ABSTRACT
Finland has only a few large cities and most of them are in many ways different from usual cities in other European Union countries. Urban areas in Finland are typically relatively sparsely populated. Past governments pursued active regional policy to keep the country evenly populated and control the urbanization process. The recession at the beginning of the 1990s also brought massive unemployment to big cities. The list of the smaller urban regions is as follows. The proportion of rural population in Finland is among the highest in Western Europe. Economic prospects for Helsinki are good on a short-term perspective, but even more on a long-term perspective. The Helsinki region is by far Finland's greatest and most versatile economic zone. In Finland there is no statutory administration for urban areas consisting of several municipalities, with the exception of the Metropolitan Area Council operating in the Helsinki region.
