The future and sustainability of Arctic city-communities will depend on how the young generation see prospects for their own personal development. In both Russia and Finland, many such cities face an out-migration tendency. This interdisciplinary project aims to better understand the determinants of youth well being in Arctic industrial cities by analyzing their attractiveness as places to live and work.
The project will also contribute to a broader theory of viable Arctic communities by combining approaches from different disciplines. Integrating anthropology, legal studies, geography, political sciences, and economics in a combined effort is seen as a key to achieving this understanding. The project also aims to find out how authorities, civil society and industrial companies provide conditions for youth well being in Arctic industrial cities, and if their ideas overlap with the hopes and ambitions of the young people themselves.
Unique in its approach, the project hopes to collaborate not solely with researchers, but with young people, media, organizations, city-authorities and all other interested parties in making this project 'by the people' and not only about them.
The project is part of a bigger international project consortium, with partners from the University of Helsinki, North Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk and Petrozavodsk State University. In Finland, the project is led by professor Florian Stammler from the Arctic Centre at the University of Lapland in partnership with professor Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen from the University of Helsinki.
For more information, visit the website.
Updates on the project will be posted here.