Our blogger of the week is Timo Hämäläinen of Urban Finland , who says that Helsinki is a rapidly growing and promising city with all the potential to become a cosmopolitan hotspot

I’m Timo Hämäläinen, a freelance consultant and urban planning activist from Helsinki. My friend once described me as a “bohemian free spirit who travels a lot”. Others just call me a typical geographer.



After growing up near Tampere, I’ve set Helsinki’s neighborhood of Kallio as my home base. I live right by a plaza most locals know as “amphetamine square” instead of its official name Vaasanaukio. From Kallio I’ve fled on many urbanist adventures to live and work or study in places like New York and Berlin. But since at the end of the day there’s no place like home, I’ve always been determined to return to Helsinki to look at the city through experiences gained elsewhere.

Now I try to promote ideas how Helsinki and other cities could transform themselves into more livable places for urbanites like myself.

Tell us about your city

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Helsinki Cathedral, always at its best against blue skies. All photographs: Timo Hämäläinen

I like Helsinki a lot because the city is extremely relaxed and has recently become an epicentre for spontaneous grassroots urban events. The stereotypical Finn is thought to be closed and quiet, but nowadays there’s a whole new generation of urban youth who are passionate about making the city as lively as possible. The global Restaurant Day is a great example to this end. It started here in Helsinki.



But as a city, Helsinki has two distinct faces. For an urban centre of its size, it has a small and lively inner city where things are never far. Beyond that, Helsinki is characterised by dispersed suburbia. If you arrive to the city by plane, you won’t really be able to see much else than forest.

The most pressing challenge Helsinki is facing is that the city is growing quickly and increasingly, many people want to live in places like the inner city rather than in the suburbs. But as developing the sprawling suburbs has been the guiding planning principle for decades, there is little expertise in neither the public nor the private sector to all of a sudden begin building urban neighbourhoods. All attempts so far have been semi-urban at best. Dense neighbourhoods are however only really attractive if they offer associated urban amenities such as street life and a multitude of services.

What is Helsinki's best building?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kaisa-talo blends into the historic facade of the city

There are a number of terrific old buildings in the city, but I’m going to pick Helsinki University’s new library building, Kaisa-talo. The building offers a great example of how contemporary Finnish architecture can support good urbanism. As opposed to the business-as-usual modernist building designs that tend to deny streets as stages for public life by offering boring facades, blank walls and a limited number of entrances, Kaisa-talo blends graciously into the existing older urban fabric. Despite being a single huge structure, the building has two busy entrances on the pictured façade and one more in the back, too. I would really like to see Kaisa-talo’s spirit echo in many more construction proposals. We would definitely start making some progress in designing world-class urban environments.



And the ugliest?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Prisma Itäkeskus doesn't exactly help Helsinki create beautiful streets

Just as there are many great old buildings, there are plenty of ugly new ones too. I chose to showcase a hypermarket complex from Helsinki’s eastern suburbs. What is perhaps most disturbing with this monstrosity is that it’s built in 2009. You would think that it wouldn’t be possible to get away with a blank-walled big-box concept like this in the 21st century. The building offers absolutely nothing to passersby. But not many ever really do pass by as the building is surrounded urban highways.

How clean is the city?

A street sweeper at work

Helsinki is very clean apart from the issue of the lack of public toilets, with respect to the fact that the Finns are not too shy about urinating in public. If there is no toilet within easy reach from the spot where someone is having a drink in the park, odds are that a nearby bush, tree, rock, or gateway will act as one instead. And it’s not only guys who are to blame.

Air quality is usually very good except for some dry days in the spring when snow piles turn into piles of dust and gravel. Until we have a rainfall, or the city’s huge street sweeper mob arrive, you often find dust particles in your eyes and mouth. Think of it as a miniature sandstorm.

What's the best way to get around?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Helsinki Metro is very orange, and soon expanding with eight new stations

If you’re in the inner city, you can easily get around by walking or taking public transit. That’s what I enjoy doing. Cycling is increasingly popular, but Helsinki has a lot to do to catch up with the bike-capitals of the world. In Helsinki, bike lanes are far and few between and a good start would be to introduce a bicycle sharing system. Helsinki still doesn’t have one! In the suburbs, the car is king, despite major construction projects underway to expand the Metro to the western suburbs, as well as the commuter train lines in the north.

What does your city sound like?

Helsinki sounds like rumbling trams, seagulls, and in the summer, happy screams coming from the city’s amusement park Linnanmäki. Actually, you can listen for yourself. The city just recently gathered typical Helsinki soundscapes from the public and uses them with the city’s phone services instead of elevator-style waiting music. Listen to the soundscapes here.



Best place for a conversation

Beermat-doodling and a place for drinks and good laughter

Any bar in Kallio is my pick. Helsinki’s contemporary bar scene in is very much found in this former working-class neighborhood. Everyone is bound to discover their type of bar for getting together to share some laughs. If, for example, you like getting creative while chatting, visit 5th Street Bar & Café. They encourage you to turn beermats into pieces of art.

What one thing is indispensable for life in your city?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest In December Helsinki gets just over five hours of daylight each day

I’d say being able to cope with darkness. It gets very dark in the city during winter months - in December, Helsinki gets just over 5 hours of daylight each day. At the best or worst phase, it gets so dark that you might sleep through the light hours if you end staying up too late the night before. And I speak from experience. Some people go as far as buying bright light therapy products to mimic exposure to sunlight.

But then again, the dark months give the city a Gotham City type of atmosphere and many streets and building facades get decorated with light installations. Finns also love to talk about the darkness year after year, so it’s a topic guaranteed to spark a discussion.

Are you optimistic about your city's future?

Yes! It seems like the global “back to the city” phenomenon has finally reached Finland and Helsinki in particular. We can even start talking about the arrival of a new urban planning paradigm. Just a few years back it was almost considered blasphemy to support anything but suburban living and development patterns. But now I’m extremely happy to notice that during the past couple of years there has been a tremendous shift away from the assumption that everyone wants to live outside of the city. Now urban planners, decision-makers and the media are increasingly recognising that many people actually feel differently towards suburban living.



This is important for many reasons ranging from environmental concerns to economic issues, but here I want to stress the aspect of offering options. Much of Finnish society is built on the idea of a homogenous nation where everything is produced for the average citizen. One-size-fits-all apartments in cloned suburban neighborhoods. If the planning sphere can adapt to the reality that we are actually a diverse group of people with even more diverse lifestyles, Helsinki has all the potential to become a cosmopolitan 21st century hotspot.