*METRO*politan dreams
"You can see all of the city from the roof of Stockmann (the continental department store then under construction; Henrikin Esplanaadi (nowadays Mannerheimintie) resembles a boulevard in Paris, and Aleksanterinkatu reminds me of Broadway. It feels like being in a real metropolis".
(Helsinki as described by a journalist for the Finnish daily Hufvudstadsbladet
in the year 1930)
Over half a decade later, the Forum shopping center was depicted as "a piece of metropolis donated to the inhabitants of Helsinki". In the early 1997, again, the new ice-hockey arena was phrased in the evening newspapers as "the Colosseum of our age." Even less monumental urban formations, such as some trendy bars along Uudenmaankatu, have been named "the Camden of Helsinki".
Metropolitan dreams and rhetoric have been at play for decades in the process of urbanizing Helsinki, of representing the city as a metropol of international standards. In what has been, and still is, a relatively small city, both the international athmosphere and the existence of urban culture in Helsinki have been produced discursively, through more or less imaginative associations and comparisons.
Helsinki Metro is a condensation of these constant clashes between rhetoric
and reality. The underground of Helsinki was built during the late Finnish modernity,
in the 1970s and 1980s. It´s Finnish name "Metro" derives
from the famous Metropolitain of Paris. It is equipped
with M-signs, underground maps, timetables and liquid chrystal displays
in both Swedish and Finnish. However, it only has one line.