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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 November 2017
Capital cities play a significant role in interpreting a country’s past and charting its future. In the aftermath of the First World War nine new European states, Finland and Ireland among them, were confronted with the question of how to create a capital city befitting their new status and national identity. Instead of designing and constructing an entirely new capital city which would have marked a clean break from the past, all these states chose an existing city as the capital. This article will examine processes through which two capitals, Helsinki and Dublin, were renewed physically and symbolically to make the political change ‘real’ to people, but also to reinterpret the past and create a ‘teleology for the present’. The aim is to discuss the ways in which the changes, planned and implemented, both reflected and reinforced new interpretations of the history of the city and the nation, and the continuities and discontinuities the changes created between the past and the present. Some elements and versions of the past were chosen over others, preserved and reinvented in the cityscape, while others were ignored, hidden or denied.
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5 A new capital city was designed and built, for example, in Australia (Canberra).
6 For discussion on capital cities and the reinterpretation of the past in newly-independent states, see, for example, Jones, Roy and Shaw, Brian J., ‘Palimpsest for progress: erasing the past and rewriting the future in developing societies – case studies of Singapore and Jakarta’ in International Journal of Heritage Studies, xii (2006), pp 122–138 Google Scholar; Powell, Robert, ‘Erasing memory, inventing tradition, rewriting history: planning as a tool of ideology’ in Brian J. Shaw and Roy Jones (eds), Contested urban heritage: voices from the periphery (Aldershot, 1997), pp 85–100 Google Scholar. For more general discussion, see Hanna, Erika, Modern Dublin: urban change and the Irish past, 1957–1973 (Oxford, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jordan, Jennifer A., Structures of memory: understanding urban change in Berlin and beyond (Stanford, 2006)Google Scholar.
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30 Pro-Helsingfors: ‘Suur-Helsingin’ asemakaavan ehdotus, laatineet Eliel Saarinen y.m. (Helsinki, 1918); Ginström, Egidius, Julius Tallberg och hans verk (Helsingfors, 1930), pp 102–107 Google Scholar. The plan was based on Munkkiniemi-Haaga plan which Eliel Saarinen had published in 1915. The earlier plan focused on two suburbs outside the boundaries of Helsinki but also offered general suggestions for the expansion of the city. Saarinen, Munkkiniemi-Haaga.
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35 See for example, Helsingin Sanomat, 22 Oct. 1918; Aminoff, Berndt, ‘Helsingin kaupungin asemakaavakysymyksiä 1915–1931’ in Helsingin kaupungin keskiosien yleisasemakaavaehdotus (Helsinki, 1932), p. 9; Ginström, , Tallberg, p. 106 Google Scholar.
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