Kontula () is a ''quarter'' of

Helsinki Helsinki () is the Capital city, capital and most populous List of cities and towns in Finland, city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About people live in the municipali ...

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

, part of the

Mellunkylä Mellunkylä () is a neighbourhood in East Helsinki, Finland. The area of Mellunkylä is 9,9 km2 and it has population of 36,360 (2005).http://www.hel2.fi/tietokeskus/helsinki_alueittain_2005/703Mellunkyl%C3%A4.pdf 2005 statistics and informat ...

neighbourhood A neighbourhood (Commonwealth English) or neighborhood (American English) is a geographically localized community within a larger town, city, suburb or rural area, sometimes consisting of a single street and the buildings lining it. Neighbourh ...

. Kontula was built mostly in the 1960s and 1970s when more housing was required in Helsinki. Many people from the city centre moved to Kontula; due to its little higher than average concentration of government tenant housing complexes,

immigrant Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as permanent residents. Commuters, tourists, and other short- ...

and

refugee A refugee, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is a person "forced to flee their own country and seek safety in another country. They are unable to return to their own country because of feared persecution as ...

population it is regarded as an average eastern Helsinki suburb. Kontula has generally been considered one of the most notorious suburbs in

East Helsinki East Helsinki (, ) is an area in Helsinki, Finland, usually thought to comprise the city's eastern and south-eastern major districts (, ), including the districts of Vartiokylä, Myllypuro, Mellunkylä, Vuosaari, Herttoniemi, Laajasalo a ...

largely due to prevailing incidents of

violence Violence is characterized as the use of physical force by humans to cause harm to other living beings, or property, such as pain, injury, disablement, death, damage and destruction. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines violence a ...

and

drug dealing The illegal drug trade, drug trafficking, or narcotrafficking is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of prohibited drugs. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types ...

, the latter of which local

youth Youth is the time of life when one is young. The word, youth, can also mean the time between childhood and adulthood (Maturity (psychological), maturity), but it can also refer to one's peak, in terms of health or the period of life known as bei ...

s actively run a drug trade near the shopping area and the

metro station A metro station or subway station is a train station for a rapid transit system, which as a whole is usually called a "metro" or "subway". A station provides a means for passengers to purchase tickets, board trains, and evacuate the syste ...

. Despite its mixed reputation, it might also be the clue to its attractiveness, because Kontula pops up in many movies, books, and songs. The

metro Metro may refer to: Geography * Metro City (Indonesia), a city in Indonesia * A metropolitan area, the populated region including and surrounding an urban center Public transport * Rapid transit, a passenger railway in an urban area with high ...

was expanded to Kontula in 1986, which made the area easy to reach. The Kontula Metro Station is daily used by 20,000 people. In 2006, the Finnish Local Heritage Foundation picked Kontula as the Borough of the Year in Finland.

Buildings

Kontulan Ostoskeskus, the mall

Kontula offers services to its inhabitants. There are various grocery stores, banks, pharmacies and over 20 shops and around 20 bars, Kontulan Ostoskeskus (''The Shopping Centre'' or ''the mall'') opened in 1967. The Shopping Centre also includes the health centre, a library, a swimming pool, gym, and a skateboard hall. There are also food production facilities in the area, for example, the famed ice cream house Kolme kaveria ('Three friends').

Mikaelinkirkko

The church representing

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

church architecture, St. Michael's Church (''Mikaelinkirkko''), was consecrated on May 7, 1988. In 1980, the Helsinki Parish Association announced an architectural competition for the new church, which was attended by 138 architects. Construction was due to begin as early as 1984, but because the winning draftsman was

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

, the plan had to be abandoned, and the new plan took the second place work of competition on which the current church was based.

References

External links

Kontula's homepage

Kontulan Ostoskeskus.
Quarters of Helsinki {{SouthernFinland-geo-stub