Espoo suburbs
The suburbs of Espoo were built on manors’ lands.
After the Second World War, the entire Finland faced a shortage of dwellings when the population evacuated from the Karelian regions lost to the Soviet Union needed some place where to live. The housing foundation Asuntosäätiö was established in 1951 and its purpose was to resolve the issue of housing shortage and to improve the quality of housing. Asuntosäätiö’s first construction project, Tapiola in Espoo, aimed to create the model of a garden city suitable for the Finnish landscape. Tapiola is a nationally valuable man-made cultural environment and classified as an integral part of the Finnish landscape.
Many of the suburbs in Espoo stand on the lands of manors. Before the Second World War, Espoo had been an agriculturally dominated parish with several manors or large farms. As agriculture became more mechanised and society more industrial, agriculture was not as profitable as it had once been and there was a great need for building land. The owners of manors could sell sufficiently large and unbroken areas of land to the municipality and construction companies. Since the 1960s, the construction of suburbs was based on the regional development agreements of construction companies and municipalities. The municipality made town plans so that the land it had procured from private parties could be used as building land.
In the construction of the first suburbs, closeness to nature was considered important. Suburban construction in Espoo started in Tapiola and is still ongoing in the 2020s. The building stock in the areas built previously will be made more dense and completely new areas will be built, especially along the West Metro.
