Smooth flows, unhurried stays: everyday organizing in a downtown commercial centre

This study explores local actors’ participation in everyday organizing and thereby in the production and maintenance of social space in the urban milieu of a downtown commercial centre. By local actors, the study refers to retailers and maintenance workers such as security guards, cleaners and facility managers. The study is based on extensive empirical research being conducted in the Kamppi Centre, located in the heart of the city of Helsinki, Finland. The Kamppi Centre consists of a complex of commercial shops, offices, residential housing and public transportation terminals. It is a hectic urban milieu in a Finnish context and operates 24/7. The study identifies critical locations in the Kamppi Centre, particularly entrances, as well as the central indoor shopping plaza and the corridors where local actors are constantly negotiating the social space with the public. These places provide endless challenges to local actors’ everyday dealings with people and to the material flows and stopovers at the site. The study elaborates on local actors’ careful management of those places and on the organization of both people and material flows and visits as a way of producing and maintaining social space in a complex urban environment.