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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 invited Päivi Sutinen, the Director of the City as a Service Development at the City of Espoo to share the Espoo Story with us and how the network structure of her city Espoo is supporting transformation towards a sustainable future. In our talk, Päivi explains the highly participatory approach that characterizes the city strategy and how relationships between nature, technology, people and urban planning (central axis) are shaping urban development. Päivi also share with us the vision of Espoo as a “close to nature” green city. In Espoo, common values are strongly intertwined with how the city plans for the future. On this, Päivi mentions how Espoo’s polycentric structure allows people from all areas a year-long access to nature areas for wellbeing. Espoo is one of the fastest growing cities in Finland. In the beginning of the 1950s, roughly 20,000 people lived in Espoo. Today, its population is roughly 272,000 people and the city is expected to reach 300,000 inhabitants by or before the year 2022 (City of Espoo). Link: City of Espoo.