Helsinki Builds Better City With Design And Openness

HELSINKI - Dec. 2, 2015 - PRLog -- The Finnish capital Helsinki has started a new chapter in Finland’s venerable design tradition: integrating design thinking into administration to reform public services. Helsinki is convinced that design thinking – the formal methods used by designers – can provide answers to many challenges faced by cities and society today.

Over the past two years, the Helsinki-sponsored project Design Driven City has been actively incorporating design thinking into city development programs.

One area where Design Driven City has been active is in seeking a solution to youth homelessness.  Approaching the problem with prototyping, the city youth administration uses fast-paced housing experiments to test concepts.

Another area is public libraries. The Helsinki city library administration has used co-design in the development of a new flagship library, Helsinki Central Library, by integrating customers into the process. In the Central Library Pals co-design project, potential customers brainstormed new services in intensive workshops.

A third area is art museum services. Helsinki Art Museum has used visitor profiles and role play as tools to revamp the museum’s user experience in order to appeal to nontraditional museum goers.

Design thinking has even helped the Helsinki public works administration to improve street construction sites.

Design Driven City continues the work started in 2012, when Helsinki highlighted the possibilities of design as World Design Capital. Owing to the city’s commitment to design, UNESCO named Helsinki a City of Design in late 2014 as part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.

Design thinking helps Helsinki to make the city administration increasingly democratic, ensuring that people’s voices are heard in decision-making. Helsinki pursues the same goal with openness in administration. Openness is ensured by transparency and citizen participation. These principles are embedded in the city’s strategy.

Stemming from long traditions in free access to public records in Finland, Helsinki ensures transparency in decision-making by making the city’s electronic decision-making documents available to the public as open data through an open user interface. The principle of free access to public records even applies to city procurement data: anyone can check online the purchases made by the city.

Citizen participation is applied in Helsinki city development projects ranging from urban planning to an ongoing process to reform the city governance system. The city invites citizens to give feedback online and utilizes it in plans and decision-making.

Citizen participation in Helsinki culminates in participatory budgeting – the most powerful form of direct democracy. Among other areas, the city has applied participatory budgeting at city youth centers by allowing their young users to decide on the allocation of the budgets for activities.

Openness in Helsinki city policies is manifested in the Neighborhood Project, a strategic program of the City of Helsinki aimed at developing Helsinki suburbs into vigorous urban areas. The Neighborhood Project relies on resident participation to make suburban living increasingly appealing.

Read more in the current edition of Helsinki News available at http://www.hel.fi/static/helsinki/news/englanti/Helsinki-News-03-2015.pdf

Helsinki is the capital city of Finland. Helsinki was one of five neighboring cities that were together designated World Design Capital 2012 Helsinki by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (Icsid) for their vision in the use of design for social, economic and environmental betterment. From the beginning of 2014, Helsinki has co-sponsored Design Driven City, a project that carries on the legacy of World Design Capital Helsinki 2012. The project is about to end but Helsinki continues to utilize design in implementing further improvements.