Helsinki

Vuosaari on the eastern edge of the conurbation, where it is co-located with the airport and well placed for trade with Russia. Within the city there are plans to grow the population by 100,000 over the next 20 years and about half of this will be achieved through the redevelopment of the city’s old waterfront. Because of its star-like shape, Helsinki has an extraordinary 200 kilometres of waterfront and, now that the main port has moved out of the centre, much of this is available for development. Most of the remaining population growth will take place on infill sites with only a small amount being achieved through new urban extensions. However, even the latter will be served by the city’s extensive public transport system, including plans for a metro extension to the west and a new ring railway line. Like many of the Scandinavian cities in this book, Helsinki exhibits a level of organisation and efficiency that can be bewildering to a British planner. This runs from the national scale where, we were told, Finland is more like a club than a country, to the municipality and through to neighbourhood planning. Finland is a very new country, having been a province of Sweden until a pact between Napoleon and Alexander I saw it become a Russian Grand Dutchy in 1809. It was at this time that the rocky peninsular where Helsinki now stands was chosen as the location of the new capital, which was planned by the German-born architect Carl Ludvig Engel. Because of this, Helsinki does not have an old town; it is laid out as a logical grid with a very organised feel. This short history is reflected in the structure of the city, which is made up of large plots without the subdivisions that you find in really old places. As a result, the grain of the city can be rather coarse. The connection between an organised society and the organised city is encapsulated by the Senaatintori (Senate Square), which has the cathedral on one side and the

Government Palace, city hall and university on the three other sides. Finland became independent in 1917 in the turmoil of the Russian Revolution and the country suffered its own civil war in the years

that followed. It was on the front line in the Second World War but when the war ended it played a canny game and avoided being absorbed into the Soviet Union. Helsinki is a city on the edge of Europe geographically and historically. Its history has seen it tugged between the East and the West and this is reflected in its character. Indeed, throughout the Cold War it was used by American film-makers when they

wanted to film Russia and by Russian film-makers when they wanted to film America. Finland did, however, become reliant on trade with the Soviet Union and its economy came close to collapse after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The speed with which it managed to recover from this and the way it promoted knowledge and innovation to achieve this is still seen as a model for economic development. Its recovery was helped in no small measure when Nokia, already Finland’s largest company with interests in logging and engineering developed the first mobile phone. This development began when the Finnish army asked the company to modify a system that Nokia were already using to communicate with distant logging operations. Once the wider implications were understood, Nokia and Finland found themselves in at the very beginning of the mobile revolution and have become global players as a result. Today Helsinki’s strategy is to promote economic growth through education, quality of life, innovation and internationalisation through the EU and links with Russia and the Far East. The policy is based on a triple helix of the public and private sectors and the universities. Indeed, 43% of adults in Helsinki have a university degree and its seven universities have 90,000 students. There is a strong focus on creativity with the new Aalto University, which brings together three colleges and focuses on art and design. The Academy assessment team visited the Cable Factory, a huge building where Nokia once made transatlantic telephone cables, which is now home to some 250 creative companies and, of course, is also owned by

the city. In 2012, the year of the city’s bicentennial, Helsinki was World Design Capital, following in the steps of Turin and Seoul. To have the chance to plan on such a scale! You can see why British planners might be jealous. But with the envy came a slight unease. The new neighbourhoods we visited were beautifully planned and designed but perhaps lacked a little soul. To be honest, the same was true of the city centre, which was subdued compared to many other European capitals. Finns are a reserved people and the climate for much of the year is such that life goes on indoors. There was also a slight unease when we discussed engagement. We met HELKA – the Helsinki Confederation of Community Associations – also funded by the city. They described an active network of community associations who, through the Finnish system, are responsible for the management of their housing blocks in both the public and private sectors. However, despite the presence of a public planning shop (Laituri), there seemed to be little public debate over the plans for the city. Finland is the country with the lowest level of corruption – according to the OECD – and there is a level of trust that means that the public assume that the authorities will act in their best interests. This is something that disappeared in the UK some time in the 1950s. As a result, Helsinki is the most civilised of places and always scores well on tables ranking the world’s most liveable cities. It is clean and safe, well organised, beautifully designed and full of highly educated people – and only occassionally a little dull.