Commission on Urban Planning met in Tartu

Planning the history and the future in consonance

In September 2011 the Commission on Urban Planning held a successful seminar in Tartu. More than 60 planners found their way to Tartu.

The seminar was arranged accordingly to the well tested template: relevant local and external speakers and guides, intensive workshops, common visits to workshop areas and socializing in the evening.

Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia. It is often considered to be the intellectual and cultural hub of Estonia, because it hosts the oldest university in the country. The city is located almost 200 km south east of Tallinn on the main road between Riga and St. Petersburg.

The history of Tartu is long and full of turbulence. But the last 20 years is probably the time when the most dynamic changes have taken place. Modernization of the university, many new buildings in the city centre and in the suburbs, new roads, heavy traffic and big changes in the retail structure made their significant marks. Today, the city centre is in danger of losing its public life.

Tartu invited the planners from the Commission to discuss and to come up with good ideas on how to strengthen the city centre.

The speakers from Sweden and Denmark put the retail structure in focus. But also the quality of buildings, parks and pedestrian areas, the location of cultural facilities and the routes for bicycling, jog- ging, etc. were given a considerable attention. Two workshop areas were appointed by city: the historical centre and the new centre with the central bus station, one of the new shopping centres. The AhHaa Centre and the old flower and vegetable market. The problems were basically identified as a lack of shops and public life in the streets and parks in the old centre, and too many cars and a lack of attractive public space in the new centre. Furthermore, the connections for light traffic between the two centres were insufficient and dominated by heavy traffic.

On Wednesday morning four workshop groups presented their results - all in all approximately 40 slides with analysis, key-values, recommendations and drawings. Now the next steps are up to the local planners and politicians.

No matter how it goes, 60 participants managed to exchange ideas across the Baltic Sea and that alone is a wonderful completion of the UBC mission.

The seminar was also a good-bye to the Commission's chairman through-out the last years, Sirpa Kallio from Helsinki. Niels-Peter Mohr, Århus will hold this position in her place.