Projects

The UN’s new sustainable development programme, Agenda 2030, was launched at the beginning of 2016. At the heart of the programme are 17 universally accepted goals along with 169 sub-goals. The aim of the goals is to eradicate extreme poverty and to foster sustainable development both economically and in terms…

Welcome to Failand! The country where conventional food and energy supplies do not work and security is in shatters. Or would you rather travel to Winland, a Finland where resilient planning and policy-making processes have prevented such a catastrophe from occurring? Our research project ‘From Failand to Winland’ provides an insight to…

European cities have recently tried to accommodate the rapidly grown refugee population. In our view, there is a clear need to rethink refugee accommodation and integration. Instead of seeing the newcomers as burdens of the system, our project approaches refugees as skillful and interested individuals who can contribute to new…

Regional governments and Tanzanian and Zanzibar Planning Committees were trained to do foresight in a very intensive three day workshop. The trained methodologies included environmental scanning, systematic approach to foresight and futures studies, Delphi process and preparing scenarios. The training included teaching the methodologies themselves with a hands-on exercise to…

New forms of government are sprouting up everywhere: Helsinki Design Lab and Design Driven City programme of Finland, Policy Lab under the UK Cabinet, MindLab of Denmark, and the Public Policy Lab of New York are just the beginning. These actors are renewing the public sector and innovating better societal solutions in the…

In spring 2014, in three Nordic cities – Lahti in Finland, Stockholm in Sweden and Oslo in Norway – a diverse consortium of public and private actors kicked off a bold project that aims to build the missing link between sustainable built environment and sustainable services. This smart city project runs from May 2014…

The University of Helsinki and Demos Helsinki run a project called Yliopistolainen yrittäjyys (Academic entrepreneurship). The first phase of the project from spring 2012 to spring 2013 experimented on how to encourage university students and young researchers to take up entrepreneurial activity that provides solutions to the wicked problems of…

The aim of the Kipinöitä! (Sparks!) project is to help intellectually disabled individuals function as active citizens as part of their surrounding communities, use its services and give their own contribution to their respective community. Demos Helsinki pilots the diverse group of experts that develops new, innovative ways to build bridges between…

In the SPREAD – Sustainable Lifestyles 2050 project Demos Helsinki together with eight European research institutes outlined the most important drivers for change in sustainable lifestyles up until 2050. European Commission –funded project develops an understanding of the diversity of sustainable lifestyles and the central drivers of change. In SPREAD…

Well-being of the Metropolis is a research project was carried out in 2009-2010. The project’s aim was to find out what gives international competitive edge to the metropolis in the future, and how the city, together with its inhabitants, and its businesses is to build sustainable wellbeing. The research was…