Welcome to From Rurban to Urban – a blog about the past, present and future of Finnish cities and urban life.
I’m Timo Hämäläinen, an urban geographer and urbanist from Helsinki, and with this blog I discuss urbanism and explore the urban environment in Finland and elsewhere in the world. I started this independent project in 2012 as an outlet for widening the conversation around cities with more culture-minded and urbanistic aspects. I felt (and still do) that here in Finland not enough attention is given to what our urban environment essentially looks and feels like – or how it functions as a whole. We settle for what gets done.
I believe we should and could do so much better. Idealistically, I share a lot of views with the New Urbanist movement which I got acquainted with during a semester spent studying at San Diego State University. Our common concern is that during the past 60-70 years we’ve sadly lost just about all of our skill and vision to create urban spaces worth caring about.
The urban habitat is our future and we need to seek ways of making it as good as we can. I want to be a part of this movement and this blog is a key element in my goal to try to make a difference.
I write in English because I enjoy it and it enables non-Finnish speakers to get some sense of what’s happening with cities in Finland. I am not a native speaker, so please forgive all language mistakes you might (or already have) me(e)t.
My writing and commentary have been featured in medias around the world and this blog has been featured among “the best city blogs around the world” by Guardian Cities. You can also read more about me in a feature by Helsingin Sanomat (in Finnish) and Helsinki Times (in English).
I also help cities become better places in my professional life. I work as a consultant in urban policy, both independently and with MDI, and, as of spring 2019, I also work with enlivening urban waterfronts with floating outdoor pools & urban culture hubs with the good people at Nordic Urban.
From 2021 to 2023 I have been collaborating with three other organizations on collecting and disseminating European community mapping practices in the Erasmus-funded MAXICO project (Maps of experiences for thriving communities). The aim is to generate a resource of methods and tools that can inspire organizations and educators to spark local conversations to improve neighborhoods. The results will be soon made available on an online platform and in an ebook.
Please feel free to contact me for discussing urban matters in Finland, professional collaboration proposals, or topics to write about in the future.
Find me on Twitter and Instagram or connect with me on LinkedIn.
All photos and writing are my own unless stated otherwise. The blog’s content may be used freely for non-commercial blog posting, forum posting and similar publishing platforms with proper crediting. Please contact me for commercial use permissions.
Comments on this site are moderated to avoid spam so please be patient when commenting for the first time.
The blog banner photo is by Joneikifi from Wikimedia Commons.
This page was updated on September 18 2020.
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