Innovative initiatives

Espoo co-operates with 100 partners to innovate low-carbon transport, energy, circular economy, and clean and smart urban solutions in a project aiming to forge paths to sustainable growth ecosystems. Espoo brings together actors from small start-ups to global companies, from citizens to research institutions, to find the most impactful solutions to create economic growth.  

As the enabler, the city ensures that the work is targeted at the most critical development challenges in the area. Among other actions, the project creates new models for energy citizenship and energy communities in both densely built-up urban areas and village-like centres and develops smart city work in Kera, Otaniemi–Keilaniemi and other parts of Espoo. It is building a local biogas ecosystem and strengthening the collection and processing of local building materials that are the most valuable in terms of achieving carbon neutrality. Learning how to lead impact and networks is at the heart of the project. Educating and sharing best practices will leverage the learning in the next development projects and the Espoo society. 

Read more: RAKKE – a solution path to sustainable growth ecosystems 

The City of Espoo is committed to the idea that the transition to climate neutrality can and must be financeable and economically beneficial. The city works together with its research and business partners to create significant positive climate impact, or carbon handprint, through the Committee of Development (DEVE) members of the Climate Leadership Coalition (CLC) – the largest non-profit climate business network in Europe. Additionally, climate change mitigation and emission reductions are considered when planning investments to future urban structure and services. 

In 2021, Climate Leadership Coalition started a development project to define how cities can develop their carbon handprint whilst promoting sustainable growth. Carbon handprint refers to the positive climate impact of using a product or service compared to other products or services in the same category. Cities can offer assets – for example buildings, infrastructure, land – for use as pilot facilities for new solutions.  

The Carbon Handprint Manual for Cities and Regions, published by CLC in 2022, provides a tool for strategic planning beyond a city’s carbon neutrality goals, whilst serving as a marketing and communication tool to attract new activities, businesses, and residents to the area. With systematic strategy work, cities can continue to maximize their carbon handprint potential for years to come. The concept is now available to cities and regions within Finland, the EU, and internationally. 

We want to empower our citizens – starting from the youngest ones – with the will and skill to live sustainably. That’s why most Espoo’s daycare centres enable urban food gardening for 3 to 5-year-olds – together with the city’s green area maintenance department and the Helsinki Metropolitan Area Reuse Centre. The children and the educators receive pots and grains from the city’s technical department, the educators receive pedagogical and technical training from the Reuse Centre, and in summer fruits and vegetables are grown together by children and adults at the yards of the daycare centres. It’s a hand-on pedagogical approach to a sustainable future: the kids learn at a young age how the environmental ecosystem works – and how to take care of it.  

As is typical in Espoo, the model was born as a pilot (55 daycare centres in 2018), refined, and in 2020 mainstreamed into the early childhood education system. Cost-effectiveness is at the core: the maintenance unit delivers the soil and grains during its usual maintenance rounds, keeping down the costs and kilometres driven. The model has been expanded to include schools and care centres for elderly.

The Finnish Ministry of Environment has chosen to spread the Espoo-born model to other Finnish cities in its Sustainable City programme. 

The Smart City Innovation Cluster, created in 2022, is a spin-off from a previous project called Smart Otaniemi Innovation Cluster that was launched in 2018. Smart Otaniemi focused on the green, digital transition of Otaniemi, an area around the Aalto campus in Espoo. Smart Otaniemi's core players – City of Espoo, VTT and Aalto University in cooperation with the business network and several SMEs – are now taking the cooperation to a new level. The networks span out to different cities in Finland and abroad, enabling the scale-up of the solutions developed. 

The Smart City Innovation Cluster accelerates the green and digital transition of city ecosystems by bringing together companies, cities, research organizations and testbeds, living labs and ecosystems from Finland and abroad. Spanning out from Espoo, the cluster seeks to build networks locally, nationally and internationally to spur the development and scale-up of sustainable and smart urban solutions. This is done by identifying concrete challenges and opportunities from innovative cities, interesting markets and leading research, development, and innovation (RDI) hubs. The cluster builds integrated and tailored solutions to local needs and global markets and establishes long-term collaboration between testbeds and living labs. While the objective is to gather smart city expertise and capabilities from Finland to create sector integrated solutions, the cluster also attracts companies, experts, and investments from abroad to Finnish RDI hubs. 

The cluster's international network will be first built through the following partnerships: Norway's and Denmark's national Smart & Sustainable City clusters, Sweden's RISE and Viable Cities strategic investment program, Bayern Innovative, German-Finnish Chamber of Commerce network in Germany, Madrid Nuevo Norte developer consortium, and existing networks. Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Vietnam, and the USA. 

The former industrial district of Kera will be developed as a forerunner in sustainable city development, circular economy, and digitalization through multi-stakeholder co-operation. The district acts as a testbed for developing a more sustainable city around the themes of low-carbon construction, sustainable modes of transport, renewable energy, circular economy, and quality services with smart digital solutions. The City of Espoo and private investors are constructing a 14,000-strong city centre in Kera, oriented towards walking and cycling, with, day-care centres and schools, as well as sports and recreation services.  

Kera’s pioneering qualities include resource-wise construction, innovative and low-emission energy solutions, and new digital services and applications such as a Nokia-led unique network of smart street poles, which provide a platform for new data-driven services. The city acts as a facilitator as well as an ecosystem orchestrator and brings the area’s residents, landowners, companies, and other development partners around the same table to develop the area together. A commitment for close cooperation, reaching carbon neutrality by 2030, and the use of significant circular economy solutions has been made between the area’s stakeholders. First pilots in Kera started already in 2019, and full-on construction has begun in 2022. By 2025, Kera aims to be a national and international reference site for sustainable cities all over the world.  

Espoo is among the forerunner cities to localize and reach the United Nations Agenda2030 for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), and it aims to accomplish this objective in the spirit of “leave no-one behind”. To support this, Espoo was one of the first cities to conduct a voluntary local review (VLR) in 2020. Over the timespan of nine months, more than 1,000 people participated in the process. 

The initial VLR focused on reviewing pragmatic and concrete phenomena, projects, and actions. In lieu of reviewing existing data, we gave our own experts, project managers, partners, and citizens the possibility to share their insights and report their projects back to us. The results were then evaluated by internal and external SDG experts.  

Espoo’s VLR process has been used by UN Habitat, Nordregio, and other organizations as an exemplary and participative process. Partners for Research (P4R), an independent global research network working with SDGs, found the Espoo VLR to be the best example of participatory VLR in the world thus far. Espoo has also created a virtual course on how to conduct a VLR to UN Habitat, which is used in their Oceanic Asia area operations. In collaboration with the six largest cities in Finland and Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities, this process has been further developed in 2022 into an SDG Sensemaking Tool – a participatory and replicable process that can be used to localize SDG indicators and link them to both local goals and global targets and indicators.  

The SPARCS project (Sustainable Energy Positive & Zero Carbon Communities, Horizon 2020, 2019-2024), coordinated by the Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT), is concerned with energy-positivity, which means increasing local surplus energy production through renewable energy production and energy efficiency. The City of Espoo aims to achieve this by developing energy-efficient district-level solutions based on local renewable energy sources for construction and mobility. The project is part of a sizeable challenge related to enabling changes in mobility and energy use and practicing a more sustainable lifestyle. Solutions are under development in two Lighthouse cities of the project, Espoo, and Leipzig, and will be utilized in five follower cities. In practice, companies in Espoo develop and experiment with new solutions first at the local level and then export the best solutions globally.   

Sparcs

Health&Greenspace > Climate project (URBACT, 2019-2022) links green infrastructure design and management to urban health policies and practices. The project focuses on the physical and mental health benefits of urban greenspaces, as well as their role in improving social health and air quality, in addition to reducing heat stress in cities. Espoo participates in the project together with eight other European cities, including Budapest (HU), Tartu (EE), Santa Pola (ES), Limerick (IE), Messina (Italy), Breda (NL), Poznan (PL), and Suceava (RO). Espoo´s Integrated Action Plan for health-responsive planning and management of the blue-green infrastructure comprises of actions that implement the best international and local practices on promoting health benefits of greenspaces in Espoo. As part of the EU-funded URBACT programme, the project furthers transnational exchange and learning and, by that, improves local policies.  

Flying Squirrel LIFE (LIFE, 2018-2025) improves the conservation of flying squirrels in Europe through co-operation. The project focuses on safeguarding flying squirrel habitat networks, developing operating models and increasing cooperation between different actors. As one of 18 beneficiaries, Espoo acts in the project as an expert in reconciling flying squirrel conservation with land use: Espoo has, among others, published a guide on best practices on protecting flying squirrel in urban areas, considered flying squirrels in urban forest management and planted trees to add connectivity of flying squirrel habitats. Exchange of knowledge and best practices in between the beneficiaries has been one of the most important outcomes of the project so far.

Flying squirrel life(external link, opens in a new window)

The joint innovation package of the cities of Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa (HEVi) will strengthen innovation activities and networks in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. HEVI is based on an innovation ecosystem agreement made with the state, within which the cities will create a large project package for urban development and innovation activities in 2021–2027.

Read more:
Stronger innovation activities and networks in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area
Hevi – Helsinki+Espoo+Vantaa – Innovations (hevinnovations.fi)(external link, opens in a new window)

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6Aika, in operation from 2014 to 2022, was a sustainable urban development strategy of the six largest cities in Finland. Together, the cities developed services and solutions with businesses, research and educational institutions and residents in 64 joint projects. Various topics such as mobility, health care, learning and circular economy were covered, and nearly 4,000 businesses participated. 

Following the peaked interest towards Finnish education expertise and the Espoo learning ecosystem, the city’s education provider Omnia established an education export company together with the Finnish Institute for Enterprise Management, the Finn Church Aid, and the Savo Consortium for Education around 2015. The mission of Omnia Education Partnerships (OEP) is to offer sustainable training solutions for future careers and build professional competence development ecosystems based on Finnish education and training excellence.  

In collaboration with national and European partners and with the support of the European Twinning funding, Omnia and the City of Espoo developed the Kosovan basic education system and curricula in 2014-2017 and the Egyptian vocational education system in 2012-2015. Building on these experiences, OEP has launched education export programs in Palestine, Uganda, Saudi Arabia, and greater Egypt.

Culture Call is a programme that brings together kids aged 3 to 5 in all of Espoo’s 200 municipal day care centres with cultural professionals to practice creativity as well as to develop innovative and participatory skills. Twenty-five different cultural actors and artists, perform or guide activities with the children ranging from music, dance, circus activities as well as light art to nature, cultural history and storytelling. The programme was co-created by the city’s culture unit in conjunction with artists and early childhood education to strengthen children’s equal right to culture and art. Each year, about 10 000 children participate in the programme’s activities. Being piloted and implemented in Espoo, the programme has raised interest in other cities, and perhaps the Culture Call experience will take place all around Europe. 

The Active NGOs (Wings to empower citizens, URBACT, 2018–2021) project drew from the exemplary practices of the Riga NGO House, which was opened in 2013, in line with the wishes of residents and civil society actors, to support NGOs and to increase citizen awareness of local affairs and participation in municipality-related activities. Set in a refurbished school building, the NGO House offers resources for capacity building, exchange of information, best and experiential practices, as well as networking and leadership training. It promotes society integration, active social inclusion, and citizens’ participation. The Active NGOs network was established for parties interested in developing cooperation between the municipality and the NGOs. The organizations actively involved in the project learned about each other’s working culture and realities. The idea of co-development has been strengthened during the project and has led to new connections and collaboration.  

In connection to hosting the Eurocities annual conference, Espoo saw an opportunity to increase youth participation - a strategic topic for Espoo, and an issue raised by the local youth council: the city should do more to make the voice of its youth heard also in international collaboration.  

The Future Mentors programme is a reverse mentoring programme, in which a small group of young people advises a leader from their own city. The advice referred to the hopes, dreams, and fears of the future generation regarding the sustainable future of their city. The mentoring took place during spring 2022 in accordance with the programme organized by the City of Espoo. Twenty-six European cities participated with a total of ninety-four mentors. The youth also had an opportunity to network with young mentors from other European cities and exchange ideas.   

The Future Mentors were given a task to dream about the city of the future. The topics were decided by the mentors themselves. Using their own city as the starting point, they envisioned it in the near and far future, and then communicated their dreams and fears for the future of the city to the city leader. The topics ranged from a grand scale to more local and everything in between, with each issue intended to create a better future for the generations to come. 

The mentorship programme enhances youth participation and strengthens their voice in the Eurocities network on a European level as well as locally in cities. The opportunity for transnational European encounters and creating bonds between cities are a crucial element of the programme. The aim is to exchange ideas and gain perspective on themes for sustainable future cities through the eyes of younger generations. The young Future Mentors will reinforce the future European community by bringing youth and leaders in European cities together.  

In June 2022, one mentor from each city travelled to Espoo to participate in the annual Eurocities conference to network with their city leaders. The Espoo 2022 conference included workshops where the programme themes were further explored. A manual available to all Eurocities member cities will be produced as a step-by-step guide to organize similar projects in their own city. The manual will also include the results and analysis of impact of the 2022 programme. The young mentors presented their six recommendations to the cities’ network at the Eurocities 2022 conference. These recommendations were submitted to Jukka Mäkelä, the Mayor of Espoo, Dario Nardella, the President of Eurocities, as well as Tom Matthew, Board Member of European Youth Forum.  

Eurocities 6th goal states, “as the closest level of government to people, city governments are the place where democracy can start, and from where connections can be made to bridge the gap between people and politics”. The proximity of European local governments to young citizens offers cities the opportunity to create a dialogue between local youth and policy leaders about the future of their cities. The Future Mentors programme was an official part of the European Year of Youth with visibility both in Eurocities communications and European Year of Youth communications. The programme is taking part in the European year of youth awards in Finland.  

Read more: Future Mentores Programme

Espoo was a frontline participant in the Culture for Cities and Regions program 2016-2019. This EUR 1 million project funded under the Creative Europe programme and led by Eurocities aimed to examine existing practices of culture as a key element in local and regional development strategies. For three years, the project enabled the exchange and transfer of knowledge between cities and regions. The goal was to better understand successful examples of cultural investment and delve into the details of policy planning and implementation. Espoo, together with Helsinki, was chosen to host one of the 15 thematic study visits arranged in the program. The aim of the study visit was to showcase and share best practices in cultural and creativity education. The cultural department of the city also functioned as a coach to two of ten cities chosen for the project’s mentoring program. Espoo coached the two cities on how to build a future-oriented, silo-breaking cultural strategy program, as rendered in Espoo. Altogether 150 cities took part, and 70 case studies from across Europe were published during the project.   

 – Espoo’s national development task to increase cooperation and share best practices between municipalities

Culture Together is a national development task funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture and coordinated by the City of Espoo. It aims to increase cooperation between municipalities, strengthen the competence of cultural employees and share best practices around Finland. At the same time, it increases awareness of the Act on Cultural Activities in Local Government (166/2019) and the significance of culture to the well-being of residents, urban development, and attractiveness of regions.   

The development task aims to bring together the cultural services competence and development needs of Finnish municipalities. The project compiles and shares information about various models for producing equal cultural services and about the availability of the necessary expertise for development work in each participating municipality. The need for elected officials to increase their understanding of the new Act on Cultural Activities is also considered. 

All the municipalities in Finland are required to get involved in finding and sharing the best practices and cooperation models that are being used in various parts of the country. The goal is to create an atmosphere that encourages a sense of community and information-sharing, where all parties involved understand that they are travelling towards the same goal: better and more functional cultural services. 

Since the launch of the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities (GNLC) in the beginning of 2010s, Espoo has been one of its key members. The aim of the network, which includes roughly 250 cities in almost 70 countries, is to promote lifelong learning in cities to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The collaboration has contributed to developing the local ecosystem, but also built stronger global collaboration. As a co-coordinator of the network’s cluster on Education for Sustainable Development (with Hamburg and Shanghai) in 2020-2021, Espoo hosted digital events showcasing best practices and inviting others to do the same. Espoo also pushed for the inclusion of youth in the network collaboration. This resulted in youth representatives from the three coordinating cities being invited to participate in a global campaign for better learning for a sustainable future (#LearnForOurPlanet) and in Espoo youth taking part in the cluster coordination meetings. Following a series of study visits from Korean Osan City to Espoo, a partnership agreement with Osan was signed in 2021. 

In Espoo, we approach the digital transition from a people-first perspective. That’s why the goal of our cross-administrative digital experimentation programme – Digital Agenda – is to make everyday life easier through the digitalization of services. We aim to provide digital services independent of time, place, and language, as the population of Espoo is growing, getting older and the share of different language groups is growing.  

The objectives of the Digital Agenda are to involve citizens, the private sector and the third sector; to promote the culture of experimentation and pioneering, as well as to improve service efficiency and impact; discovering creative solutions that serve multiple city services and functions; gaining understanding of what is expected of the city, learning what kind of capabilities are needed in the future; comprehending the various effects; and promoting sustainable solutions and services.  

Results in the years 2015-2021 include: four publicly open pilot proposal campaigns organized; over 150 proposals gathered, where over 6 500 Espoo residents and customers were involved; 20 experiments carried out in different city services and activities; and 110–1400 participants attended campaign events and related thematic networking events.  

Concrete experiments include augmented and 3D reality solutions tested with students, teachers, senior residents and customers, day care personnel and children; a variety of sustainable and mobile service solutions tested in the Espoo organization and community; artificial intelligence portals and applications tested with Espoo employees, residents and customers with the aim to improve the delivery of information and customer services.  

The Espoo organization, residents, companies, especially start-ups and export-oriented companies, have benefited from the Digital Agenda. The Digital Agenda has gained local, national, and international recognition and as a result the City of Espoo has continued the program and launched the Digital Agenda 3.0 for the period of 2022–2025. 

Red more: Digital Agenda

Espoo is a forerunner in utilizing data to create better services and innovations for local citizens and businesses. Our Data Management Model goes far beyond what is legally required of public authorities who gather data on their citizens and services.  

Beyond ensuring data privacy, we have used the publicity principle of government, and other duties set by law, in our data management model as a frame to support the development of new services and innovation, and to make it visible in how the city functions – and how value streams are built. The model builds visibility for the exchange of information between authorities and thus serves as an important tool in promoting digitalisation and interoperability. The Data Management Model also supports data lifecycle management and thus ensures the integrity, availability, and confidentiality of the data. In addition, we have successfully integrated enterprise architecture and data management into the city-level project management model (EsPro).   

The data management of the City of Espoo is a flagship in Finland and sets an example for other cities and public authorities, as Finland's second largest municipal operating environment.  

Video on MyData(external link, opens in a new window)

During the Covid-19 pandemic children were required to stay at home for lengthy periods of time, with no live access to daycare centres facilities or their teachers. In Espoo, this did not hinder early childhood education for long. Very quickly, a web page was created that offered easy activities with common materials found at home, and during spring 2021 temporary digital distance mentors were hired by the city to support the Early Childhood Education and Care units in carrying out part of the pedagogical work online. The mentors trained the personnel to use MS Teams when collaborating with parents and with each other, for instance on how to arrange digital home visits and online educational discussions with parents. 1 800 educators were trained for the benefit of 13 000 children in 200 units. This ensured that children still felt a sense of belonging to the community, despite the physical distance.  

The mentoring gave equal possibilities to develop digital skills across units, and the skills are still used in everyday work in early childhood education units. Daycare centres also have their own ICT mentors to support others, receiving 60-70 hours of training and keeping up their skills in network meetings.

This training model has been included into the curriculum for child nurses in Step Training Centre in the close-by city of Järvenpää. 

Espoo is committed to scaling up the AI capabilities of the city as well as the ecosystem – e.g. establishing Finnish AI Region EDIH during fall 2022. Besides successful AI experimentations Espoo, by combining two cutting-edge national AI events with global reach: the Business Finland touring concept AI Finland, and the biggest annual AI research event, AI Day, with partners gathered researchers, companies, students, and the public sector to promote matchmaking, information sharing, and cross-border collaboration in the fast-developing AI field in November 2021.   

The City of Espoo was the main organizer, together with the Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence, Business Finland, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment in Finland, the Finnish AI Association, and a joint research project by several Finnish universities (Etairos, Ethical AI for the Governance of the Society). The partners arranged the AI Day in Espoo with the theme Reboot with AI. The event focused on impact leadership and anticipation with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). Business, public services, and research cases on how to prepare for future challenges were showcased. The cases covered the space industry, 6G, health, quantum technology, AI regulation and ethics, as well as local, regional, Nordic and European collaboration.  

The event attracted 1 200 participants from 52 countries. In the feedback survey, 14 % of the respondents stated they had gained new collaboration and 18 % new contacts at the event. 

The UserCentriCities (UCC) project (Horizon 2020, 2020-2023) promotes the user orientation of city services, and is based on the Tallinn Declaration signed by the EU Member States in 2017 in which they are committed to developing high-quality digital services that follow user-centric principles. The project will develop common user-centric indicators and a view from which to follow the development as well as a toolkit to support urban development work. Sharing insights and experiences is imperative to the project. Various peer learning forums are organized not only for the members of the consortium but also for other European cities. The UserCentriCities network brings together already 20 European municipalities and regions; the 6 founding partners – Espoo, Milan, Murcia, Rotterdam, Tallinn and Emilia Romagna – and 14 participating cities and regions: Barcelona, Catalonia Region, Brussels Capital Region, Ghent, Glasgow, Gothenburg, Helsinki, Kronoberg Region, Lisbon, Ljubljana, Madrid, Mataró, Paris, and Porto. Also VTT, the Eurocities network and the Lisbon Council think tank are highly involved in the project.    

During 2021 and 2022 the project has produced an adapted and operational version of the user-centric principles as well as a user-centricity indicators handbook. In June 2022, a dashboard showcasing their performance in different project cities was launched.  

In Espoo, the UserCentriCities project is linked to the improvement of customer service and the MyEspoo project, which aims to develop a new self-service channel for electronic services in Espoo.

To support the acceleration of the digital transformation with user-centricity at the core, UserCentriCities has created a benchmarking dashboard(external link, opens in a new window). Based on a list of 39 curated indicators, the dashboard ranks cities and regions performance in designing and delivering digital public services that focuses on their citizens and their needs. The dashboard is open to all European cities and regions.

Learn more about the UserCentriCities project: www.usercentricities.eu(external link, opens in a new window)