Skanssi of the future was innovated in an international atmosphere
On Friday 6 November, 150 people gathered at Skanssi Shopping Centre in Turku to develop the Skanssi area for the future. The English-language Smart Sustainable Cities event was organised by Turku University of Applied Sciences and attracted students, experts and company representatives from both Finland and abroad.
Text: Sara Malve and Jenni Suominen
Photo: Joonas Salo
The topics of the morning ranged from designing sustainable and smart solutions for cities to the current plans for the Skanssi area. The speakers included e.g. Martijn Rietbergen from the Netherlands, who has researched sustainable cities at Hogeschool Utrecht, and City Planning Architect at the City of Turku Oscu Uurasmaa, who is involved in the planning of Skanssi. Representatives of Turku Energia and Turku University of Applied Sciences also took the floor.
During the day, the event participants got to vote on questions related to the planning of the Skanssi area. The planners also got valuable information from the opinions of over 100 people which have an impact on the planning of the Skanssi area.
The key words include zero waste, smart energy solutions and community-orientation
The afternoon was reserved for group work, which the large crew managed outstandingly. The groups led by facilitators brainstormed Skanssi with the help of creative innovation methods and to top off the event, the participants voted on the best ideas which were discussed at the end of the day.
The most popular ideas were taking zero waste into account in city planning and transforming waste into raw material. In addition, the participants brainstormed smart energy solutions and saw the Skanssi area as a good test platform for bold energy experiments, which would profile the area even more visibly as a sustainable neighbourhood. Community-orientation was also discussed and in the planning of the area, the inclusion of different target groups was considered important.
The event demonstrated that people are interested in smart, sustainable city solutions and also want to be a part of planning the city of the future.
The presentations can be viewed here: http://resurssitehokkuus.turkuamk.fi/smart-sustainable-cities/
Check the Twitter discussion here: https://twitter.com/search?q=smartsustainableturku&src=typd
The event was organised by Turku University of Applied Sciences in cooperation with the City of Turku and Skanssi Shopping Centre. The event was a part of the Carpe-Essence project, funded by the Erasmus+ programme.