The anti-growth state of mind on the Åland islands
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lingon.land
The article leaves me far more puzzled by the author's mindset than that of the Ålanders.
Instead it was just someone completely missing the point.
> For years I have dreamed of breaking free of monetary restrictions and living a calm life on the country side.
I visited this weekend / and we wanted to bike through some of the islands to the mainland of Finland. The only problem? Their anti-growth state of mind which makes it hard for tourism to shine. / I can understand wanting to keep housing prices low but if demand is great, just build more like they do everywhere that is popular? / What I cannot understand is a fee to simply pass through. It is just super anti-growth. / We will not exactly recommend people going there because it's kind of boring for a tourist.
That's the whole point. They don't want tourists, and they don't want tourism based growth, or any other kind of growth for that matter, any more than a person would want an actual growth on their body!
Being offered more money isn't a "bend-over-and-take-it" proposition unless one allows it to be. People can choose any number of things over it.
On the island where I was born (not Åland), they recently placed some large boulders to block access to a beach where penny-pinchers liked to park their camper vans for free. Good riddance.
I have lived on Gotland as mentioned in the article and it is similar in many ways but life on Gotland is way more interesting due to the tourism. You still have the calm life of the country side except that during the summer there is a little more people there.
Those people enhance the lives on Gotland because it makes life on Gotland possible for many instead for only a few. Personally I think the anti-tourism mindset is stupid and that is what I was trying to convey in the text. Of course you can think differently but that still doesn't invalidate my points.
Perhaps those people don't want "a little more people there", and think their life is enough interesting as it is?
>Personally I think the anti-tourism mindset is stupid and that is what I was trying to convey in the text.
Try living in some places burnened by tourism and see how bad it gets. And consider how Gotland might be in a trajectory to get in that list, as welcoming tourists can easily cascade to further tourism and changing the local economy, and then it's a race to the bottom.
The author speaks of visiting Åva island in Brandö (county). That place is tiny; the population of the county is 436, split between multiple islands. It can't really support a booming service industry. Again, go check out the main island, that's where the party's at.
The author also complains about high fees on ferries if you're just driving through. The ferries are small, and primarily for the locals to move around; the high fee discourages drive-thru on purpose. Imagine you're trying to get to the other island for work or whatever and there's 300 cars queuing for places on a 60-car ferry.
If you read on their website it appears like they want visitors but yet seems to do a lot in order not to receive them. If they were more open to tourists they could probably afford more or bigger boats or simply more trips. It's not an unsolvable problem.
We just wanted to pass the islands and see it but it wasn't really feasible due to the restrictions placed. I wonder if it really has the intended effect.
Why not "between Suomi and Sverige"?
Or "between Finland and Sweden"?
Is it because Åland is mostly Swedish speaking that "Finland" gets written in English and "Sverig" gets written in Swedish?
"There were no adress and the" is another example - the Swedish is "adress" while the English is "address".