6City Strategy (Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Tampere, Turku, Oulu - Finland)
6City Strategy (Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Tampere, Turku, Oulu - Finland)
The Finnish 6City Strategy focuses on achieving a sustainable urban development, and it is carried out by the six largest cities in Finland: Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Tampere, Turku, and Oulu. The strategy is part of the implementation of Finland’s Structural Fund Programme for Sustainable Growth and Jobs 2014–2020.
The cities established this strategy based on each city's needs and strengths, finding ways to collaborate in more concrete terms. Three main topics were defined: Open Participation and Customership, which focuses on how to develop city services together with citizens in an open way; Open Data and Interfaces, related to how cities are opening their data for it to be used in the creation of new innovations, development of services, and open interfaces; and Open Innovation Platforms, which focuses on how cities can open up as innovation platforms – which means cities, their infrastructures, processes, and services serve as a test bed for companies, so that they can develop new innovations together with the city and its citizens. The implementation phase of the 6City Strategy has been up and running for 3 years now, and it follows a clearly structured methodology. There is a Management Board where City Mayors and Directors of Business Development Agencies decide what will be done. And there is a Steering Group for the more practical implementation of the activities, which prepares the decisions for the high-level group. Also, there are partners from each city involved in the participation in the three main projects related to the focus areas, and groups dedicated to the development of pilot projects. To support this structure, there is a technical secretariat working in Helsinki.
The funding for the strategy implementation comes from the ITI - Integrated Territorial Investment tool. The Ministry of Trade and Economy had an open call, the 6City network applied for the funding and won the bid. Two thirds of the funding come from the European Regional Development Fund and the European Social Fund, and one third comes from the cities and the Finnish Government. The total budget of the collaboration, for the structural fund period of 2014-2020, is roughly 100 million euros.
In the process of implementing the pilot projects, the context factor is of the uttermost importance. Basic principles are copied, but then they are adapted to the local context of each city. For instance, the school innovation platform was developed in the city of Espoo and several other cities have been copying it. When they do it, they take the basic principle and adapt it to their context. It is part of the cities’ everyday work to find common solutions and to keep in mind the differences among cities, although the Finnish society is still quite homogenous.
Sources:
https://6aika.fi/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/6Aika_Brochure_2015_ENG_web.pdf
https://6aika.fi/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/6Aika-strategia_p%C3%A4ivitys_2015_EN.pdf
https://www.slideshare.net/Kuutosaika/the-six-city-strategydec-2015
Interview with a local government official at the Smart City Expo World Congress Barcelona 2017.
Improved e-Governance and citizen services;
Improved Energy management;
Improved Intelligent Transport Systems;
Improved Health for Citizens;
Improved Education and Training;
Improved supports for business.
Description of the specific objectives:
- Finland’s six largest cities aim to act as innovation and experimentation environments to strengthen national competitiveness, creating new know-how, business and jobs by utilizing openness, digitalization, and partnerships;
- Disseminate, expand and replicate the collaboration model.
Cities of Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Tampere, Turku, and Oulu; Government of Finland.
- Different cities have different approaches: get to know everyone involved in the process, to ensure that collaboration develops smoothly;
- Copy and adapt the solutions properly to each local context / reality;
- Share experiences that were not so good, because that would start the debate on more efficient ways to save money, learning from the mistakes that were made and avoiding them in future experiences.
Open Data; APIs; cleantech; creating development environments for product testing; Smart Kalasatama agile piloting of wellbeing and active everyday life (in Helsinki); Living Labs, Open Innovations, and EdTech solutions (in Espoo); smart mobility solutions, smart low-carbon energy solutions, and low temperature district heating network that allows two-way energy trade (in Turku); virtual tools in city planning, IoT and 5G networks (in Oulu); Metropolia campus area on robotics (in Vantaa).
In the scope of the project that aims to open up public data, the six cities are committed to encouraging the commercial use of their open data: https://www.databusiness.fi/en/.
The six cities have also created a network of pilot environments, which include both physical spaces and virtual ones: https://citybusiness.fi/en/. These innovation platforms allow companies and other social actors to research, and develop products and innovative solutions in real-life settings.
In terms of improving public service delivery and maintaining competitiveness, it is vital for cities to create and develop new services in co-operation with the customers, so that the solutions follow a customer and end-user approach. The six cities are currently working towards an enhanced public service structure, and a new mindset of customer service delivery for the citizens.
Since 2014, the six cities have already launched up to 26 co-operation projects with a budget of 45 million euros.
Robot buses are on trial in Helsinki, Espoo, and Tampere, an experiment that aims to solve the challenges of urban mobility based on automated road transport systems. For companies, the robot buses are a chance to develop and test their solutions in a real-life environment.
In Helsinki and Vantaa, the 2-year pilot project of Climate Streets (within the open innovation platforms focus area) aims to create the city of the future: low carbon and adapted to climate change. Some central streets of the two cities were already transformed into test-beds to develop new solutions and services, together with the residents, real estate owners, and businesses. Three agile pilots run to develop sustainable solutions with a resource-wise use of energy.
The cities of Tampere, Helsinki, Oulu, and Turku are creating real-time open interfaces to their data systems related to road and street maintenance, public transport, traffic management, and parking.
| Attachment | Size |
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| 6City Strategy 2014-2020 - brochure 2016.pdf | 321.05 KB |