Espoo Master Plan 2060 blog post series: You can sense the quality of a city

If I asked you what is a high-quality city, what would you say? Would you talk about the feelings and scents you have encountered on your travels in different cities? Would you draw on the memories of your childhood summers spent in urban settings? Or would you focus on specifying different quality factors: lively business premises for brick-and-mortar stores, beautiful buildings and lush pedestrian paths?

There is no right answer. A hight-quality city is different for everyone, because the way we experience things is the result of our own world and history.

A hight-quality city is different for everyone, because the way we experience things is the result of our own world and history.

When the quality of the city is site-specific and personal, is it possible to create for quality its own set of criteria, its own standards?

The quality of a city is relative and a very personal experience and it is guided by our senses. Our senses have evolved to tell us vital things about our environment, such as home, enemies, nutrition, and mating. Sensations also evoke strong emotions in us.

It is said that our sense of smell is the sense that most affects our emotions due to the biological structure of the nose and the frontal lobe of the brain. The smell of a bun floating on the street is therefore a primal experience, the reaction of which awakens our imagination. A high-quality urban space is therefore a series of positive associations. These memories stay with us and create our experience of the city.

When we evaluate the quality of the city we are experiencing now, we are dealing with the city planning of the past. The quality we now experience has evolved over time. In the present, we are building the quality of the future.

The planning criteria, trends and human life are changing at a rapid pace in the modern age. When planning the future, we should consider whether we should keep as standard the factors that currently guide city planning. In this case, it is as if we are creating a promise that the world will not change again.

As we strive for quality as far into the future as 2060, where can we find such standards and planning principles to which city developers could also commit in the coming decades? It is important that they do not limit planning too much and allow for the wonders that sparks of creativity and randomness can create.

According to the Espoolaisten näkemys toivotusta asuinympäristöstä (“Espoo residents’ view of their desired living environment”) survey, people in Espoo place the highest value on safety, greenery, tranquillity, the pleasantness of the atmosphere and access to a forest. By reflecting on these, we get a good overall picture of the factors of desired quality.

Cities also exist in our memories. Wherever we go and experience things, we collect information, sensations and sequences of events. This is how we build our overall picture of the city.

Over time, places of residence have evolved into cities as settlements, livelihoods and culture have accumulated along early passageways and historical roads. In cities and their immediate surroundings, temporal layers can be sensed from our recent history to prehistoric times.

A sense of history and something taking root is an important part of a city’s quality factors. When Espoo’s cultural environments have been inventoried, nationally and regionally significant areas as well as areas of local significance have emerged. In these areas, measurable value and quality factors have been identified, such as well-preserved and cohesive buildings and building groups.

But when people in Espoo tell stories about their lives, they rarely feature well-preserved building groups. Memories, stories and local community history are a significant part of a city’s perceived quality. Measuring them is more difficult than clear material values that come up in area inventories. Without the story created by the place and the guiding stars of residents’ memories, the link between the past, the present and the future is broken. Therefore, we must stop to consider whether we should include residents’ stories as part of the planning. Especially when it comes to a strongly regenerating area or the demolition of a single building that is relevant to the cityscape.

Will we work together to find ways or incentives to create the conditions for the preservation and maintenance of neighbourhoods and individual buildings? With what kind of guidance can the City of Espoo be a part of preserving memories and stories in a high-quality city, equally for all areas?

High-quality and accessible urban green is one way to create quality in a city. In surveys aimed at Espoo residents, it is highlighted as one of the most beloved features of the living environment.

The green structure of cities consists of vegetated areas of different natures and sizes. At their smallest, they can be a row of trees you see from your window or a yard with plantings. At its broadest, urban green is represented by an extensive forest area such as Espoo Central Park, which is an important habitat for many species.

The health of city residents is built in the routine of everyday life. The accessibility of the natural environment is a significant qualitative factor in this. Urban nature and urban green contribute to our physical and mental well-being. For example, exposure to natural microbes strengthens children’s immune systems. An easily accessible park or natural area encourages residents to be physically active and explore their surroundings. At the same time, local nature enables natural encounters between city residents.  Urban green also spreads indoors through the views from windows. Just seeing a piece of green landscape elevates our mood and affects our health – according to studies it speeds up the healing of patients, among other benefits.

Our connection to the natural environment and the lush views from our windows also have a financially significant positive impact on the municipality. The positive health effects of urban green reduce the costs of health care, and a green environment has also been shown to have a positive impact on the value of properties. A healthy urban environment can therefore promote not only the quality of the urban environment, but also support the achievement of the municipality’s financial objectives.

Green construction and saving the natural environment are also essential means of preparing for climate change. The consequences of climate change are already visible in cities, and can even be fatal as heatwaves intensify. A harsh urban environment and built surfaces intensify heat and increase the creation of heat islands. Extreme heavy rains are becoming more common and will cause flooding when the urban environment designed for past conditions is unable to respond to increasing rainfall.

It is important for the quality and living of the city that even densely built areas have enough vegetation to provide shade and cooling on hot days. In addition, natural retention and absorption systems must be promoted even more than they are at the moment. Saving and maintaining urban green and safeguarding biodiversity are essential factors in developing the quality of the future.

Cities are made up of individual sounds: children’s shouts of joy, occasional screeches, creaks. Rustles, honks and beeps. The sounds of speech coming from the terrace and the singing of creatures living in the urban environment. Celebration and joy bring the city to life. Services and brick-and-mortar stores bring hustle and bustle and the sounds and scents of the city. A high-quality city has a rich and vibrant soundscape, but it is not annoyingly noisy.

Espoo residents appreciate their city’s peaceful and pleasant sounds. Noise is perceived as disturbing and has a detrimental effect on our health. Staying in a noisy environment increases heart rate and blood pressure and can, at worst, cause diseases of the cardiovascular system. The disturbance level of noise is also influenced by the audience’s attitude towards the source of the noise.

When advancing the quality of the city, comprehensive attention should be paid to minimising various noise factors. A city that is soundproofed by surrounding walls might not be the goal for quality in terms of the cityscape, but limiting traffic, lowering speed limits and improving the placement of trees and shrubs could be measures for managing noisy areas.

In the design of new sites, noise and particle effects are particularly well taken into account in Espoo and quality standards are adhered to. However, there are areas in Espoo where noise has become a problem. In the context of master plan work, we should think about how to build healthier and higher quality environments from these problem areas and how to ensure that they encourage people to go outdoors for recreation and enjoy services.

When we are moving around the city, we are constantly looking for our own space: we dodge other passers-by, run away from phone subscription merchants or try to find a nice place to rest for a moment.

In small and narrow spaces, the importance of details is emphasised, intimacy increases and encounters become more natural. In expansive, scattered spaces, we easily retreat into our shell and distance ourselves from others.

When considering the dimensions required for the street space in city planning, we often start with technical factors: how much space does a service car take when it turns, how many cars should fit on the street in parallel, and nowadays cyclists have their own fast lanes. Streets have a precise order of who goes where and dimensions that are rarely compromised.

The city’s street spaces should be viewed as living and recreational spaces, where dimensions are based on pleasant encounters – they are not reduced to just orderly passage. Vehicles and horse-drawn carriages have historically adapted to the design of the city, not the other way around. If the quality of existing street spaces in the city centre needs to be improved, aspects such as intimacy should be increased by means of green construction. A comfortable and lively street space increases the value of the land and thus creates prerequisites for the preservation of old buildings.

Speed affects our sensory experiences in an urban space. A pedestrian observes the surrounding environment much more than someone who uses other, faster modes of transport. When we travel by bike or car, we usually observe the environment with a side eye. Our attention is drawn to the broad strokes and high contrasts of the background of our trip.

The pedestrian experience is more lingering. A pedestrian pays attention to elements such as the design of building masses, the rhythm of façades and the details that they can see. For a pedestrian, the city exists on a larger scale than it does for a motorist. People like it when the landscape around them is diverse and offers visual variation – it is familiar to us from nature, and these features can also be introduced into the city space.

When defining the quality of a city space, the pedestrian experience must be taken into account, especially in the city centre area. Quality criteria and increasing greenery must be developed as part of master planning work.

Due to its functions or location, not all construction can be small-scale. A diverse and accessible city also includes a larger building stock, such as shopping centres, halls, or industrial buildings.

When designing large structures, the sensitivity level to urban quality must be higher. A large building has a great impact on the quality of the surrounding street and urban space. It must be possible to place on the street level a large number of services and facilities that open onto the street and welcome all kinds of customers. They increase comfort, attract people and create a sense of security. This way, we can introduce life, feelings and smells to the urban space.

The quality of our city is a joint effort of different factors. We all take responsibility for it when we value nature and our fellow human beings in our everyday lives. Let us make our street and city spaces as comfortable as possible through our own actions.

It is good to remember that others have more power over future quality development due to the positions they hold. We planners should take our role with empathy and understand our responsibility for a shared high-quality future and well-being.

We now have the opportunity in master planning work to create quality standards that do not limit creativity too much. We hope that these will be visible in the Espoo of tomorrow as a high-quality and pleasant environment. The quality of the urban environment is also a financially profitable investment.

We encourage people to adopt a curious, positive and creativity-embracing approach to city planning and its challenges so that we all keep getting closer to a high-quality city. A thank you to the communities and individuals who cherish the quality of our city in their everyday lives and activities.

Authors: Architect Anniina Jokinen has challenging land use planning questions on her desk. As early as the first drafts, solutions to them prioritise quality and comfort. Architect Paula Kangasperko is planning a solution for cultural environments for the Espoo Master Plan 2060. Landscape Architect Heidi Ahlgren is planning the Espoo nature and green area complex in the Espoo Master Plan 2060. 

Learn more:

• Master Planning in Espoo
• Espoo Master Plan 2060