Tarmo Pikner | Tallinn University (original) (raw)
Papers by Tarmo Pikner
Maritime Studies
This paper explores deep insights into sustainability transition tensions and pathways in terms o... more This paper explores deep insights into sustainability transition tensions and pathways in terms of place-based conflict and potential for synergies between offshore wind energy (OWE) development and justice for humans and nonhuman nature. Specifically, we build a capability and recognition-based multispecies blue justice framework that at once centers ecological reflexivity (i.e., environmental awareness-raising, proxy representation of nature, and institutional recognition and protection of rights of nature and human-nature relationality), decenters anthropocentric frames of justice, and sheds light on injustices, human and nonhuman that climate and energy transitions may create or reinforce. This framework then informs analysis of a sustainability transition conflict, specifically a longstanding OWE conflict on Hiiumaa island, Estonia. This analysis unravels justice concerns, human and nonhuman, raised by proxy representatives of nature (i.e., grassroots actors and environmental s...
Invisible Legacies and Rural/Urban Dynamics in Heritagization Process of Soviet-Era Collective Farm Buildings
Heritage and society, Jul 3, 2023
Contingent Urban Nature and Interactional Justice: The Evolving Coastal Spaces of the City of Tallinn
Springer eBooks, 2022
Emergent rural–urban relations in Covid‐19 disturbances: Multi‐locality affecting sustainability of rural change
Sociologia Ruralis, Jan 18, 2023
Poliitilised ökoloogiad ja antropotseen urbaansuse pingeväljade maastikes
Mäetagused (Trükis), Dec 1, 2022
Sustainability
Spatial planning faces challenges in addressing interactions between land and sea. This paper ela... more Spatial planning faces challenges in addressing interactions between land and sea. This paper elaborates on land–sea interfaces, which can integrate certain socio-cultural values and related tensions into maritime spatial planning (MSP). In this article, three regional case studies from Estonia, Latvia, and Poland analysed important intersections between the formations of cultural values and spatial dynamics within MSP processes. These cases make it possible to address current challenges, contested boundaries, and spatial planning possibilities to embrace the vibrant and complex ways the sea becomes connected to societal change. The study indicates the multiplicity of land–sea interfaces, which should be involved in MSP through situated places of terraqueous interactions, means of public participation, and meaningful boundaries within mobilised co-existence. The actual and possible tensions in allocating new functions of maritime spaces indicate the importance of coastal landscapes ...
The landscape approach to planetary urbanization: beyond the planetary urbanization approach
City
Urban allotment garden : a case for place-making
Much has been written about the concept of “nature”, while its polar opposite has largely remaine... more Much has been written about the concept of “nature”, while its polar opposite has largely remained in the shadows of scholarly attention. However, in an age where the natural has been declared obsolete as a substantive category (e.g. McKibben 1989, Sayre 2012), it may be high time to inspect its antonym more closely. For the unnatural is an immensely powerful, if inherently ambiguous, concept with critical implications for the formation of social categories, the morality of classifications, the terms of urban governance and the directions of environmental conflicts. What is considered unnatural is a question of framing, strategizing, and of the significance of the respective categorical boundaries; its meaning emerges through ongoing and often conflicting ecologies of practice. Furthermore, the construction of the unnatural is so deeply entwined in wider social, political and cultural dynamics that it must not be taken for granted as a foundational circumscription of the subject mat...
Atmospheric Politics and Entangled Encounters: Freedom Square in Tallinn
Journal of Coastal Conservation, 2021
The Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) Directive was ratified (2014/89/EU) along the Strategy of the... more The Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) Directive was ratified (2014/89/EU) along the Strategy of the European Union (EU) on the Blue Economy to contribute to the effective management of maritime activities and resources and incorporate the principal elements of Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) (2002/413/EC) into planning at the land-sea interface. There is a need to develop the ICZM approach throughout Europe to realise the potential for both socio-economic and environmental targets set by the EU and national legislations. In this study, we co-developed different approaches for land-sea interactions in four case areas in Estonia and Finland based on the defined characteristics and key interests derived from local or regional challenges by integrating spatial data on human activities and ecology. Furthermore, four ICZM drafts were co-evaluated by stakeholders and the public using online map-based assessment tools (public participatory GIS). The ICZM approaches of the Estonian c...
Roadsides, 2019
The road through the Gal/i district requires continuous zigzagging to avoid potholes, and the lan... more The road through the Gal/i district requires continuous zigzagging to avoid potholes, and the landscape shows a succession of burned-out houses and skeletons of buildings. At times, the marshrutka is surrounded by cows, which would have been able to outrun us if there had been a race. One can tell that gunpowder has been used here, but also that there has been a lack of maintenance in recent years.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2020
This article examines the processes of urban commoning and its co-produced features of urbanity, ... more This article examines the processes of urban commoning and its co-produced features of urbanity, making the claim that, through these processes, informality becomes translated into institutionalized city planning. Commoning is analysed through a comparative study that utilizes contingent features of urbanity and three modalities accommodating the informality-formality meshwork during urban change. The article contributes to research on urban transformations by integrating commons, informality dynamics and the constitution of state institutions. This focus is elaborated with reference to collective gardening practices in the context of two of the less studied European cities, Narva in Estonia and Tampere in Finland. The results of the study indicate that urban commoning takes place through delegating a public mandate and enacting uncertainty, two processes that informalize city government practices. Particular differences appeared in regard to the institutional porosity that enables unregulated spaces of collective gardening to be mobilized as part of urban politics. We argue that networked movements appear as an essential part of the urban logic of action producing meaningful connections in an informal-formal meshwork and bringing together multiple sites in the commoning process.
Methis. Studia humaniora Estonica, 2019
Artikkel mõtestab kogemuspõhiste lugude kaudu kahaneva linna olemust, mida sageli määratletakse e... more Artikkel mõtestab kogemuspõhiste lugude kaudu kahaneva linna olemust, mida sageli määratletakse eelkõige majanduspoliitiliste katkestuste ja kahaneva rahvaarvu kaudu. Kahte autobiograafilist jutustust kõrvutav temaatiline sisuanalüüs toob esile Detroiti ja Narvaga seonduvad linnalisuse-kogemused, mis ilmestavad postindustriaalseid muutusi. Struktuurse kriisi kontekstualiseerimine linnade kahanemises näitab omakorda mitmeid linnaruumilisi kestvusi ja alternatiive otsivad kultuuripraktikaid. Linnalisuse ümbermõtestamine avaldub siin ruraalsete omaduste ja piiride esitamisega linnamaastikes. Ilukirjanduslike jutustuste ja nende kaudu esitatud lugude põimimine kahanevate linnade uurimusse võimaldab märgata kriisi mõjude ambivalentsust ning seejuures uurida kompleksset mitmesuunalist linnastumist. The article analyses the characteristics and appearances of shrinking cities, which are too often framed in terms of structural economic ruptures and population decline. The notion of “struct...
Sustainability, 2019
The cultural sustainability of coastal landscapes relies heavily on the community’s self-organisa... more The cultural sustainability of coastal landscapes relies heavily on the community’s self-organisation in fish foodways. The theoretical framework concentrates on cultural sustainability, foodways, land–sea interactions, and community of practice. The data presented in this article were part of the SustainBaltic Integrated Coastal Zone Management plan, consisting mainly of semi-structured and focus group interviews with stakeholders, supported by background information from various available sources. The results are outlined by descriptions of self-organisation, community matters, and food forming cultural sustainability of coastal landscapes. The self-organisation in community of practice among coastal fishers is slowly progressing by negotiating common resources and voicing concerns about ecological, economic, and social sustainability. Foodways, which comprise the indispensable ingredient for sustaining a way of life that has produced traditional coastal landscapes, are always evo...
Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 2019
In this article, we study the largest existing fare-free public transport (FFPT) programme, launc... more In this article, we study the largest existing fare-free public transport (FFPT) programme, launched in 2013 in Tallinn, Estonia. Instead of focusing solely on the rationale and impact of fare-free public transport in terms of finances and travel patterns, we propose to analyse FFPT from the perspective of urban political geography, and to inquire into its political and scalar dynamics. We analyse how Tallinn's fare-free programme was developed, and demonstrate the politics of its conception and implementation. We observe who has access to free travel and we reveal how FFPT is embedded in Estonia's place-of-residence-based taxation system. Finally, we identify where lies the impact of territorial competition exacerbated by FFPT. Therefore, we argue that transport policies-of which FFPT is but an example-should be understood as much more than strategies dealing with transport issues per se. Instead, we propose to approach them as political and spatial projects, whose processual, cross-sectorial and scalar dimensions help to
Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 2014
post-industrial imagery and the functions of ruins can evoke novel dimensions of spatial structur... more post-industrial imagery and the functions of ruins can evoke novel dimensions of spatial structures and organization. This article discusses the question of how interactions between urbanity and nature are articulated and enacted within the redesign of industrial ruins. The socio-ecological configurations produced in this process include multiple realities about nature that become fragmented and contested in practice described by various authors using different concepts which are viewed critically. The concept of urban nature is elaborated because it enables one to problematize more-than-human entities in making particular commons and can reveal some interactions between semiotic and ecological systems. Theoretical approaches are illustrated by a case study of initiatives taking place in the former heating plant of Tallinn. The study indicates that engagement with nature has evolved through abstract vitalization visions of the ruins and moved to tactile encounters of experimental gardening. The evolutionary aspects of nature were used as guidelines for enabling weak structures of creativity, and the rationalities behind the experimental garden got contested and partly refocused over time.
Dis/appearing waste and afterwards
Geoforum, 2014
Movements, Care and Dispersed Periurban Landscapes Evoked by Dacha Allotment Gardens of Narva
Landscapes of Affect and Emotion, Oct 18, 2021
Contingent Spaces of Collective Action: Evoking Translocal Concerns
M C Journal, Nov 17, 2010
Maritime Studies
This paper explores deep insights into sustainability transition tensions and pathways in terms o... more This paper explores deep insights into sustainability transition tensions and pathways in terms of place-based conflict and potential for synergies between offshore wind energy (OWE) development and justice for humans and nonhuman nature. Specifically, we build a capability and recognition-based multispecies blue justice framework that at once centers ecological reflexivity (i.e., environmental awareness-raising, proxy representation of nature, and institutional recognition and protection of rights of nature and human-nature relationality), decenters anthropocentric frames of justice, and sheds light on injustices, human and nonhuman that climate and energy transitions may create or reinforce. This framework then informs analysis of a sustainability transition conflict, specifically a longstanding OWE conflict on Hiiumaa island, Estonia. This analysis unravels justice concerns, human and nonhuman, raised by proxy representatives of nature (i.e., grassroots actors and environmental s...
Invisible Legacies and Rural/Urban Dynamics in Heritagization Process of Soviet-Era Collective Farm Buildings
Heritage and society, Jul 3, 2023
Contingent Urban Nature and Interactional Justice: The Evolving Coastal Spaces of the City of Tallinn
Springer eBooks, 2022
Emergent rural–urban relations in Covid‐19 disturbances: Multi‐locality affecting sustainability of rural change
Sociologia Ruralis, Jan 18, 2023
Poliitilised ökoloogiad ja antropotseen urbaansuse pingeväljade maastikes
Mäetagused (Trükis), Dec 1, 2022
Sustainability
Spatial planning faces challenges in addressing interactions between land and sea. This paper ela... more Spatial planning faces challenges in addressing interactions between land and sea. This paper elaborates on land–sea interfaces, which can integrate certain socio-cultural values and related tensions into maritime spatial planning (MSP). In this article, three regional case studies from Estonia, Latvia, and Poland analysed important intersections between the formations of cultural values and spatial dynamics within MSP processes. These cases make it possible to address current challenges, contested boundaries, and spatial planning possibilities to embrace the vibrant and complex ways the sea becomes connected to societal change. The study indicates the multiplicity of land–sea interfaces, which should be involved in MSP through situated places of terraqueous interactions, means of public participation, and meaningful boundaries within mobilised co-existence. The actual and possible tensions in allocating new functions of maritime spaces indicate the importance of coastal landscapes ...
The landscape approach to planetary urbanization: beyond the planetary urbanization approach
City
Urban allotment garden : a case for place-making
Much has been written about the concept of “nature”, while its polar opposite has largely remaine... more Much has been written about the concept of “nature”, while its polar opposite has largely remained in the shadows of scholarly attention. However, in an age where the natural has been declared obsolete as a substantive category (e.g. McKibben 1989, Sayre 2012), it may be high time to inspect its antonym more closely. For the unnatural is an immensely powerful, if inherently ambiguous, concept with critical implications for the formation of social categories, the morality of classifications, the terms of urban governance and the directions of environmental conflicts. What is considered unnatural is a question of framing, strategizing, and of the significance of the respective categorical boundaries; its meaning emerges through ongoing and often conflicting ecologies of practice. Furthermore, the construction of the unnatural is so deeply entwined in wider social, political and cultural dynamics that it must not be taken for granted as a foundational circumscription of the subject mat...
Atmospheric Politics and Entangled Encounters: Freedom Square in Tallinn
Journal of Coastal Conservation, 2021
The Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) Directive was ratified (2014/89/EU) along the Strategy of the... more The Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) Directive was ratified (2014/89/EU) along the Strategy of the European Union (EU) on the Blue Economy to contribute to the effective management of maritime activities and resources and incorporate the principal elements of Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) (2002/413/EC) into planning at the land-sea interface. There is a need to develop the ICZM approach throughout Europe to realise the potential for both socio-economic and environmental targets set by the EU and national legislations. In this study, we co-developed different approaches for land-sea interactions in four case areas in Estonia and Finland based on the defined characteristics and key interests derived from local or regional challenges by integrating spatial data on human activities and ecology. Furthermore, four ICZM drafts were co-evaluated by stakeholders and the public using online map-based assessment tools (public participatory GIS). The ICZM approaches of the Estonian c...
Roadsides, 2019
The road through the Gal/i district requires continuous zigzagging to avoid potholes, and the lan... more The road through the Gal/i district requires continuous zigzagging to avoid potholes, and the landscape shows a succession of burned-out houses and skeletons of buildings. At times, the marshrutka is surrounded by cows, which would have been able to outrun us if there had been a race. One can tell that gunpowder has been used here, but also that there has been a lack of maintenance in recent years.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2020
This article examines the processes of urban commoning and its co-produced features of urbanity, ... more This article examines the processes of urban commoning and its co-produced features of urbanity, making the claim that, through these processes, informality becomes translated into institutionalized city planning. Commoning is analysed through a comparative study that utilizes contingent features of urbanity and three modalities accommodating the informality-formality meshwork during urban change. The article contributes to research on urban transformations by integrating commons, informality dynamics and the constitution of state institutions. This focus is elaborated with reference to collective gardening practices in the context of two of the less studied European cities, Narva in Estonia and Tampere in Finland. The results of the study indicate that urban commoning takes place through delegating a public mandate and enacting uncertainty, two processes that informalize city government practices. Particular differences appeared in regard to the institutional porosity that enables unregulated spaces of collective gardening to be mobilized as part of urban politics. We argue that networked movements appear as an essential part of the urban logic of action producing meaningful connections in an informal-formal meshwork and bringing together multiple sites in the commoning process.
Methis. Studia humaniora Estonica, 2019
Artikkel mõtestab kogemuspõhiste lugude kaudu kahaneva linna olemust, mida sageli määratletakse e... more Artikkel mõtestab kogemuspõhiste lugude kaudu kahaneva linna olemust, mida sageli määratletakse eelkõige majanduspoliitiliste katkestuste ja kahaneva rahvaarvu kaudu. Kahte autobiograafilist jutustust kõrvutav temaatiline sisuanalüüs toob esile Detroiti ja Narvaga seonduvad linnalisuse-kogemused, mis ilmestavad postindustriaalseid muutusi. Struktuurse kriisi kontekstualiseerimine linnade kahanemises näitab omakorda mitmeid linnaruumilisi kestvusi ja alternatiive otsivad kultuuripraktikaid. Linnalisuse ümbermõtestamine avaldub siin ruraalsete omaduste ja piiride esitamisega linnamaastikes. Ilukirjanduslike jutustuste ja nende kaudu esitatud lugude põimimine kahanevate linnade uurimusse võimaldab märgata kriisi mõjude ambivalentsust ning seejuures uurida kompleksset mitmesuunalist linnastumist. The article analyses the characteristics and appearances of shrinking cities, which are too often framed in terms of structural economic ruptures and population decline. The notion of “struct...
Sustainability, 2019
The cultural sustainability of coastal landscapes relies heavily on the community’s self-organisa... more The cultural sustainability of coastal landscapes relies heavily on the community’s self-organisation in fish foodways. The theoretical framework concentrates on cultural sustainability, foodways, land–sea interactions, and community of practice. The data presented in this article were part of the SustainBaltic Integrated Coastal Zone Management plan, consisting mainly of semi-structured and focus group interviews with stakeholders, supported by background information from various available sources. The results are outlined by descriptions of self-organisation, community matters, and food forming cultural sustainability of coastal landscapes. The self-organisation in community of practice among coastal fishers is slowly progressing by negotiating common resources and voicing concerns about ecological, economic, and social sustainability. Foodways, which comprise the indispensable ingredient for sustaining a way of life that has produced traditional coastal landscapes, are always evo...
Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 2019
In this article, we study the largest existing fare-free public transport (FFPT) programme, launc... more In this article, we study the largest existing fare-free public transport (FFPT) programme, launched in 2013 in Tallinn, Estonia. Instead of focusing solely on the rationale and impact of fare-free public transport in terms of finances and travel patterns, we propose to analyse FFPT from the perspective of urban political geography, and to inquire into its political and scalar dynamics. We analyse how Tallinn's fare-free programme was developed, and demonstrate the politics of its conception and implementation. We observe who has access to free travel and we reveal how FFPT is embedded in Estonia's place-of-residence-based taxation system. Finally, we identify where lies the impact of territorial competition exacerbated by FFPT. Therefore, we argue that transport policies-of which FFPT is but an example-should be understood as much more than strategies dealing with transport issues per se. Instead, we propose to approach them as political and spatial projects, whose processual, cross-sectorial and scalar dimensions help to
Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 2014
post-industrial imagery and the functions of ruins can evoke novel dimensions of spatial structur... more post-industrial imagery and the functions of ruins can evoke novel dimensions of spatial structures and organization. This article discusses the question of how interactions between urbanity and nature are articulated and enacted within the redesign of industrial ruins. The socio-ecological configurations produced in this process include multiple realities about nature that become fragmented and contested in practice described by various authors using different concepts which are viewed critically. The concept of urban nature is elaborated because it enables one to problematize more-than-human entities in making particular commons and can reveal some interactions between semiotic and ecological systems. Theoretical approaches are illustrated by a case study of initiatives taking place in the former heating plant of Tallinn. The study indicates that engagement with nature has evolved through abstract vitalization visions of the ruins and moved to tactile encounters of experimental gardening. The evolutionary aspects of nature were used as guidelines for enabling weak structures of creativity, and the rationalities behind the experimental garden got contested and partly refocused over time.
Dis/appearing waste and afterwards
Geoforum, 2014
Movements, Care and Dispersed Periurban Landscapes Evoked by Dacha Allotment Gardens of Narva
Landscapes of Affect and Emotion, Oct 18, 2021
Contingent Spaces of Collective Action: Evoking Translocal Concerns
M C Journal, Nov 17, 2010