Expert exchange programme: practical experience

Review of working practice in Tampere

In 2009 Tukums became a region with 10 more rural municipalities. The City Planning Department has been working on master plan for this newly made region. Ms Skrūzkalne thought it would be very usefulto havea possibility to see how other countries deal with the planning problems. She was especially interested to find a chance for professional exchange in some Scandinavian city because of its rich experience in urban planning.

Zane Skrūzkalne is an urban planner of Tukums Region Council, who worked for the city of Tampere for 4 weeks in April and May 2011.

During the UBC Commission of Urban Planning seminar in Šiaulai in October 2010, Ms Skrūzkalne met the urban planners from Tampere, i.e. Mrs Eija Muttonen-Mattila who did not refuse her a chance to work as a professional exchange staff in Tampere.

Also Tampere, i.e. Mrs Hanna Montonen (Head of City Planning Services, Architect M.Sc) and Mrs Ritva Kangasniemi (Strategic Planning Architect) had an open attitude to employing a foreign urban planning professional in the city planning office for a limited period. As the yearly budget of the Tukums municipality is limited, and sending an employee for a long business trip could be a financial problem, Ms Skrūzkalne decided to take four weeks of holidays and in that way also to take the responsibility for all the expenses. Tampere municipality offered Ms Skrūzkalne salary for the work she would do for the city.

A Nordic Council of Ministers' programme offers civil servants, also from Latvia, exchange trips to the Scandinavia. One has to go to at least to two different Scandinavian countries and the maximum time one could spend on the trip is 20 working days (10 in each country). Ms Skrūzkalne thought that during such a short period it would be difficult to discover all advantages of the Finnish planning system and to acquire good experience of local planning work organization.

Ms Skrūzkalne was especially interested in some of the projects Tampere deals with, such as the new Arena project of the famous architect Liebeskind or the housing exhibition in the Vuores area in 2012.

Staying and working for four weeks in a foreign organization gave Ms Skrūzkalne a clear image of the whole planning process and system in Finland. Also, she got a chance to compare the technical tools and equipment of Latvian and Finnish municipalities. The IT tools and solutions in the Tampere Planning Department are more advanced as the ones that are in use in Tukums, e.g. the Intranet system. It makes it very easy to communicate with one's workmates and also lightens the work of the planning process.

Last, but not least, Ms Skrūzkalne was very happy to discover that the city environment and its architectural values are important for the employees in Finland. Tampere is doing a lot to save its historical architecture and green public areas for the next generations.