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Our latest updates, thoughts, and events — as they roll out.
The services of housing are underdeveloped, if not non-existent. Yet housing makes up the largest share of both our ecological footprint and our national income. This was the starting point of our joint project with the biggest constructor of the Helsinki area, Foundation for Student Housing in the Helsinki Region…
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Kesäkuussa 2012 Ajatushautomo Demos Helsinki ja valtion muotoilutoimikunta kokosivat 120 pohjoismaista muotoilun asiantuntijaa piirtämään päiväksi kuvaa muotoilun suunnasta. Tähän muotoilupääkaupunkivuoden Design Round Table – tapahtumaan osallistuneet muotoiluammattilaiset visioivat, miltä hyvin muotoiltu Suomi näyttää vuonna 2030 ja pohtivat, mitä toimenpiteitä tarvitaan tänään, jotta parempi tulevaisuus toteutuu. Tuloksena syntyneeseen julkaisuun “Muotoiltu huominen – suomalaisen…
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Helsinki was the World Design Capital in 2012. The central stage and forum of the design year, the WDC pavilion was a centre for entertainment and learning from May till September 2012. Demos Helsinki curated the programme including discussion on poverty, design markets, lunch yoga, a short film festival, and…
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This report shares how young people aged 14-19 helped shape Scotland’s Horizon Scanning through a participatory foresight process co-designed with Members of the Scottish Youth Parliament. It reveals insights on young people’s perspectives on topics such as climate, technology, democracy, and society more broadly, and shows how engaging them meaningfully can strengthen anticipatory governance. The methodology offers learnings and tools for governments seeking to embed long-term thinking into policy, and build trust and momentum towards shared large-scale goals.
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This report, created in collaboration with the EU Horizon-funded LIKE-A-PRO project and over 50 food experts across sectors and regions, underscores the urgent need to change the default protein production and consumption within the next two decades.
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How can countries strengthen their capacity for long-term governance and ensure that future generations are taken into account in decision-making? In this white paper, we highlight ways to promote anticipatory governance based on the views of key Finnish stakeholders. By translating the Finnish experience into a broader context, we aim to provide universally applicable strategies for advancing long-term governance and promoting intergenerational justice.
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Imaginaries on Sustainability Transformation – Report outlines three positive futures
May 19, 2025
Imagining futures where society has successfully undergone a sustainability transformation helps us envision a world in which today’s major negative trends have been brought under control. But what kind of positive futures have been proposed in recent years? At the request of the Finnish Expert Panel for Sustainable Development, Demos Helsinki conducted a literature review and drafted three preliminary visions of such futures.
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The anticipatory policy cycle: not just preparing for the future, but influencing it
May 14, 2025
Governments that invest in foresight-driven policymaking are better positioned to shape the conditions that they operate in. This is how to build policies that both anticipate and influence the future.
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Innovating urban development: Lessons from M4EG & moving beyond growth
April 17, 2025
Two key lessons from our work in the Mayors for Economic Growth project, in collaboration with UNDP: 1) Innovation needs to occur at multiple levels and 2) If we’re to be effective, we must remain humble.
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