The present issue of Helsinki Quarterly sets out to explore the history of Helsinki – urban actors, events, spaces and processes – from a transnational, comparative perspective. By doing so, it also takes the reader to several urban spaces in Helsinki, which even today display a multilayered, transnational past.

The development between 1880 and 1950 changed the use of urban areas in European metropolises. Monumental new city halls were central elements in Scandinavian capital cities.

Ports and industries are at the core of the urban history of Helsinki. Industrialization and the construction of the major port at the end of the nineteenth century ensured Helsinki a solid economy for developing a modern and innovative city.

The Northern Baltic is the best place in the world for marine archaeology for one reason: the wrecks are often in a good shape, because there is no teredo navalis, or shipworm, in this sea area.

This article analyses and explains how the creation and role of public green space in Helsinki has evolved since the 1990s and contrasts this development with that of London.

The establishment of the EAUH in 1989 built on two previous initiatives in urban history.

Town planning was used in Helsinki and similar capitals of emerging independent states to redefine the city and the nation in relation to the rapidly changing world

Some of the most distinguished contemporary Finnish writers, such as Kjell Westö, are urban writers. In the first decades of the twentieth century Toivo Tarvas was one of the very few Helsinki-born writers. The works of this little-known author are especially interesting for urban historians, because they offer observations of a city undergoing profound changes.

Foreign languages have been spoken in the streets of Helsinki throughout the past 450 years. The first migrants came mainly from present-day Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, while the 19th century saw the arrival of a large number of Russian traders and entrepreneurs.

From the end of the nineteenth century to the 1960s, the city officials of Helsinki made a great number of study tours and visits to other European cities to learn about the latest innovations in public infrastructure.