Design stories from Helsinki: Kalasatama

New neighbourhood is testing whether residents could telecommute in nearby empty spaces, benefit from electric cars, order food to home from a local food ring, and get help from their neighbours with washing windows. Helsinki Design Weekly presents the best bits of ‘Design stories from Helsinki’.

A completely new neighbourhood arises from the midst of asphalt and sand, a five-minute metro ride away from central Helsinki. It has a six-kilometre beach promenade, the refurbished industrial premises of Teurastamo and Suvilahti for cultural use, and the soon to be completed largest shopping centre in Helsinki, in connection with six habitable skyscrapers.

The area will become Helsinki’s densest neighbourhood, but also the smartest.

“Cities have to be constantly renewed in new ways. We are facing a huge period of growth of cities and that demands new and sustainable city services,” says Veera Mustonen, head of the Smart Kalasatama project.

Among other things, this means that our traffic jams will reduce and our energy behaviour is sustainable. All of this can be regulated with good urban design, but also with good urban services. Good urban services improve the comfort of residents without necessarily having to change the constructed environment or other heavy infrastructure.

At the moment the residents are testing the application encouraging neighbourly help, Nappi Naapuri, the connective application for different modes of transport, Tuup, the food wastage reducing application Foller, and a service that monitors the filling up of waste containers.

When the services have been tested and experiences have been gained from Kalasatama, their teachings will be shared elsewhere too.