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Meeting of the UBC Commission on Urban Planning

The Commission on Urban Planning had its 20th seminar and annual meeting in Linköping, Sweden in early September. Linköping, hoping to become the 4th biggest city in Sweden, is keenly interested in growing and increasing cooperation with its neighbouring city Norrköping. The future growth is naturally supposed to happen according to the principles of sustainability, and therefore also the CUP seminar discussed about increasing city density and public transportation as means of future development not only in our host town but in UBC member cities generally. Sustainability, as urban planners understand it, includes social, economic and environmental aspects of urban development. In Linköping sustainability means e.g. the growing use of public transportation and biking instead of private cars, renovating old houses to meet the requirements of sustainability and using biomass as energy source.

In the seminar there were presentations about sustainable green cities and on sustainable transport systems. The seminar programme included examples of sustainable urban planning in practice, namely Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm and Viikki in Helsinki. Also, Linköping planners described their work aimed at making the city more compact and densely built, how new development areas are being planned to get optimal effect from rapid and frequent public transport routes, and how cycling is promoted in these areas.

The seminar workshops this time tried to find ways for Linköping to be built in a sustainable, compact and attractive way. The first workshops concentrated on how to link up the present city centre on the west side of the river Stångån with a new area for city centre extension on the east side of the river. The other workshops concentrated on the question of how to physically connect the University to a housing district which is isolated from the University and from the rest of the city. In the end of the seminar our hosts told that the discussions with colleagues looking at the local problems from new points of views had given them many new, good ideas of how to proceed with the issues of urban development of Linköping. One conclusion of the seminar is that cities need to plan their future development on the terms of their inhabitants and the local business life. As the local people enjoy their living environment with all the services the city can provide them, it also increases the attractiveness of the city in the eyes of outsiders.

Sirpa Kallio
Chairperson of the UBC Commission on Urban Planning
City of Helsinki Economic and Planning Centre
tel. +358 9 310 36124
sirpa.kallio@hel.fi

 


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