untitled


Bad reputation – bad reality?
The intertwining and contested images of a place

SIRPA TANI

Tani, Sirpa (2001). Bad reputation – bad reality? The intertwining and contest-
ed images of a place. Fennia 179:2, pp. 143–157. Helsinki. ISSN 0015-0010.

In the early 1990s, prostitution became a visible element in Helsinki and
caused a big stir in the Finnish media. Street prostitution became concentrat-
ed in a densely-built-up residential area north of the city centre. The prostitu-
tion debate stigmatised the area effectively. This article explores the area by
interpreting its images in cultural artefacts and in people’s minds. The history
of the area will be described in order to make the present images understand-
able. Three types of images will be analysed: images of the place for ordinary
people, images of the dangerous neighbourhood and images of bohemian ro-
manticism, which are all associated with the history of the area and repro-
duced in the prostitution debate.

Sirpa Tani, Department of Teacher Education, P.O. Box 38, FIN-00014 Univer-
sity of Helsinki, Finland. MS received 29th March, 2001 (revised 4th April,
2001).

Introduction

The aim of this article is to interpret an area by
exploring its images in cultural artefacts and in
people’s minds. The area concerned became
known as a district of street prostitutes and kerb-
crawlers during the 1990s. The prostitution debate
in the media stigmatised the area effectively, the
fact which is the point of departure for this study.
I will ask why some areas are more vulnerable to
get a bad reputation than others and how the
prostitution debate used and reconstructed place
images. I will also ask what dimensions are ap-
parent in the present reputation of the place. To
answer these questions I will describe the history
of the area in order to make the present images
understandable. I will trace the changes in the
images in time and analyse their contents by us-
ing examples of various cultural products and
opinions of local residents.

The article is based on two studies of street
prostitution in Helsinki. The first one is my per-
sonal research project based on qualitative data
gathered between the years 1993 and 1999, when
I lived in the research area and observed the
changes in the neighbourhood on a daily basis.
The main purpose was to interpret the street pros-
titution debate and to compare the mediated im-

ages with the experiences of local residents (Tani
2001, 2002). The second one is a research project,
the main purpose of which was to analyse the ef-
fects of street prostitution on women’s everyday
lives in Helsinki. The study was made in the form
of a mailed questionnaire to women in two areas;
the research area consisted of ten blocks of the
street prostitution area, while the control area was
the rest of Inner Helsinki. The material was col-
lected in May–June 1999. A total of 1,714 women
answered the questionnaire, 888 of whom lived
in the research area and 826 in the control area
(Koskela et al. 2000). Many interesting aspects of
place images emerged in both projects but, for
practical reasons, they took a minor role in the
previous publications. It seemed important to
write this article by concentrating on the relations
between the place and its images.

First, I will give an overview of some central
concepts informing my research. Secondly, I will
explain the difficulties of defining the borders of
the area studied and note the variation in its nam-
ing. Thirdly, I will explore the street prostitution
debate as a creator of some new images of the
area, and fourthly, I will interpret other existing
images by concentrating on three dimensions; the
area seen as a place with a nostalgic past, as a
dangerous neighbourhood and a stage for bohe-



144 FENNIA 179: 2 (2001)Sirpa Tani

mian romanticism. Finally, I will consider some
contemporary place promotion activities and raise
questions about the meanings of subjectivity and
intersubjectivity in place images. The intertwin-
ing and palimpsest character of the images and
the lived experiences will be highlighted.

Images and reputation of place

‘Image’ is a widely used concept with various
meanings, depending on the discipline and the
context. Its all-inclusive definition is clearly not a
task for this article. Rather, I will survey some as-
pects relevant in the context of this research. The
conceptual basis of the article contains elements
of an older behavioural geography, dealing with
mental maps and environmental perceptions, as
well as viewpoints of humanistic geography, es-
pecially elements concerning people’s senses of
place. At the same time, recent work in cultural
geography – the connections between places and
the constitution of identities, subjectivities and
imaginings – will be reflected.

The origin of the concept of image can be
traced to the 1950s business language in the Unit-
ed States. It has since become popular, especial-
ly in marketing, but also in political science and
media studies (Karvonen 1999: 37; Äikäs 1999:
62).

‘Image’ was one of the central concepts of be-
havioural geography of the 1960s and 1970s,
when interest was centred on behaviour patterns
and environmental perceptions (Gould 1969;
Pocock & Hudson 1978; Gold 1980; Walmsley
& Lewis 1993). Perception was used as a syno-
nym for personal images of the phenomenal en-
vironment (Porteous 1977), and the products of
the process of perception were called mental or
cognitive maps, images, cognitive representations
or schemata. Often the concept of image was con-
nected to visual perception, as Kevin Lynch de-
fined the term in his book ‘The Image of the City’
(Lynch 1960; see also Lynch 1984).

‘Image’ was defined as a representation of re-
ality, a metaphorical description of verbal pic-
tures, for example (Burgess 1978), a perception
in the absence of an external stimulus (Tuan 1975;
Gold 1980), or as constructed from first-hand ex-
perience (Burgess & Gold 1985).

Since the behavioural approaches, images have
been an important subject of study in humanistic
geography as well as in studies of the media and

popular culture. In the humanities and social sci-
ences there has been a growing interest in the
meanings of spatiality, which has been called a
‘spatial turn’. In geography, at the same time, ‘cul-
ture’, along with ‘space’, has become one of the
key concepts. The meaning of ‘culture’ and the
content of the new approach (the cultural turn)
have aroused vivid debates (e.g. Philo 1991; Cos-
grove 1993; Duncan 1993; Jackson 1993; Price
& Lewis 1993; McDowell 1994; Mitchell 1995;
Johnston 1997; Barnett 1998; Cook et al. 2000).
The ‘cultural turn’ has guided geographers to find
new approaches to geographical issues and
brought them closer to discourses in other cultur-
ally and/or socially oriented disciplines. It has
occasioned a broader alertness to how people –
understood as highly differentiated and multiply
positioned but always distinctly social beings –
build up shared repertoires of cultural meaning,
often embracing place images which may be quite
stereotypical in content. These images are nego-
tiated in a more collective terrain of discourse,
performance and gesture.

Since the ‘cultural turn’ in geography, images
have been interpreted mainly in relation to social-
ly produced space. The social practices of place
and landscape construction and representations
of images have been popular subjects of study
(e.g. Burgess & Gold 1985; Agnew & Duncan
1989; Zonn 1990; Shields 1991; Anderson & Gale
1992; Barnes & Duncan 1992; Keith & Pile 1993;
Aitken & Zonn 1994; Gold & Ward 1994; Banks
1998). Place images are understood as historical-
ly produced and actively culturally contested.
Language is seen to be important ‘as a medium
and mediator by which intersubjective meanings
are shared’ (Shields 1991), and the question of
representation has become central.

Sometimes it is useful to distinguish between a
public image and a mental image, as Äikäs (1999,
2001) has stated. ‘Public image’ refers to an in-
tentionally produced impression, while ‘mental
image’ means a mental representation of some-
thing, not by direct perception, but by memory
and imagination (OED Online 2001; cf. Äikäs
1999: 59). Sometimes, however, the split between
the concepts seems to be too violent. The rela-
tion between public and mental images is more
like a continuum in a process of making and in-
terpreting meanings to the world. In every men-
tal image, there is always something shared and
produced, as there is always the level of subjec-
tive interpretation in public images.



FENNIA 179: 2 (2001) 145Bad reputation – bad reality?

In addition to ‘image’, ‘reputation’ is also used
in the studies of places and their representations.
The reputation of a place can be defined as a
combination of the shared images, stereotyped
meanings and mythical generalisations of ele-
ments that people attach to a certain place in their
minds. Reputation is not necessarily comparable
to the reality of place. When the characteristics
of a place change radically, place images and the
reputation of that place sometimes stay as they
have always been. It can be said that the place
has been stigmatised, and these stigmas usually
outlive a particular image. Shields (1991: 256)
argues that the changes “necessitate not just an
adjustment of the myth, ‘cleaning out’ the old
images and installing new ones, but a restructur-
ing of the entire mythology and the development
of new metaphors by which ideology is present-
ed”. This is an interesting point of view in con-
sidering changes in place images and the reputa-
tion of a place. The reputation of place can be
seen as a product of public opinion, while the
images may represent subjective experiences of
place. Reputation is more stable and often a prod-
uct of repeated ways to represent the place. The
formation of a reputation takes more time, while
the images can be more personal and can be
more easily changed.

Rob Shields (1991) defines place images by us-
ing the concept of stereotype. Place images “are
the various discrete meanings associated with real
places or regions regardless of their character in
reality. Images, being partial and often either ex-
aggerated or understated, may be accurate or in-
accurate. They result from stereotyping, which
over-simplifies groups of places within a region,
or from prejudices towards places or their inhab-
itants” (Shields 1991: 60). Shields defines place
images as meanings attached to a real place, but
images can also be created without any relation
to a real environment. We have many place im-
ages which may refer to wholly imagined places
– they may be the products of our own imagina-
tion, or perhaps reinterpretations of imagined
places in films, literature, and other art forms. In
this article, image and reputation of place are in-
terpreted side by side, since I think it is artificial
to make any strict separation between these two
terms.

Next, I will introduce the area researched by
defining its borders. This may sound simple, but
in this case, it reveals more than the geographi-
cal location of the area. The area will be contex-

tualised both spatially and socially in relation to
its surrounding areas.

Blurred identity of place:
defining the borders

Usually, identification of an area is quite simple:
it can be named, and defining its borders makes
the distinction between it and the surrounding ar-
eas obvious. Although the definitions may just be
mental constructions built by the researcher, they
are usually generally recognised and easily taken
for granted. In this particular case, the situation
is more complicated and needs to be explained
more carefully.

In the 1990s, prostitution became concentrat-
ed in a densely-built-up residential area north of
the city centre. In order to explore the phenome-
non from the viewpoint of the residents, I con-
ducted in-depth interviews among them and
among some social workers in the area. When I
asked them what they called the area, I got an-
swers like these:

I usually say Kallio… Apparently, it is Alppila, or
somehow… But nobody knows where Alppila is.

I would say this is more Sörkkä than Kallio.

If I have to choose, I live in the district of Harju.

Yes, it is a matter of taste.

The name of the area often becomes estab-
lished as a symbol for a particular space. Images
and the reputation of place are closely linked with
the identity of place, and place images and spa-
tial identities can be seen in the context of the
institutionalization of regions in the way Paasi
(1986, 1991a) defines the term. He sees four
stages in the process of the spatial institutionali-
sation, which may be entirely or partly simulta-
neous: the constitution of territorial shape, sym-
bolic shape, and institutions and, finally, estab-
lishment in the regional system and regional con-
sciousness of the society concerned. In the con-
text of this research the constitution of symbolic
shape is particularly relevant. Paasi (1991a: 245)
defines it as follows: “The increasing number and
use of territorial symbols is crucial for creating the
symbolic significance of a region. One essential
symbol is the name of the region, which connects
its image with the regional consciousness.”

In this case, the area has a name which is used



146 FENNIA 179: 2 (2001)Sirpa Tani

in official contexts, but in public speech – for ex-
ample in the media – it is named differently. There
is no consensus on its name even among the res-
idents, as can be seen in the quotations above.
Although the interviewees talked about their own
neighbourhood, not many of them seemed to be
sure which was the appropriate name for it. Some
of them were convinced that they lived in Kallio,
some others called the same area Harju, Sörnäi-
nen (Sörkkä) or Alppila. I find it interesting to ask
why this particular area has no clearly established
name, and whether this has something to do with
the images associated with it.

Places, regions and areas can also exist after
their possible deinstitutionalization as document-
ed in written texts and as recalled by local peo-
ple, as some other studies have stated (e.g. Paasi
1991a, 1991b; Riikonen 1995, 1997). The resi-
dents of one region can ‘actually live in the worlds
of different kinds’, and ‘may have very different
images in their minds about spatial reality and its
regional identity’ (Riikonen 1995: 100). Paasi and
Riikonen (ibid.) have used ‘generation’ to explain
these differences. In my study on the street pros-
titution area, the situation seemed to be quite dif-
ferent. At the beginning of the 20th century, the
Pitkäsilta Bridge separated the prestigious areas
of the city centre from the northern working-class
areas, and acted as a powerful symbol separating
these two social worlds. In the early days of the
area, there was a strong sense of place among the
residents, which could be seen in the naming of
the smaller areas north of the bridge. There were
also violent street fights between the gangs of the
neighbouring areas. Even when the local residents
made a clear distinction between these areas, the
outsiders saw them as one working-class district,
which was usually called Sörnäinen after the
neighbouring industrial area and harbour. Al-
though the naming practices have changed dur-
ing the history of the area, it is impossible to de-
fine any generation-bound names any longer. In
my interviews, there was no connection between
the residents’ age and their ways of naming the
neighbourhood.

The name of the area can be defined by com-
paring its ‘official’ name with the actual naming
practices. The area is located in the administra-
tive district of Alppiharju, which can be divided
into two sub-districts, Alppila and Harju. The area
is colloquially called Kallio after its neighbouring
district (Fig. 1). The way the names are attached
to a certain area varies, however. An example of

this is the housing notices in the newspapers,
which use various names. Compared to the neigh-
bouring areas, the confusion is very obvious. The
neighbouring areas have a strong place identity,
but the research area seems to differ markedly. It
seems to be an area that is located on the fringe
of other regions.

Another way to approach the question of the
name is to explore the area by using Lynch’s
(1960) way of defining districts and edges. Offi-
cially, although Helsinginkatu is the border be-
tween Kallio and Harju, it does not really sepa-
rate these two areas either visually or functional-
ly, but rather forms a connecting link between
them. It is one of the most important shopping
streets in the area and is also an excellent trans-
port link.

Kallio is widely known as the area located on
the north side of Pitkäsilta, but Harju as a name
is not established in colloquial speech. Kallio has
a well-established reputation as an old working-
class area, and both positive and negative imag-
es have been associated with it during its history.
Although the two areas have a similar history, the
identity of Harju seems less certain. For example,
thirty-five geography students wrote to me about
the images that Kallio and Alppiharju evoke in
their minds. Most of them did not even mention
Alppiharju in their texts, and those few who did
said that they did not have any particular image
of the place. Alppiharju was said to be an unfa-
miliar name for a region, and was found difficult
to define. Most of them had quite strong images
of Kallio, however, and it was often “stretched”
to the neighbouring areas. This explains why I will
call it Kallio even though it is the administrative
district of Alppiharju or Harju.

Sudden changes: prostitution in the
neighbourhood

When street prostitution appeared on the streets
of Harju, it caused a big stir both in the media
and among some locals, who were upset by kerb-
crawling. As described elsewhere (Koskela et al.
2000; Tani 2002), prostitution had an effect on the
ways female residents use public space in their
neighbourhood, but also affected public images
of the area. I have analysed the changes in the
debate in detail elsewhere (Tani 2002). Here, I
will concentrate on the images which the media
produced of the area.



FENNIA 179: 2 (2001) 147Bad reputation – bad reality?

In the newspaper articles on street prostitution,
there were stories about firms that were thinking
of moving away because of the disturbance suf-
fered by their employees, and also for fear of the
bad reputation of the area. The tabloid Ilta-Sano-
mat (8th December 1995) reported how some
newspapers had published articles on prostitution
and provided pictures of female office-workers on
their way home. These connections caused con-
fusion among the female employees. Another ar-
ticle described the difficulties that a housing com-
pany formed by the apartment owners had be-
cause of the falling price of offices in the area.
The owners were worried that prostitution and
kerb-crawling could cause the neighbourhood to
decline by strengthening the negative image of the
area (Helsingin Sanomat 21st December 1995).

The local newspapers were especially con-
cerned about the effect that prostitution might
have on the reputation of the area. They quoted

the report of the City Planning Committee on
prostitution (Kallio ja Ympäristö 7th December
1997), which argued that prostitution made the
reputation of place even worse in the areas of
poorer people as they called the area north of
Pitkäsilta. In its leading article (Kallio ja Ympäristö
27th October 1996) the local newspaper accused
the media of defaming Kallio and its environment.
It was argued that because of the effective ‘adver-
tising’ of the area as a centre of street prostitu-
tion, the local residents had to suffer from heavy
traffic caused by curious outsiders and the subse-

Fig. 1.  The location of the area studied in Helsinki, Finland: Harju and its surroundings.



148 FENNIA 179: 2 (2001)Sirpa Tani

quent traffic prohibitions. The paper suggested
that the media debate should be stopped or made
more impartial in relation to such residential
areas.

The nation-wide media did not pay much at-
tention to the issues concerning the reputation of
place when it reported on the street prostitution
in Kallio. The problems of prostitution were rep-
resented by and large as local. When the prosti-
tution spread into the streets of the city centre,
however, the concern about place image became
acute. The tabloid Ilta-Sanomat (9th September
1997) interviewed some female politicians who
felt that the prostitution in main city streets could
be harmful to the image of the city. Nobody ex-
pressed concern over the bad reputation of the
Kallio area. This is an interesting example of the
fact that there seems to be some kind of ‘official’
Helsinki, the image of which it is important to pro-
tect. The areas with a bad reputation are imprint-
ed in people’s minds so strongly that defaming
them seems to bother nobody outside the area.

During the winter 1996–1997, the media
seemed to start to ‘forget’ the issue of street pros-
titution. There were only some occasional articles
about the situation in Kallio, one of which ap-
proached the subject from a wholly new point of
view. Ilta-Sanomat headlined the article “3,400
bank employees are hidden in the dilapidated
‘Flesh Valley’: Teollisuuskatu is nowadays the Wall
Street of the Vallila area” (Ilta-Sanomat 9th Janu-
ary 1997). The point of the article was to describe
the two different worlds in the same urban mi-
lieu. It was argued that the Finnish version of Wall
Street was situated in the same area as the street
prostitution had concentrated in Helsinki. The tab-
loid described the neighbourhood thus:

Skyscrapers with glass walls line Wall Street in Man-
hattan. There are service stations and heavy traffic
in Teollisuuskatu in the Vallila district. In both plac-
es there are people doing the same job in their ex-
change trading halls wearing white shirts and silk
ties. - - - In the neighbourhood there are cars parked
in vacant sites, undistinguished industrial premises,
and residential buildings blackened by exhaust
fumes. The only beautiful building is the former mor-
tuary. If you see someone, it is highly likely that he
or she will be wearing a wind-cheater or quilted
jacket. (Ilta-Sanomat 9th January 1997)

The article continues with a description of the
concentration of exchange trading by several
banks in the area and shows two pictures from
the street prostitution area, one taken in the after-

noon and another one just before midnight. The
legends of the pictures make a clear distinction
between the daytime and nighttime reality: “In the
daytime it is peaceful in the Wall Street of Val-
lila”, but “At night prostitutes swarm around the
Merita bank buildings” (Ilta-Sanomat 9th January
1997). In the first picture, there are some cars
parked along the street, which two men are cross-
ing – one in the foreground, the other in the back-
ground. There is snow on the ground. In the sec-
ond picture, the angle is almost the same: the
same two buildings are portrayed, but now, there
are five people – probably women – standing on
the street corner in the light of street lamps, two
of them holding umbrellas. The difference of these
pictures is not so much in their content, but their
context. Legends tell us what we should see in
the pictures, and the text tells us what we should
think about these two worlds, one of the wealthy
bank employees, the other of the not-so-wealthy
local residents and ‘swarming’ prostitutes.

In order to analyse the images people have at-
tached to this area, I will describe its history brief-
ly. I will then concentrate on three types of im-
age: images of the place for ordinary people, im-
ages of the dangerous neighbourhood and imag-
es of bohemian romanticism, which are all asso-
ciated with the history of the area, as I will show.
The prostitution debate will be analysed by inter-
preting examples of the reconstructed images
within the debate.

History of a working-class quarter

Harju and its neighbouring area, Kallio, both have
histories that go back to the end of the 19th cen-
tury. Helsinki was growing very fast because of
rapid industrialisation. New housing areas were
needed for people who came to Helsinki looking
for jobs in the factories. There were some farms
to the north of city centre, one of which was
called Kallio and the other Harju. There were also
some restaurants in the area outside the city cen-
tre before the residential areas were built, some
catering to peasants visiting Helsinki and some to
upper-class people who travelled there from the
city centre. Houses for the workers were built in
the area of the farms. They were two-storey build-
ings, the first storey of stone and the second of
wood. The area was incorporated into the town
plan in 1901. These working-class areas were
densely populated: over four persons per room on



FENNIA 179: 2 (2001) 149Bad reputation – bad reality?

average. Population density was the highest there,
and living conditions were extremely poor. Be-
cause of the poor accommodation and the pov-
erty of the inhabitants, all kinds of social prob-
lems became a part of everyday life in Harju and
Kallio from the beginning of their history.

At the beginning of the 20th century the distri-
bution of liquor was concentrated in a relatively
small area in the city centre, and in Harju and
Kallio selling or serving alcohol was not allowed
(Helsingin kaupungin historia 1956: 282). These
restrictions acted against themselves, boosting the
illegal liquor trade. During prohibition (from
1919), bootlegging was the norm in these areas,
and even after repeal of the law in 1932, it was
widely known that the illicit liquor trade still ex-
isted there. Vaasankatu in particular became fa-
mous for bootlegging.

Beside bootlegging, prostitution also character-
ized these densely populated working-class are-
as. Many brothels were situated near the city cen-
tre, especially in the Punavuori area. They were
obliged to go out of business in 1884 when it was
decreed that only two prostitutes could live to-
gether. Brothels were officially closed, and many
of the prostitutes went back to Sweden or moved
to Viborg. Many, however, stayed in Helsinki and
continued their business by themselves. Even
though the brothels have been forbidden by law
since then, there have been times when they have
appeared again and been allowed to continue
their activities. During the 1930s, the brothels
were operating quite openly in the centre of Hel-
sinki. (Häkkinen 1995).

While the brothels were for upper-class men,
street prostitution was for working-class men and
soldiers. Streets near the restaurants were the most
popular places for prostitutes to find their clients.
The number of street prostitutes was at its great-
est at the beginning of the twentieth century and
during the First World War when there were hun-
dreds of female prostitutes working in the streets
of Helsinki (Häkkinen 1995). Working-class dis-
tricts like Kallio became places for street prosti-
tutes.

Poor living conditions in the Kallio area and the
social problems described above were powerful
factors in creating the negative image of the area.
However, the reality changed during the rapid in-
dustrialisation after the Second World War. The
massive migration from rural areas to Helsinki
began in the 1950s, and the reputation of the area
began to change. The average standard of living

improved in Finland, and people were able to
choose better living conditions in the newly-built
areas of the city fringes. Kallio and Harju, because
of their location near the city centre and their ex-
cellent traffic routes, became popular among
young childless couples and singles. Many of
them were students.

Even today the area is very densely populated.
The mean size of the dwellings is the smallest in
Helsinki (38 m2) and so is the mean size of house-
holds (1.3 persons). In Harju there are about
7,500 inhabitants living in an area of 0.27 km2.
The proportions of young adults and old people
are great and, because of the smallness of the
flats, the proportion of children is the smallest in
Helsinki. The area is more homogenous in rela-
tion to the native language (93% Finnish) and to
the nationality of its inhabitants (only 3.4% for-
eigners) than the average for Helsinki (Helsinki
alueittain 2000).

The old images of Kallio and its environment
are still imprinted in many people’s minds, and
the working-class history is often mentioned when
people are asked about the image of the area. The
meaning of the image has changed its content,
however, over the years. Next, I will describe pop-
ular images of Kallio by concentrating on three
dimensions; the first emphasises the long work-
ing-class tradition, the second one stresses the
negative aspects of this image, while the third
adds some romantic gloss to the old images. The
analysis is based on my in-depth interviews, let-
ters from former and present residents, the writ-
ings of some geography students and the inter-
views with local shopkeepers, which were pub-
lished on the Internet. In addition to these mate-
rials, I will also use some cultural products in my
analysis.

Place and its nostalgic past

The texts concerning Kallio and its surroundings
often mention the working-class history of the
area and highlight the importance of the past.

Kallio evoked strong images in the minds of the
students whom I asked to describe their images
of certain areas. Many defined them by describ-
ing the physical environment. The location was
usually seen as excellent, but the buildings were
not seen so positively; many mentioned the grey-
ness of the area, and wrote about non-aesthetic
images. The history of the area was perceived as



150 FENNIA 179: 2 (2001)Sirpa Tani

strong, the present day often associated with so-
cial problems, and the spirit of the place in the
future was thought to remain despite the changes
that may occur. Many of them described Kallio
by mentioning its reputation as a working-class
area.

Workers’ areas are often associated with the
thoughts of ordinary, decent, unpretending, real
people, to make a clear distinction from ‘others’.
As compared to the students’ images, many shop-
keepers, whose interviews were published on the
website of the area (Pitkänsillan väärällä puolella
2000), emphasised the long traditions in their
neighbourhood. Many of them mentioned how
their customers were part of the nice and decent
folk that has lived in the area. They talked about
the area from the viewpoint of small-scale entre-
preneurs and often compared the profits they
made with the earlier, better days. Many saw the
underground as a major reason for their business
problems; nowadays it was easier for people to
go straight to the city centre or to the shopping
malls and ‘forget’ their local shops.

Although the daily reality in the workers’ areas
of the past is often described by emphasising its
negative sides, it is sometimes portrayed different-
ly, as the following extract from a former resident’s
letter indicates:

Most of the people who lived in the neighbourhood
were decent folk, ordinary workers. There were al-
ways some youngsters who were hanging around the
tough guys, imitating them and admiring them, but
they were not really tough themselves. Some of them
were real cowards. Many of them never got into
fights nor perpetrated any offences.

The reputation of Kallio as a place for ordinary
people has also been repeated in the media. For
example, in an article published by the Kotiliesi
magazine (12th July 1996) life in Kallio was de-
scribed thus:

People who live in Kallio are used to living and be-
ing with other people. Life is visible on the streets
there. People are straightforwardly what they really
are. What happens within four walls elsewhere hap-
pens on the streets in Kallio.

A female resident who had been living in the
research area described her neighbourhood by
saying that its reputation seemed to be worse than
the reality. She emphasised the residents’ strong
attachment to their environment, although many
of them have had problems and sorrows in their
life – the biggest problem in her opinion was al-

cohol. She defined the ambiguous character of the
area as follows:

The streetscape may scare people with its stagger-
ing boozers, but here you can also find humanity,
community spirit and care for neighbours. You must
have a certain kind of character to be happy here.

There were some things in the daily reality of
the area that were sometimes interpreted as trac-
es of the old community spirit:

Some permanent residents sometimes had barbecues
and drank beer together in the courtyard of our
block. I thought there was a kind of old-time spirit
there, like in the good old days, when the residents
maybe had closer contacts with each other.

This kind of ‘community spirit’ refers to the ide-
as of shared values in a neighbourhood. As I have
described elsewhere (Tani 2002), the residents
who protested against street prostitution and kerb-
crawling often justified their actions by arguing
that ‘the neighbourhood was their space, and they
had every right to fight for it. They created an idea
of shared values in the area by highlighting the
view that when they were acting against prostitu-
tion, they were acting for the whole community’.
By stressing the differences between themselves
and the prostitutes, they placed the prostitutes in
a marginal position in the area both socially and
spatially. In the public debate, the residents’ view-
points were portrayed as questions of moral val-
ues. The constructed ‘otherness’ of prostitutes and
kerb-crawlers turned into social exclusion on the
streets (cf. Shields 1991; Goodall 1995; Sibley
1995; Duncan 1996; Hubbard 1998, 1999b).

Although life in the workers’ area must have
been hard, its image has changed in the course
of time. Nostalgic elements of the past are often
highlighted both in cultural products and in peo-
ple’s memories. Working-class people of the past
are represented as honest and decent folk, and
their ways of spending their leisure time are also
portrayed from an understanding viewpoint. This
positive colouring of the past occurs frequently;
memory always simplifies, forgets and highlights
certain elements, and by doing so, ‘greater coher-
ence may be created than was actually present’
(Pocock 1982; Lowenthal 1975, 1985).

Life in the dangerous neighbourhood

Because of the history of poor living conditions,
there are many negative images that people have



FENNIA 179: 2 (2001) 151Bad reputation – bad reality?

of Kallio: for many, it is known as the area of poor
people, crime, violence, and bootlegging. The re-
ality of the beginning of the 20th century with
bootleggers on the streets has been imprinted on
people’s minds even if they never have experi-
enced those times themselves. In fact, the boot-
legging continued in the area for decades, but
during the 1990s the phenomenon was not so
common because the restaurants were allowed to
stay open later. The people who experienced the
bootlegging and the street fights in the area in
their childhood or youth still associate them with
the images of the area. Some residents still men-
tion the violent history when asked about the
images of the area.

Cultural products have kept the old images
alive. Kallio has been a particularly popular sub-
ject in literature and songs. Many films have also
been shot there. Because of these produced im-
ages, the area’s reputation precedes it, even
among outsiders. Both local residents and others
use these images in their speech.

The images of violence in the area do relate to
everyday reality. The quarter around the Sörnäi-
nen metro station is observed to be one of the
most violent areas in the city (Tuominen 1999).
Although the violent attacks have been concen-
trated in this small area, the violence is often
thought to exist in the whole district. The Kallio
area is often described in terms of fear (cf. Koske-
la & Tuominen 1995).

Beside the crime and the violence, drunkenness
has often been part of the image of Kallio. Of the
thirty-five geography students who wrote about
their images, fourteen mentioned alcoholics in
their answers. It is impossible to show that there
are more alcoholics in Kallio than in other parts
of the city, but if the images are to be believed,
that seems to be the case.

Since the beginning of the street prostitution
debate, the research area has been portrayed as a
space of struggles over the control of public
space, or as a landscape of sexual harassment,
violence and fear (Koskela et al. 2000; Tani 2002).
The fear has been connected not only to harass-
ment on the streets but also to the ideas of prosti-
tution as a threat to the homogeneity of the com-
munity. In other words, by representing the pros-
titutes and kerb-crawlers as outsiders in the neigh-
bourhood, the protesters and the media created
an imagined divide between ‘us’ (residents/pro-
testers/decent people) and ‘them’ (prostitutes/
kerb-crawlers). The fact that the majority of the

street prostitutes were foreigners made this kind
of ‘othering’ even easier.

Prostitution was related to other social prob-
lems in the area both in the media and in the
opinions of local residents; it was argued that
prostitution, crime and drugs are intertwined and,
because of these ‘side-effects’ of prostitution,
stricter control strategies should be imposed. Such
associations between ‘asocial’ or ‘immoral’ life-
styles and prostitution are often represented as
initiating neighbourhood decline (cf. Hope &
Shaw 1988; Herbert 1993; Hubbard 1999b;
Weitzer 2000).

In the survey concerning the effects of street
prostitution in women’s daily life in Helsinki (Kos-
kela et al. 2000), the Kallio area was seen prob-
lematic for many reasons. Many respondents were
concerned about the reputation of the place. Only
9% of them thought that their area had a good
reputation, whereas 76% of those living in the
control area (other parts of Inner Helsinki) did.
Only 27% of respondents living in Harju felt very
comfortable in their neighbourhood, versus 67%
in the control area. Street prostitution and kerb-
crawling had negative effects on the images, but
there were also many other reasons for the dis-
content of the residents. Many mentioned inse-
curity and unrest on the streets, the weak sense
of community among the people, drug addicts,
crime and recurrent disturbances. Identification
with one’s own neighbourhood was much lower
than in the rest of Inner Helsinki. Although it is
difficult to estimate how much these factors arose
from the everyday reality in the neighbourhood,
it is obvious that they had a powerful effect on
the images, and thus also affected the experienc-
es of the residents in their daily lives. Prostitution
was easily linked to other problems in the area,
and was often seen as an indication of the neigh-
bourhood decline.

Some respondents felt that there were too many
social problems concentrated in their neighbour-
hood. In their opinion, the daily reality seemed
to be depressing and too hard:

The few parks in the area are completely taken over
by drunks and junkies. You can’t even take your chil-
dren to the playground, because it is full of broken
glass and used syringes. My doorstep is the kitchen,
bedroom, toilet, ashtray and basin for the vomit of
the professional drinkers. And nobody even tries to
do anything about it. We can’t even talk about well-
being of the residents; it is fruitless to even think of
security; you have to be afraid on behalf of your chil-



152 FENNIA 179: 2 (2001)Sirpa Tani

dren all the time, and the prices of the apartments
come down…

Although the images of danger and nostalgy
can easily be regarded as opposites, they can also
be considered to work together in the process of
creating reputation of place. Representations of a
‘golden’ past of the neighbourhood emphasise
thoughts of community spirit, neighbourliness and
decency, but these representations are also used
for constructing notions of ‘right and wrong’, for
allowing justifications for insiders (the ‘decent’
local community) closing ranks against outsiders
(the ‘non-decent’ others). They serve in the dis-
courses of many as a counterpoint to the degen-
eration of the current situation. In other words, a
temporal discourse of decline, of loss over the
years, is adding another layer to the ‘othering’ of
drunks, junkies, prostitutes and kerb-crawlers in
Kallio.

Bohemian romanticism

Although the area is still defined in relation to its
background as a working-class district, the reali-
ty there has changed in recent decades. In the
1980s it became popular among young, highly-
educated people who appreciated the location
near the city centre. The housing prices there were
not as high as in other places near the centre, so
that many young singles and childless couples
found the small apartments in the area attractive.
Kallio was also appreciated because of its histo-
ry, which was thought to create charm and a cer-
tain bohemian romanticism to the area. Housing
prices rose and middle-class people moved in. In
the economic boom of the late 1980s the area
was clearly gentrified (Mäenpää 1991; Tuominen
1997).

The images of the bohemian lifestyle are quite
common in public opinion and in the cultural
products relating to Kallio. It is said that many art-
ists live in the area and the number of the stu-
dents there is great. Kallio has been a popular sub-
ject for authors, film producers and musicians.
Some of the authors have described the life in the
past when the area was still a working-class
neighbourhood (Ruuth 1969; Saisio 1975; Mutka
1996, to name but a few), while others have con-
centrated more on the contemporary stories based
on the area (Kauranen 1981; Melleri 1997). In
films Kallio and its neighbouring areas have been

represented either as the background for the role
characters in their everyday life or as the major
cause of their troubles (for cinematic representa-
tions of Helsinki, see Tani 1995). In rock lyrics the
most popular images of Kallio have been the ones
of working-class romantics, lonely people and
depression (see Tani & Kopomaa 1995).

Some people reflected these romantic images
when they wrote about their own relationship to
the area:

The old working-class image is alive and well in
many people’s minds and without doubt it feeds a
kind of romantic feeling, especially in the conscious-
ness of the people – like myself – who have a work-
ing-class background - - - However, we have bro-
ken with our background because of our education
so that this kind of longing for a real working-class
community is just like a nostalgic pathos for es-
tranged people.

A female resident (herself an artist) reflected
critically on the images of her neighbourhood:

In some kind of ‘bohemian’ or ‘artistic’ circles Kal-
lio has a good reputation; there is ‘life’ and the ‘taste
for life’ here. That might refer to the street prostitutes
and outcasts at the pubs and bars; there is ‘colour’
- - - Personally, I don’t think of the gutter as a repre-
sentation of life.

Some residents said that they see prostitution
as a profession (often mentioned as the oldest pro-
fession in the world) like any other job. Prostitutes
should have the same right to do their work in
peace as any other professionals in society. Some
saw them as providing ‘essential services for the
sick, the deformed, the invalid, the ugly, etc.’
(Goodall 1995: 129; see also Roberts 1992). Tol-
eration and understanding differences were also
linked to the ideas of the urban way of life: Some
emphasised that since the Kallio area is the most
urbanised area in Helsinki, people should under-
stand social and cultural diversity in their neigh-
bourhood. In the media the diversity of social
groups was sometimes highlighted – these include
lesbians and gays, the elderly, students, artists,
working professionals, the unemployed and many
others (Lahtinen 1995). Therefore, it was argued,
the prostitutes should also have their place in the
area:

In my opinion this neighbourhood is suitable for
[street prostitution]; most of the people here are
workers and more or less shabby, or the rabble. This
is an undeniable fact and the red-light districts have
been located in such neighbourhoods in foreign
countries. We can forget the hypocrisy; I think Hel-



FENNIA 179: 2 (2001) 153Bad reputation – bad reality?

sinki needs its own Reperbahn or Pigalle, too, and
this area suits that purpose well.

The nostalgic image of a working-class past also
figures in this discourse of romanticism. The cul-
tural-artistic residents strive to recreate a new form
of community, only in this case an inclusionary
community tolerant of others rather than an ex-
clusionary community wishing to shut its borders
against anyone departing from commonly accept-
ed norms. In such a view, prostitutes in particular
cease to be seen in the more typical negative and
prejudical fashion. In this ‘bohemian discourse’
there is the idea that prostitutes should also have
their place in the neighbourhood, among other
people. This discourse emphasises the diversity of
sub-cultures within the area, and questions the
implicit assumptions of prostitution as a totally
negative phenomenon in the society.

Place promotion at the local level?

Place promotion, which can be defined as a ‘con-
scious use of publicity and marketing to commu-
nicate selective images of specific geographical
localities or areas to a target audience’, has be-
come increasingly popular since the mid-1980s
worldwide (Ward & Gold 1994; Hall 1998). Pro-
moted images have become more important in the
post-industrial economy where traditional loca-
tion requirements are no longer as important as
they used to be in the industrial economies. Cit-
ies and regions need to establish new advantages
for themselves. The images have been integral
parts of urban regeneration programmes, but they
have also been used when cities have competed
to host mega-events such as the Olympic Games
or to get nomination as a European City of Cul-
ture (Ward 1998; Holcomb 1999).

What has not been explored so much is the in-
teraction between the images produced and the
everyday lives of people who live in the place. In
the case of Helsinki, the place promotion efforts
have usually concerned the city centre, which has
been the area most frequently visited by the tour-
ists. During the year 2000, when Helsinki was a
European City of Culture, the significance of resi-
dential areas and their images was also recog-
nised.

In Kallio a tendency to create positive images
of the area has been strengthened in recent years.
In some newspaper articles, Kallio has been de-

scribed as a ‘trendy’ (Metro 17th December
1999), ‘fascinating’ area with a ‘strange kind of
charm’ (Helsingin Sanomat 21st February 2000).
These new images have often been linked with
trendy bars and pubs, and with fashionable spe-
cialized shops. The media have stressed both the
long traditions of the neighbourhood and its cul-
tural and social diversity.

Residents and some local associations have or-
ganized gatherings at which they have explicitly
tried to find positive ways to improve the image
(and the reality) of their neighbourhood. One ex-
ample is the campaign during which local resi-
dents planted out flowers in a park with the help
of the police and the Public Works Department.
Although their main purpose was to ‘expel’ the
drunks and vandals from the park, they decided
to do it in a positive way. The press reported how
the residents had every right to promote social
interaction in the park, and if their own means
were not effective enough, they could ask for help
from the police (Helsingin Sanomat 4th June
1997).

There have been many signs of increasing cul-
tural activity in the area in recent years. For ex-
ample, a cultural network (Kallion Kulttuuriver-
kosto) was founded in 1997 to encourage collab-
oration between local artists and other culture-ori-
ented people. Since then, the network has taken
part in organizing cultural happenings every au-
tumn and spring in the area. In 1998 the Kallio
theatre was founded to make ‘drama of familiar
topics for the ordinary people’ (Helsingin Sano-
mat 17th December 1998). The themes were
found in the neighbourhood; there were produc-
tions on the prostitute’s life, on the images of Kal-
lio and on the daily life of lonely people, for ex-
ample. Push Firma Beige is another example of
strengthening the links between the local environ-
ment and art, an art gallery which enables ‘direct
social interaction’ with its environment and acts
as an intermediary between art and local com-
munities.

Another example was a new culture club,
which was launched in 1996 at the street corner
café situated in the place with the worst reputa-
tion within the area. The contrast between the
planned cultural activities and the surrounding
reality was described in the following way (Hel-
singin Sanomat 29th November 1996):

Theatre without any ticket reservations, music with-
out any stress for the musicians, poetry, magic, art



154 FENNIA 179: 2 (2001)Sirpa Tani

for free. There has been a lack of a public space,
which would be more interesting than pubs where
customers go in for arm wrestling. The atmosphere
inside the Melba café is tailor-made for the culture
club. Outside, however… three glass walls separate
the ground floor café from the wildest corners of
Helsinki…

Such activities created new images of the area;
many of the active cultural agents wanted to stress
the sense of positive action in order to counter
the older negative images. Some residents stressed
positive action in relation to prostitution by men-
tioning the importance of taking care of the phys-
ical environment, or by encouraging the residents
to take possession of public space in their neigh-
bourhood.

Conclusions

Industrial cities and working-class areas have
been seen in terms of the hard-working people,
who have rough jobs and rough ways to spend
their leisure time (cf. Shields 1991: 229; Taylor et
al. 1996; Ward 1998: 216). The images of these
areas have been ambiguous; they have been por-
trayed both as areas of harsh living conditions and
multiple problems and as areas of a nostalgic past
and bohemian romanticism. In the case of the
Kallio area, these two are easy to recognise.

The boom in gentrification of the 1980s in Kal-
lio did not last long. The recession in the early
1990s broke the trend: housing prices fell, and
pubs invaded many empty former corner shops.
Tuominen (1997) has argued that the area re-
turned to its working-class roots, which could be
perceived as a certain urban roughness. Unem-
ployment rates rose and social problems became
more usual. The old images of the area revived:
images of poverty, unemployment, crime and vi-
olence were apparent once again, but some new
elements, drugs and prostitution, emerged as well.
Fear of the ‘other’ and the possible neighbour-
hood decline also formed part of the images. The
debate can be viewed as a reconstructive force
in relation to the existing images. Those who saw
prostitution as a threat to the community repre-
sented the issue by emphasising the negative as-
pect of the image; for them the area was a neigh-
bourhood characterized by crime, immoral ways
of life, and fear. They thought that prostitution was
linked with other problems in the area.

Those who thought that prostitution was part of

urban life did not want to blame on the prosti-
tutes or kerb-crawlers, but highlighted the posi-
tive sides of the diversity of the local culture. For
them, the old images of bohemian romanticism
were more accurate than the negative ones. They
saw Kallio as a suitable place for prostitution, be-
cause of the long traditions of tolerance of differ-
ence in the neighbourhood.

The third type of image was linked with the
working-class past of the area. Some people – and
every now and then the media – described the
neighbourhood as a place for ordinary, decent
people. The community protesters used this kind
of thinking in their actions as well. They stressed
that the area was their place, and they had every
right to define the appropriate way of living there.
For them, prostitution was a threat to the simplic-
ity of the imagined past.

Prostitution in public space raised such a stir
in Finland partly because there were no estab-
lished ways of dealing with the questions of mar-
ginal groups. Since Finnish identity and culture
has been based on the rural environment and tra-
ditional shared values, people have not been ca-
pable of tolerating cultural or social differences
in their neighbourhood (Tani 2002; cf. Åström
2000). Finland’s role as one of the Scandinavian
welfare societies changed quite quickly during the
economic recession of the 1990s (cf. Kattelus
1996). Massive unemployment and problems like
prostitution, homelessness and drug abuse, which
had been marginal, became more widespread. At
the same time, Finland took in more immigrants
than before. From the viewpoint of public opin-
ion, foreigners were easy scapegoats for the eco-
nomic and social ills of society and all the more
so in the case of prostitution because of the visi-
bility of foreign prostitutes on the streets. The
change was so sudden that no political or cultur-
al practices for dealing with these issues were es-
tablished.

In this article I have represented the Finnish
street prostitution debate from the viewpoint of
image construction. Street prostitution raised
many emotional, practical and moral opinions,
and by doing so it affected the subjective and in-
tersubjective images of the area. The area was stig-
matised as a neighbourhood that was different
from its surroundings.

In December 1999, a new municipal ordinance
came into force in Helsinki. It prohibited prosti-
tution in public places and caused a temporary
displacement of the prostitutes and the kerb-



FENNIA 179: 2 (2001) 155Bad reputation – bad reality?

crawlers to the neighbouring city of Vantaa, which
also then prohibited visible prostitution. Despite
these changes, the reputation of the Kallio area
as a place for prostitution and kerb-crawling was
imprinted in people’s minds. Only time will tell
how long the neighbourhood will be remembered
for prostitution. Whatever the case, the bad repu-
tation will affect the everyday reality in the neigh-
bourhood for a long time, because there is always
interaction between the lived and the imagined.
The images are intertwined with the reality.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper is part of my research project funded by
the Academy of Finland (project number 163997).
Manchester Institute for Popular Culture (Manches-
ter Metropolitan University) and Department of Ge-
ography (University of Helsinki) offered me good
working opportunities during the project, and I am
sincerely grateful to both. I am also grateful to the
anonymous referees for their comments. Responsi-
bility for the final version remains mine.

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