Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2015 | Page 12

“Helsinki is also generally considered
pretty advanced with respect to embracing
environmental sustainability in its buildings
and energy portfolio as well as the use of
renewable diesel for its public transportation system,” adds Cohen.

Start Me Up
Listening to Cohen, it seems that everything
in Helsinki is just about perfect and getting better – but there must be some weaknesses, too. What does Helsinki need to concentrate more in? – Cohen responds that
among the EU leaders, Helsinki is behind
in two things: contributing to a smart economy and improving smart transportation use
and options for citizens.
“For me, a key measure for a smart
economy is the rate of new entrepreneurial
startups in a region,” Cohen says, pointing
out that cities like Berlin, London and Barcelona seem to be doing better in this arena.
With respect to transport, he looks at the use
of public transit, availability of shared transit options (bike and car) and of course nonmotorised transit (pedestrian and cycling)
– and sees Helsinki gaining ground in this
department.
“Helsinki is progressing in the area of
promoting the use of electric vehicles in the
city, which to me is an important driver of

smart mobility. Also the new personalised
bus service, Kutsuplus, is a good example of
municipal innovation in transit which could
be adopted in other smart cities around the
world.”

Beyond Helsinki
Boyd Cohen seems to know Helsinki very
well indeed, considering that he’s only visited the city once. Having finished his Master’s Degree at the Copenhagen Business
School in 1995, he is a big fan of the Nordics, however – and the Nordic capitals keep
placing well in his smart city rankings.
But how about the Second Cities of
Finland – for instance Espoo, Turku, Tampere and Oulu? Cohen confesses that he is
not too familiar with these smaller wouldbe smart cities, since most of his research
focuses on global, capital cities.
There are two reasons for this: first,
there are simply too many cities in the world
to study, so one has to focus on a smaller
subset. Secondly, Cohen believes the trends
which are generating such interest in sma