Meeting of the UBC Commission on Urban Planning

Kotka, 3-6 October 2007

The Commission on Urban Planning had a seminar and annual meeting in Kotka between October 3rd and 6th, 2007. The seminar theme was City Identity and the theme was approached from different points of view by lectures by researchers from the Helsinki University of Tech-nology. The lectures were about city identity building and branding and about cities inhabitants' experiences of good urban life. Again it was stated that a city's image and atmosphere is made by its inhabitants while planners' and administration's task is to create opportunities for urban life and culture.
The seminar participants had a chance to get acquainted with City of Kotka as a maritime city with rich culture of forestry, paper mills, har-bour life and international connections. An impressive experience was the visit to Sunila paper mill and housing area designed by famous ar-chitect Alvar Aalto in the 1930's. Kotka was also seen as a city of parks and green nature, where the presence of the sea can be felt every-where. Seeing the calm water surface with fog rolling in from the sea at sunset followed by an excellent dinner of roasted lamb was a perfect ending to the first day of the workshops, and gave a good boost for con-tinuation of our work for the rest of the seminar.

The seminar workshops had two themes, one about developing the original Kotka Port to the Harbour of Culture, and another about devel-oping a suburban area Karhula and its neighbouring commercial area Jumalniemi. Four different workgroups worked intensively with these questions producing good proposals for future planning. Our hosts, the city planners of Kotka, were happy with the results of the workshops and said they got plenty of good new ideas for future development of their strategically important planning projects. The seminar participants especially appreciated the excellent organisation of the seminar and hospitality of the host city, the dynamic maritime city of Kotka.

The annual meeting of the CUP focused on future activities of the Commission. The Commission aims to apply for financing for a project about Sustainable and Attractive Cities and seeks interested cities to become project partners. Also, it was announced that the CUP will have its next seminar in Aarhus, Denmark, in April 2008. The next seminars will be in Turku, Finland in autumn 2008 and in Gdansk, Poland, in spring 2009.

Sirpa Kallio
Chairperson of the Commission on Urban Planning

Photo: Seminar participants on a tour in Sunila, housing area designed by Alvar Aalto. Photography by Jussi Kautto.