Greening Urban Futures – Greening Urban Futures

Our experience of life on Earth is shaped by our environment. As development continues to grow increasingly urban, access to green areas will grow central to human health and quality of life

Today it is well known that cars can occupy up to 70 percent of the street space while being operated only by a fraction of the urban population

Many challenges that would otherwise be hard to meet can best be solved by approaches where nature plays the key role

GUF EP. 11: From “Smart” Cities to Intelligent Communities: The Espoo Story Päivi Sutinen is the Director for City as a Service Development at the City of Espoo- Finland. In this episode, She will talk to us about the “Espoo Story”, the city strategy of past, present and future vision moving Espoo towards the creation of a “new urban culture,” that lives and grows in a community of trust with a strong network sharing capacity. In recent years, the city of Espoo has emerged as an example of urban innovation in human-centric planning, one of the reasons why in 2018, Espoo was selected the Intelligent Community of the Year. During our talk, Päivi explains the dynamic participatory process behind developing the city with its citizens and describes the methodologies used in the city's co-creative process. We learn from Päivi how the vision of Espoo as a “network city” is linked to its values represented in its polycentric planning of 5-city centers, forgoing the ordinary single-urban centre development structure typical of most cities. So, when asked about the vision for green Espoo, Päivi mentioned that having 5-city centres is something that helps residents live closer to nature. “Each city center is relatively small in size which means that nature is close by” explains Päivi.

EP. 11 – From “Smart” City to Intelligent Communities-The Espoo Story: How can the structure of the city shape its future? In this episode, we have […]

From “Smart” City to Intelligent Communities-The Espoo Story–EP. 11

EP.09 – THE CIVIC CITY IN A NOMADIC WORLD: Charles Landry is an international authority on the use of imagination and creativity in urban change. He created the concept […]

The Civic City in a Nomadic World–EP. 09

EP. 10 – CITIES EMPOWERED BY SYSTEMATIC FUTURES THINKING: Sirkka Heinonen is a Professor of Futures Studies at the University of Turku and a member of the Club of Rome. She has a […]

Cities Empowered by Systematic Futures Thinking–EP. 10

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Nature is much more diverse, collaborative and intelligent than we understand today. In contemporary urban living, nature’s beauty and intelligence has been replaced by the economically-driven targets of industrial societies. In fact, we have purposely seek out to break away from nature and it’s environment.

Greening Urban Futures is a living portal and knowledge creation platform to debate on collective challenges concerning life in urban cores. Our aim is to operate as a transformational force for the new wave of 21st century highly urbanised societies enabling learning and the activation of a new state of public awareness and knowledgable communities.

Our experience of life on Earth is shaped by our environment. As development continues to grow increasingly urban, access to green areas will grow central to human health and quality of life

Today it is well known that cars can occupy up to 70 percent of the street space while being operated only by a fraction of the urban population

Many challenges that would otherwise be hard to meet can best be solved by approaches where nature plays the key role

From “Smart” City to Intelligent Communities-The Espoo Story–EP. 11

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