To learn from the best, to improve one’s own nest and to think about the rest. This is what happens to the Finnish urban professionals when joining the one-week excursion to Portland, Oregon. The Finnish Urbanism Foundation (Urbanismisäätiö) invites biannually a number of Finnish urban strategists, planners, developers and thinkers to learn from “World’s Best Cities”. In 2017 the excursion target is Portland – famous for its liveable urban core and a thriving, increasingly creative economy. The planning of the excursion (taking place in May 2017) was launched by Aalto University. The actual excursion and its preparatory workshops will be planned and carried out by Demos Helsinki.
The intention is to provide opportunities to learn both on-site and within the network of peers that join the tour. The excursion will feed the later phases of the process where the participating urbanists share their experience in an edited book and discuss their learnings in a workshop that gathers together also the alumni of the previous excursions (2012 and 2014).