Finland
Markku MARKKULA
Member
Member of the Espoo City Council
Building a sustainable city requires operating through a huge number of parallel public-private-people co-creation processes. Espoo is transforming an industrial area into an attractive district – showcasing the reality of new solutions in digitalisation and circular economy.
New city solutions are being created together with partners to work toward the city of Espoo's objective to discontinue the use of coal by 2025, and furthermore for carbon-neutrality by the year 2030.
One of the transformation areas is Kera, a district of 200 hectares in Espoo, which includes Nokia International Head Office. It has the crossroads of a motorway, a railway and a regional ring road and is in the middle of Helsinki's metropolitan area. Transforming an old industrial site to modern urban smart city showcases the new forms of public-private networking for urban co-creation, piloting city as a digital platform, and development of the functionality of the area based on ambitious goals to reach climate neutrality through innovative city solutions.
Urban development has been opened to businesses, landowners and other development partners because the city sees that a profound development can be achieved by moving from traditional co-working models to developing the functionality of the area. The practical solutions range from new digital approaches to life in a city, and to energy and circular economy ecosystem. Therefore, the Kera district functions as a test bed for new innovative solutions to support sustainable city environment and the development of global scale solutions. The co-creation made in the area will support innovations for global markets, and with that sustainable growth and employment.
Finland
Member
Member of the Espoo City Council
ENVE works in fields related to the European Green Deal, which include the environment biodiversity, circular economy, zero pollution, climate change, energy, and space policies.