to restaurants. The buses from Espoo bring loads of people here to spend an evening in Helsinki. They may have a can of cider in their hands. It doesn’t necessarily disturb anyone if they carry cans while walking through [the Centre], and normally we let it be. They just go outside in due course. But if larger groups of people gather to drink here indoors, they usually make noise and cause [disturbances]. Then we give them notice and ask them either to throw the cans and alcohol in the garbage bin or to go outside the building to drink. Most often they choose to go outside to finish their drinks there. (Security guard #2)

As the security guard explains above, constant assessment and consideration are required to determine whether security is being threatened, as are questions of when to interfere with groups of people moving through the space. Loud and inappropriate behaviour such as aggression often combined with substance use is considered frightening to the public, and therefore potential troublemakers are either prevented from entering the premises or asked to move away to keep the Centre an attractive and safe space for the public.

Finally, the security guards constantly monitor whether the actions taking place in the area under their control are legal and whether people have valid¹ licenses for what they are doing. These questions concern various commercial and political activities. The boundaries between the public and the commercial areas are not always visible. Controlling the boundaries that are invisible to the public can lead to conflicts with potential trespassers.

A good rule of thumb is that three metres away from the wall is part of the property. There are sewer lids that we take advantage of [to define our working areas]. We can take action if we know that a person is on our site. As an example, let’s say a person has acquired an authorization from the city to distribute yoghurt, advertisements for elections or anything else; and if it starts raining, surprise, surprise, they come close to the entrance [of the Centre], under the glass overhang. In these cases we show them the line; the permit is valid on the other side of the line. (Security guard #1)

Managing boundaries requires constant negotiation between the guards and the public for appropriate places to pursue activities in a public space. Here, the guards take advantage of various material arrangements in the environment such as sewer lids, which they use to demarcate their working area or areas in which where they have the license to act.

Discussion

The Kamppi Centre is a vital site in downtown Helsinki that offers space for social interaction facilitated both by commercial activities and public transportation (e.g., Abaza 2001; Stillerman and Salcedo 2012; Hagberg and Styhre 2013). The Kamppi Centre serves multiple important roles as a social space where a combination of people and material flows and stopovers and thereby tensions emerge for local actors to manage. The first role of the Kamppi Centre is that of an indoor passageway where transportation terminals produce a continuous flow of people, either to or from the local bus terminal and metro station, thus generating a place where people enact rapid, purposive walking (Wunderlich 2008), thereby challenging local actors to manage visitors’ walking pace and destinations. There is also a continuous material flow in this pedestrian passageway. People carry or drag their bags and other belongings, leaving traces of dirt for the cleaners to deal with. Retailers deliver materials or waste and children may play ball or push shopping trolleys, potentially causing disturbances in the passageway. Such people and material flows are constantly monitored by local actors, either through surveillance cameras or through observation at on-site operations such as security patrolling, cleaning, facilities management and retailing. The aim is to manage and assure the smooth flow of people and materials in the Kamppi Centre. This is done in part by supplying information and helping people find directions and ways to navigate not only inside the Centre, but also around the whole Helsinki area. The management of smooth flows focuses particularly on places where tensions may emerge when movement may potentially become blocked, i.e., entrances and the indoor shopping plaza, which is in the middle of key walking routes inside the building. Meanwhile, local actors try to prevent congestion and problems from arising, either by blocking potential troublemakers’ access to the building or by guiding them smoothly away from the Centre altogether. Significantly, the local actors recognize that people and material flows are constantly monitored by visitors themselves who may record and report potential public disturbances with their cell phone cameras.

Second, the Kamppi Centre is a public meeting point centrally located in downtown Helsinki. It is a comfortable indoor space that invites people to stay either for a short period of time to wait for public transportation or for a longer period of time to meet friends or find shelter. The local actors, particularly security guards, try to manage people’s visits by constant reflection on whether staying can be considered loitering and is disturbing. Entrance halls and building corners are under particularly close observation in this respect. In general, loitering seems tolerated, but long stays combined with loud and disorderly behaviour are considered disturbing to the public order, especially when these things threaten to block people flow in and out of the Centre. The security guards try to keep the Centre as a comfortable indoor space, for example, by preventing access to corners and corridors that are difficult to monitor for antisocial behaviour or by asking people to move on (see Lewis 1990; Staeheli and Mitchell 2006). Rules formulated together with young people have been helpful in negotiating and reaching mutual understanding on the appropriate behaviour in the Centre.

Third, the Kamppi Centre provides an example of a bricolage of commercial and public space. The commercial centre is privately owned, but the centre as a whole functions socially as a public space (e.g., Hagberg and Styhre 2013; Mehta 2014). The Centre is essentially a space that is appropriated by the public, for the public. The public can actively approach the management of the commercial centre to request permission to organize different kinds of non-commercial activities. Along with the Centre’s commercial activities, the management of the commercial centre has decided to tolerate and even welcome non-commercial activities. From the management’s perspective these are regarded as promoting the Centre’s commercial use by offering possibilities for the public to stay longer in the building and thereby increase business. At the same time, however, the management tries to regulate non-commercial uses by careful selection of organizers and even by controlling the places where such activities are permitted.

Conclusions

The study contributes to the discussion of the production of social spaces in commercial centres (Goss 1993; Abaza 2001; Stillerman and Salcedo 2012). It extends previous work by Hagberg and Styhre (2013), which focused on developmental practices, and examines everyday practices in an existing building. The results show that the Kamppi Centre serves multiple roles as a social space, i.e., an indoor passageway, a comfortable indoor space, and a bricolage of commercial and public space. The results emphasize the importance of local actors, i.e., retailers and various maintenance workers such as security guards, cleaners and facility managers, in the production and maintenance of social spaces in hectic urban milieus such as a downtown commercial centre. The study supports the findings of Smith and Hall (2013), who maintain that the daily work of such local actors is essential in maintaining order in the 24-hour city.

The study identifies entrances and plazas as critical sites in a complex downtown shopping centre where the local actors constantly have to negotiate the social space with members of the public who visit the site. These places provide constant challenges to local actors’ everyday dealings with people and material flows. The challenges they face may conflict with each other. The results of this study show that security guards try to guarantee and support a smooth flow of people in and through the premises. However, the retailers’ key challenge is to prevent people from passing through their places of business in a hurry; they prefer to tempt the public to wander around their stores in a leisurely way and examine the merchandise. Giving directions to visitors and passers-by is an important role that all local actors play, as they help people navigate a complex urban environment. Giving directions supports the maintenance of a smooth flow of people and thus supports the aims of the security guards. However, retailers need to deal with interruptions whenever they are faced with frequent demands for directions.

The results further show that the social space is strictly managed in the shopping mall’s corridors and commercial floors, and even on the boundaries of the Kamppi Centre’s premises. Places at the edges of corridors or open areas on different floors are managed by being purposefully opened or closed to the public. Overall, controlling, maintaining and halting the flows of material and people act as important ways of organizing and managing the social space in a complex urban environment. Physical distances as well as people and material flows in the shopping mall seem central to local actors’ practices and thereby to the ways in which social space is maintained.

Finally, the study contributes to discussions related to routes into and within commercial centres (e.g., Stillerman and Salcedo 2012). Hybrid spaces in the city centre, such as the Kamppi Centre, can easily be reached by consumers through various forms of public transportation. This offers potential for marketing and requires the development of experiential pathways within the built environments that slow the physical movements of visitors and passers-by and allow discursive and conceptual walking (Wunderlich 2008). For managers of such urban complexes, the challenge is to consider how to incorporate the mundane walking practices of visitors and passers-by into the work of local actors in commercial centres.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supported by TEKES, the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation, under the research programme ‘Energizing Urban Ecosystems (EUE)’, co-ordinated and managed by RYM Oy, the Strategic Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation for the built environment.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all the interviewees who participated in the research project. They also gratefully acknowledge comments and suggestions by Philippe Lorino and other participants at the APROS/EGOS Conference in Sydney, Australia, 9‒11 December 2015, as well as by the participants at the 10th Annual Ethnography Conference at the University of Liverpool, UK, 26‒28 August 2015. Comments and suggestions by the editor and two anonymous reviewers are also gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

1. To organize an event in a public space such as a street, square or park of the City of Helsinki, the organizer needs to apply for a permit from the city authorities, which is particularly important when the planned event will limit the public’s use of the area. The site manager for the Kamppi commercial complex handles requests to organize either commercial or non-commercial activities in the commercial centre.