Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2010 | Page 52

REAL ESTATE SPECIAL REPORT
The City of Lahti

“This is how significant
clusters come to exist.”

Winning Design

He acknowledges that as soon
as a certain “critical mass” is
achieved within any given industry regionally, this will create a “snowball effect” of sorts.

Map: STT

ti Centre and Lahti Science and
Business Park are among the
key players. Lahti also spearheads the national cleantech
cluster programme.
Karppanen acknowledges that the so-called green industries are brimming with potential.
“We want to keep developing and be one of the top players
on a European level by 2015,” he
lays down the strategy.

Another factor contributing to
the success story of Lahti is design. The City has composed
Lahti Design Manual in order
to pool together resources and
create fresh cityscape. As Helsinki won the honours for Design Capital of the World 2012,
Lahti is in fact one of the participants of the application – and
the only city coming from outside the capital region.
Since the 1950s, Lahti has
been the centre of the Finnish furniture industry; still today, approximately half of the employees in the sector work in the region. Academically speaking, the
anchor for