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Our latest updates, thoughts, and events — as they roll out.
Demos Helsinki is currently involved in 14 Horizon Europe projects. From exploring the societal impacts of new technologies to tackling climate challenges, these projects reflect a growing demand for research that sparks systemic change. Discover how we are working across disciplines to shape fairer, more sustainable futures.
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These three research projects are: 1) Reducing polarisation via material participation (MaDem); 2) Coastal waters under pressure – safeguarding a healthy Gulf of Finland in a changing geopolitical and environmental landscape (CoWup); and 3) Safe Water for All (WaterFall).
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We are pleased to announce that the UNDP’s Istanbul Innovation Days (IID), taking place in March 2025, will focus on shaping the next generation of public institutions for a secure and prosperous world.
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Over the past decades, the term “smart city” has been used as a catch-all for various city development initiatives and concepts. With this joint Nordic Smart City Roadmap, we want to promote conceptual, ethical, and political guidelines that honor a more human-centric, inclusive, and collaborative approach to developing smarter and more sustainable communities.
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This white paper proposes an approach to the policymaking process that aims to renew how governments steer and regulate societies through Collaboration and Iteration. We call this approach Humble Governance.
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In this short Annual Report for 2020, we share reflections on how our operations and community embraced the unique year, highlight key projects and publications and where we go from here, and articulate our role and responsibility in 2021 and beyond.
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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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