The City of Helsinki wants to be among the leading cities in the local implementation of global responsibility. This article describes how the Helsinki City Strategy is linked with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and how the city promotes and monitors the realisation of the goals.

The latest issue of Helsinki Quarterly covers topics ranging from population growth and urbanisation to sustainability, citizen security and environmental attitudes.

Among the tasks of the city administration is to monitor the development of Helsinki by means of statistical analysis, prognoses and research. Sometimes this requires us to delve into a variety of data sources in order to produce relevant insights and understanding about crucial urban developments.

At the end of 2016, Helsinki had 635,000 inhabitants. The population has been growing rapidly, by 8,000 annually on average in 2013–2016. This means an annual population increase of 1.3 per cent.

The present issue of Helsinki Quarterly functions as an overview of essential research topics that City of Helsinki Urban Facts has dealt with during the past year. The thematic range reveals the multiplicity of aspects related to urban life, but also of the information required by the authorities to successfully develop a city.