The second round of Helsinki's participatory budjeting OmaStadi, implemented almost entirely digitally, demonstrated that a more diverse group of residents was involved than in the first round.

What is multi-local life, and what does it imply for Helsinki and the Helsinki Region in future? Is the coronavirus pandemic causing a flight from cities, as some commentators have suggested?

Jobs are lost to automation all over the world, but new jobs and occupations are also created through technology. The authors of this article estimate that around 22 per cent of all jobs in Helsinki are at high risk to be replaced by 2030.

Because of international mobility, Helsinki, the capital of Finland, has become increasingly multi-ethnic and multi-cultural. Therefore, the integration of immigrants and their descendants has also grown in importance. While Finnish integration policy has been lauded as one of the best in its class, in actual life it is rarely what it looks like on paper.

Helsinki residents consume more alcohol on average than people in the rest of Finland, as has been evidenced in various studies. Much less is known about non-drinkers in Helsinki, although they make up 14 per cent of the city population.

In the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, 2019 turned out to be a record year in housing production. A total of 16,056 dwellings were completed in the three big cities of the metro area – Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa – a number clearly exceeding any previous annual output.

The Helsinki City Strategy stresses the importance of reducing population differentiation at the neighbourhood level. This framing is consistent with most discussions on urban segregation, concerned largely with the static distribution of different population groups in residential space. However, if one of the goals in preventing segregation is to promote integration, and ensure equity of access and outcome between population groups, then only considering where people live is far too limited an approach.

Putting together a coordinated effort to respond to a sudden crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic with data proved to be neither easy nor seamless. The lessons learned from the process will be a valuable asset as we develop our monitoring and information systems further.

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.

Helsinki Quarterly interviewed researcher Miika Norppa, whose doctoral thesis covers the development of Helsinki’s central areas from 1550 up to the present day. In the past few decades, the main focus of planners has returned to the inner city after a period of suburban development.

Finland's population growth has slowed down to nearly record-low levels. In the Helsinki Region, growth has meanwhile remained rapid. In all of Finland, population is expected to grow until 2035, but in the capital region the growth is set to continue until the end of the current projection period in 2050.

The summer of 2018 was exceptionally hot in Finland. Also in Helsinki, an increasing number of people became acutely aware of climate change. After the summer, the attention was turned more towards the City: what is Helsinki doing to mitigate climate change?

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

Cities have adopted an active role in influencing global environmental issues and climate change. Consequently, the opinions of city residents and their consumption patterns and choices are important as cities steer their activities in a more ecological direction.

A new security survey shows that the residents of Helsinki consider their own neighbourhood, the city centre and public transport safer than in any previous similar study. This article looks at the respondents’ assessments of the current safety situation as well as its development during the past three years.

A city is a community formed by city residents, and the role of the city administration is to answer their needs and ensure their conditions for success. Changes in the community and its operational environment require the administration to adapt to the new circumstances. In the present article, we will locate areas of activity on which cities of the Helsinki metropolitan area should considering focussing in order to manage their relationship with the urban activists in an ideal way.

Since the 1990s, children’s independent mobility in the city has been a lively topic of research. By international comparison, children in Finland still move fairly independently. However, recent decades have seen evidence of decreasing autonomy in children’s mobility. The article looks at Helsinki from the 1940s up until the present day and discusses how a changing city influences the spontaneous mobility of children.

For the first time in fifty years, a considerable part of the growth in the child population of Helsinki occurs in the existing housing stock and infill areas. Today, there are more children in the city than at any time since the mid-1970s. This article looks at the development of the number and proportion of 0–15-year-olds in Helsinki’s population between 1962 and 2017.

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.

The opening of the Helsinki’s western metro line finally took place in November 2017, over a year after the latest planned opening date. Despite this, the new metro line has already influenced the housing market around its stations for several years.