The CUP 10^th Anniversary Seminar in Turku

The Commission on Urban Planning had its 10^th anniversary seminar "Cultural Planning - Urban DNA" on 24-27 September in Forum Marinum, maritime museum and information centre in Turku. The first CUP seminar was in Malmö in October 1998. Since that time the CUP has gone through changes, being now a constantly expanding network of urban planners from all around the Baltic Sea.

The Turku seminar was festive not only because of the anniversary. The seminar theme was connected to the fact that Turku will be European Cultural Capital in 2011 together with Tallinn. Therefore, the seminar workshops concentrated on analysing the Urban DNA of our host town using a very useful method that was introduced by Mrs Lia Ghiraldi of Noema Research and Planning from London. The seminar participants were shown Turku from many sides and every workshop then noted that Turku is a city of contrasts with old and new buildings, mixing 18^th century architecture with very modern new houses - a good example was the brand new enlargement of the Turku Main Library - and also with a duality of different generations.

The Turku seminar was also the annual meeting of the Commission. The city of Malmö is the Lead Partner in a project application called Visual Cities made to the Interreg BSR. The CUP is waiting for the results of the project evaluations at the end of October 2008, because EU financing would help studying the creation of virtual models of city plans and also to study more the theme of Sustainable and Attractive Cities. It was agreed that even if the application for project financing wouldn't succeed, the Commission will continue the seminars on the themes mentioned before. The "ABC Method" of working together and talking openly about good and bad experiences has proved to be very effective and interesting. The Commission on Urban Planning will have its next seminar in Gdansk on 2-4 April 2009.