Commentary
Why Helsinki – a mix of Detroit and Geneva – is one of the most exciting cities in the world
Smart doesn’t have to mean boring. As city officials, corporations and other traditional institutions get on board with Helsinki’s thriving participatory urban culture, the Finnish capital is turning into one of the most exciting cities in the world. Nordic think tank Demos Helsinki says the prospering urban commons is a…
Read MoreSmart talk with Mehmet Kaplan
Hyperconnected Neighborhoods, Transparent Cities, Smart Meetings and Transportation-on-Demand. These are some topics we’ll present and talk about on April 11 together with Mehmet Kaplan, Sweden’s Minister for Housing, Urban Development and Information Technology. The discussion is based on Demos Helsinki’s new report on the great potential that the massive initiatives in…
Read MoreY-Lab – new affordable housing concepts for citizens’ needs
Y-Foundation, Finland’s biggest and internationally recognized non-profit housing company, aims to offer reasonably priced rental accommodations for citizens. To celebrate their 30th anniversary, Y-Foundation co-operated with think tank Demos Helsinki to envision and develop the future of housing. In this collaboration Demos Helsinki and Y-apartments, founded by Y-Foundation, created new…
Read MoreHow emergence of smart urban services will change the way we work, move, and live in cities?
For the past half-century, the central functions of our cities – housing, mobility, work and commerce – have remained more or less unchanged. Technical improvements have been incremental, business models have not diversified. Market structures are in many cases still very similar to how they were fifty years ago. It…
Read MoreWhy do our cities change so slowly? There are 4 reasons behind it
There are established policies, practices and market structures that on the one hand make our urban planning machine automatic, but, on the other hand, make it resistant to change, even when change is strongly needed. So why do our cities change so slowly? 1 THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT IS DEVELOPED BY…
Read MoreThe new normal of cities – six things that define it
Cities are not like they used to be. Cities all over the world are repurposing themselves and building new narratives of their future success. While the rest of society defines progress in increasingly economic terms, cities have started thinking more about their population and their capacity to create a flourishing environment. The…
Read MoreA New Way to Manage Elderly Care is Tested in Three Nordic Cities
Ageing population is a tricky challenge for human-orientated welfare systems. Traditionally Finland, as well as other Nordic countries, has been emphasizing the societal benefits that happen through supporting self-imposed learning and coping of people. The number of over-75s is expected to double in the next two decades in Finland –…
Read MoreThis is the suburb of the future
One exceptional neighbourhood in Stockholm is taking the lead in smart urban development “Bagarmossen is Stockholm’s friendliest neighbourhood,” says Tobias Lind with a smile on his face. Lind knows the city inside out: he has 10 years’ experience in developing suburban areas in Stockholm and now works for Stockholmshem, Sweden’s…
Read MoreWhy involve users in IoT?
The Internet of Things (IoT) is shimmering now, but if its users – the people – are forgotten during the development, it will fail. When we are talking about the IoT, where different devices and spaces communicate by themselves, it’s easy to forget the people around them. However, there’s no…
Read MoreSharing care: 3 advantages and 1 disadvantage of sharing services in the healthcare sector
The collaborative and sharing economy seems to have established itself as a growing market model, especially in consumer markets. Demos Helsinki created two different scenarios for the hyperconnected Nordic societies of 2015 to 2040. In these scenarios, seven long-term changes were identified, one of which depicts the shift from owning things…
Read MoreTekes Views: The future looks smart
Tekes Views published yesterday a 4-page article about Demos Helsinki’s work on resource smart economy. In the article, Maria Ritola explains how scarcity of resources will be a game changer of our future lifestyles. ”Change is already here”, Ritola outlines. ”If you look at headlines from Google, Uber, Facebook or…
Read MoreRadical Futures: Energy Does not Matter in the Post-Energy Society
The core vision in the scenario publication “The Future as Told Through the Garden and the Streets” is that technologies for the hyperconnected planet enable a decoupling between increasing well-being and the consumption of natural resources. The basic requirement for that to happen is that the IoT and industrial internet…
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