Sustainability in urban planning

Recent seminar of the Commission on Urban Planning in Kotka, Finland in October 2007 discussed the theme "Sustainability and Attractiveness in Urban Planning" by studying the City Identity. The Commission sees sustainability as a complex question which can be influenced by the different means of urban planning.

The lectures of researchers from the Helsinki University of Technology, were about the city identity building and branding and about cities inhabitants' experiences of good urban life. 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. A city's history should be the basic foundation on which the identity will be built. In Kotka the strong history of maritime city with rich culture of forestry, paper mills, harbour life and international connections is the starting point. Kotka was also seen as a city of parks and green nature, with omnipresent sea.

The seminar workshops had two themes, one about developing the original Kotka Port to the Harbour of Culture, and another about developing a suburban area Karhula and its neighbouring commercial area Jumalniemi. Four different workgroups worked intensively with these questions producing good proposals for future planning.

In Kotka a special project called "Visual Cities" was announced. It is led by Mr Lars-Goran Bostrom from Umea, and it aims to find new methods of presenting urban plans to the public by using 3D-visualizing computer programmes and the internet. There are approx. 10 partners in the project. The Visual Cities Project enables urban planners around the BSR - and possibly even further - to present their ideas in an easy-to-understand way and wake conversation with city inhabitants.