Latest content
Our latest updates, thoughts, and events — as they roll out.
Low2No Camp is a strategic design workshop curated by think tank Demos Helsinki. In Low2No Camp thirty carefully chosen urbanist come together to create groundbreaking projects. The key players of Helsinki´s people-driven urban culture are here to take our thinking on what good life in cities can be to the…
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Demos Helsinki wrote up the final report for the Finnish Country Brand Delegation. The report centered around functionality, nature, and education. Demos Helsinki sifted through the material produced by the Country Brand Delegation, and held tree internal seminars with the delegation representatives. Each theme was addressed through Finland’s national strengths,…
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In 2009-2010 WWF Finland and Demos Helsinki carried out a project that synthesised research results on the factors that influence people’s happiness and wellbeing. Based on this research, we built the foundations for a the politics of One Planet, which would increase human wellbeing efficiently, and within the boundaries of…
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The Circular Design Toolkit helps policymakers move beyond recycling by focusing on upstream design decisions that shape sustainable value chains and industrial transformation.
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Drawing on almost five years of Cities Mission implementation, Demos Helsinki and its partners from Dark Matter Labs and the Mission Board argue that mission governance has reached policy readiness. Its mechanisms have been tested, its governance infrastructure is in place, and it offers a transferable model for delivering on EU strategic priorities at scale.
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Finland managed the Covid-19 pandemic comparatively well. Yet the longer the crisis lasted, the more visible the limits of the governance system became. This brief examines what a prolonged crisis revealed about institutional strength, societal vulnerabilities, and the kind of governance future crises demand.
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What does a stronger Europe actually require? Demos Helsinki’s comments on the State of the Union.
September 18, 2026
Drawing on three EU-funded research projects, we examine the tensions behind von der Leyen’s State of the Union address. Technological sovereignty risks deepening the dependencies it aims to reduce; climate resilience requires funding architecture that lets mitigation and adaptation reinforce each other; and Europe’s strength cannot be measured by economic indicators alone. A stronger Europe, we argue, depends less on ambition than on governance capable of delivering it.
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The next frontier for circularity is governance
September 17, 2026
For cross-cutting policy issues, like the transition to circularity, Demos Helsinki has developed a model that works: beating uncertainty through action, empowering relevant stakeholders with autonomy in problem solving, building a shared coordination structure, and adapting through learning what works. The model has been proven to move the circularity agenda forward, despite its complexity and fluctuating political significance.
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Governing with cities: Europe’s overlooked governance infrastructure
July 21, 2026
The Cities Mission functioned as a natural experiment that revealed an overlooked property of European governance: cities do not merely implement policy more effectively; they generate governing capacity and governance knowledge that Europe should intentionally incorporate into policy design through a revised multilevel governance architecture.
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