Welcome to the fifth edition of City Center Watch, my monthly-ish roundup of city-center news from the Nordics and around the Baltic Sea.
This time, several of the stories are about the less visible work of keeping city centers adaptable, active and worth spending time in.
Let’s get into it.
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1. Helsinki begins a new chapter in city-center management
This is a development closely connected to my own work. Helsinki has already launched a city-center program to coordinate the municipality’s own projects and pick up useful work that might otherwise fall between them.
Alongside that, Helsingin Ydin is now getting started, with its new executive director taking up the role in October. The business-led association brings property owners and businesses together to strengthen the center’s attractiveness and take a more active role in its everyday development.
The association continues the work of Helsingin City Markkinointi under a new name. Much of that cooperation has focused on Christmas. Now the idea is to extend it throughout the year and organize it more professionally. The aim is to give people more reasons to visit, address problems quickly and improve communication between businesses, property owners and the city.
Some of the logic will be familiar from shopping-center management and business improvement districts elsewhere. Individual businesses and properties benefit from somebody paying attention to how the whole place works.
A significant development is that the City of Helsinki has joined the association. That creates a regular connection between the city’s own work and the priorities and resources of the private sector.
The ambition is that this cooperation will also lead to projects funded jointly by the city and businesses, for example to improve a public space or bring new activity to an underused site. The association could help organize participation from the business side, making it easier for interested companies and property owners to get involved.
For Helsinki, this is an opportunity to build the kind of sustained city-center cooperation already found in many successful peers. What I find most promising is the chance to make things happen that individual actors could not achieve alone.
2. Berlin moves closer to a library at Alexanderplatz
Berlin has taken another step toward a new home for its Central and Regional Library at Alexanderplatz. The city and property owner Commerz Real have signed a letter of intent to bring the library’s two existing locations together in the Galeria department-store building. The plan would give the department store a new public role, with shops and restaurants continuing alongside the library. A final agreement on the move is still needed.
For Alexanderplatz, this could add an important everyday destination. A successful city center needs a broad mixture of reasons to visit, attracting people with different interests and routines. A major public library can contribute to that mixture throughout the week.
Back home in Helsinki, Oodi offers a good example of what this can mean. The central library recorded more than 2.7 million visits in 2025. Its appeal extends across reading, working, meeting people, attending events and using shared facilities.
But one of its most valuable qualities is also very simple: you can go there just to spend time. You do not need a particular errand or an intention to buy something.
That kind of place matters in a city center. It gives people somewhere to be without spending money, and somewhere to go when the weather makes lingering outside less appealing.
That’s what makes the Alexanderplatz proposal compelling. It would not just add a library to the square, but a place where spending an unplanned hour is entirely normal. For many people, having that option can be a modest but valuable reason to come back another time.
3. Turku and Vilnius look for ways to support businesses through construction
Improving a city center usually means making everyday life there more difficult for a while. For businesses behind construction fences or separated from their regular customers, that period can be especially hard.
Turku has created a steering group bringing together different parts of the city administration to prepare for a major bridge renovation. Tuomiokirkkosilta will close for reconstruction, while nearby Auransilta will be reserved for buses, walking and cycling. The group’s task includes maintaining accessibility and city-center vitality, reducing disruption and improving communication.
Giving somebody explicit responsibility for managing these effects is a step in the right direction. The impact on businesses can easily fall between departments, with few tools available when problems emerge. A group that brings traffic planners, business development staff and construction managers into the same room has a better chance of responding.
The measures it chooses will matter, though. Turku is also investigating a free first half-hour of parking. That sounds like an unwelcome blast from the past. Turku’s earlier free-parking trials led to cars occupying spaces for longer. Effective support should be based on how customers actually arrive and what prevents them from visiting, while still supporting the longer-term goal of a center that works well for walking, cycling and public transport.
Vilnius, meanwhile, is considering a more direct form of business support. With seven Old Town streets under construction in September, local politicians have proposed relief from land and property taxes for businesses affected by prolonged works, along with easier provision of temporary signs to help customers find them. The idea is welcome, but some business owners say help should have been considered much earlier.
The approaches differ, but the common point is simple: support needs to be thought through before the fences go up, not improvised once businesses are already struggling.
4. Reykjavík reconsiders what belongs on the ground floor
Reykjavík’s environment and planning committee has decided to ease requirements for ground-floor commercial premises. Developers would have more freedom to build housing without including space for shops or services. Such space would be required only where location, demand and planning goals justify it. The city still wants active ground floors along important streets and room for local services in larger developments.
The decision touches on a dilemma that matters particularly where city centers are expanding. Shops, cafés and everyday services can only move into a neighborhood if suitable premises exist. Yet demand for retail and service space may be hard to demonstrate in a new neighborhood or on a currently quiet street. Customers may arrive gradually as the surrounding area grows. It can take decades for a particular spot to become a busy destination.
Housing developers are often primarily interested in building and selling apartments. That is certainly the case in Finland. Finding buyers or tenants for commercial premises is a different business, with different risks. Using the ground floor for more apartments or storage can therefore seem like the simpler option.
But that choice is not easily reversed. Creating commercial premises once the building is finished is no small undertaking and can require substantial investment.
The difficult part is therefore how to judge demand in places that could become much busier in the future. Planning needs to consider where shops and services may be needed as neighborhoods grow, not only what is viable today.
There is also a question of who takes responsibility for commercial space while demand develops. Could a specialist owner or operator acquire ground-floor premises across several buildings and gradually find suitable tenants? That could make it easier to provide the space without expecting every housing developer to manage the commercial side.
There is a good case for relaxing requirements where commercial space is unlikely to work. The challenge is not to lose it in places that may simply need more time.
5. Rostock gives its waterfront more room for people
When I visited Rostock this summer for City Center Watch fieldwork, a large section of the city’s waterfront was under construction. Through the fences, I could only catch glimpses of what was taking shape. That stretch of the Warnow shoreline is now open to the public.
The city has completed the roughly €22 million reconstruction of Kempowski-Ufer, combining essential quay repairs with improvements that make the waterfront more welcoming. New additions include a lower walkway and seating steps that provide places to stop and spend time by the water.
The new promenade also made me think again about the rest of Rostock’s central waterfront. What struck me during my visit was how much of it still felt underused, with parking areas and uninviting spaces occupying land that could contribute much more to city life. A wide, busy road also separates the waterfront from the center.
Rostock has a considerable amount of what might be called blue gold. Water gives people a reason to walk somewhere, meet friends or stay a little longer. Comfortable places to enjoy it, and easy access to them, are key to making the waterfront part of the center’s appeal.
Kempowski-Ufer covers only a limited section of Rostock’s extensive shoreline, but having an inviting place people can already use makes the potential for further redevelopment much easier to see.
There is another important waterfront development hanging in the balance, however. The planned Warnowbrücke now faces possible cancellation after a major cost increase. The walking and cycling bridge would connect the city harbor with Gehlsdorf across the water, improving access from the opposite shore.
Kempowski-Ufer is a good start. Losing the bridge would pull in the opposite direction, making it harder to connect the waterfront to the people and neighborhoods around it.
Also on my radar
Stockholm — redevelopment could improve a tricky city-center connection
A redevelopment proposal for Putten 15 in central Stockholm is out for public consultation. The project would expand the property toward Sveavägen and add offices, retail and restaurants. One particularly interesting feature is a new staircase linking Mäster Samuelsgatan with Sveavägen, alongside improvements around Malmskillnadsgatan. That sounds like a welcome addition, as central Stockholm has some awkward changes in level that can make moving between streets surprisingly difficult. If realized, the project could be another good example of how private redevelopment can also improve connections and public space around the building.
Tallinn — empty municipal premises could get temporary occupants
Tallinn is proposing easier temporary use of city-owned premises, including vacant spaces in the Old Town. The change would allow cultural, educational and community activities to use premises for up to six months. It would give the city a more active role as a curator, using its own property portfolio to diversify what happens in the center. That is a concrete response to the municipal-property debate I covered earlier in City Center Watch. Six months is not long, but it may be enough to give local initiatives a chance to test an idea and bring some life back to an empty space.
Gdańsk and Tampere — better rail connections extend the center’s reach
Gdańsk has secured funding and launched a construction tender for PKM Południe, a new rail link between its southern districts and the center. Tampere, meanwhile, has taken steps toward continuing and expanding its commuter rail services in the 2030s. Neither is a city-center project in the narrow sense, but quick and effective access from the surrounding city region is a cornerstone of a thriving center. Better rail connections increase the number of people who can easily reach its jobs, shops and other destinations without relying on a car.
Warsaw — a greener square gives people reasons to stay
Warsaw completed the redevelopment of Plac Powstańców in September, reopening the central square with 58 trees, extensive planting and a music garden. It is a tangible milestone in the city’s Nowe Centrum Warszawy program and showcases the direction many cities are taking to future-proof their city centers. New seating, a pergola and musical instruments give people different reasons to actually use the square, whether to meet someone, take a break or let children explore. Creating comfortable, green spaces with small invitations to linger can help turn city centers from places people simply pass through into places where they choose to spend time.
Odense and Szczecin — making room for the people who make culture
Odense’s KRFTWRK has opened in a former music conservatory, with rehearsal rooms, recording studios and a stage for around 300 people. In Szczecin, the city is preparing a former school for artists’ studios and shared workshops. These are interesting examples of anchoring creative activity in the city center, where artists and other cultural actors can easily be priced out. Both projects focus on the places where culture actually gets made. Concerts and exhibitions need rehearsal rooms, studios and workshops behind them. Keeping these functions in the center brings in a community of regular users and adds some of the intangible creative energy that makes a city center interesting in the first place.
Copenhagen — tightening the rules on shared mobility
Copenhagen wants stronger powers to regulate commercial rental bikes, after complaints about rental bikes and scooters reached record levels. The city already tightly controls shared e-scooters, with limits on numbers, designated parking areas and a large no-deployment zone covering the inner city, and now wants similar tools for bikes. Copenhagen is part of a wider shift towards more actively managed shared mobility. Helsinki introduced a licensing system in 2026, while cities such as Paris and Madrid have gone as far as removing shared rental e-scooters altogether. The question increasingly seems to be not whether to regulate these services, but how far to go.
Lübeck — retail vacancy rises, but footfall holds up
Lübeck has published a new retail monitor offering a snapshot of how its city center is faring economically, and some of the figures stand out. The vacancy rate has reached 20.5%, with almost 20,000 m² of retail space standing empty. Much of that, however, comes from the former Karstadt department store alone, which accounts for 11,400 m². Other indicators point to a more mixed picture: city-center retail turnover fell 14% in 2025, while pedestrian volumes remained at a high level and ongoing street works have not produced a visible drop in footfall.
Bergen — Fisketorget plans for life beyond the summer season
Bergen has presented a new design for Fisketorget (fish market) that would replace the square’s temporary tents with timber market buildings intended for year-round use. Plans include fish traders, fruit, vegetables and flowers, with room for smaller producers and events. What makes the project particularly interesting is its attempt to improve conditions for year-round trading without turning the market inward. If that balance works, Fisketorget can remain both a visitor attraction and an everyday part of the surrounding public space.
Discover the previous editions of City Center Watch here.
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