Helsinki Summer Streets
A shared mandate for a car-light summer street.
The City of Helsinki launched an initiative with an AI co-planning tool to reimagine public spaces, aiming to convert three central streets into car-free pedestrian zones for the summer. Moving away from conventional, top-down planning, the City leveraged the generative AI platform to empower specific local key groups. Through collaborative workshops, citizens and entrepreneurs became the architects of their own streets.
Context
Client
City of Helsinki
Location
Helsinki, Finland 🇫🇮
Year
2023
Every year, the City of Helsinki undertakes the ambitious project of converting several downtown streets into welcoming pedestrian oases. These seasonal transformations are designed to enhance the urban experience by introducing lush greenery, comfortable resting spots, and expansive open areas for public gathering. Historically, a single traditional architectural firm managed the entire design and implementation process.
However, for the 2023 Summer Streets initiative, the city committed to a paradigm shift. They sought to cultivate an inclusive environment by actively engaging key groups across a comprehensive demographic spectrum – ensuring that the voices of women, children, the elderly, and persons with disabilities were central to the planning phase. To realize this vision, Helsinki required an accessible, intuitive solution. They needed a platform that could completely remove the technical barriers typically associated with urban design, allowing everyday citizens to meaningfully participate, imagine, and breathe life into their unique visions for the city’s shared spaces.
Engagement method
To facilitate this highly inclusive design methodology, the project brought together Helsinki’s municipal planners and leading engineering and design consultancies, WSP and Sweco. Together, they orchestrated two focused community engagement workshops in January 2023. These events were specifically tailored to capture the insights of two vital community pillars: a vibrant cohort of local business owners and a carefully selected, diverse Citizen Committee comprising 20 members.
The interactive sessions were structured as immersive, two-hour collaborative experiences. Attendees were divided into intimate, moderator-guided groups of four to five individuals to encourage deep discussion and the free flow of ideas. Their primary objective was to brainstorm and generate a wide array of alternative visions for predetermined sections of the summer pedestrian zones.
By utilizing the platform, participants were able to instantly translate their verbal ideas into photorealistic visual depictions. Following this dynamic co-creation phase, the groups participated in a democratic voting process to identify and shortlist the most compelling future scenarios. The workshops ultimately culminated in an open, constructive dialogue, allowing community members, city planners, and architects to jointly evaluate the practicality, potential, and real-world viability of the proposed visualizations.
Impact
The transformation of Helsinki’s central streets during the summer of 2023 shows the effect of participatory urban design. By utilizing the tool, the City of Helsinki redesigned a physical space and also changed the planning process to be collaborative and democratic.
The workshops provided an innovative platform that enabled everyday residents and local business owners to become active creators of their urban environment. The ability to generate realistic visualizations on the spot fostered a shared understanding among all stakeholders, bridging the gap between community desires and architectural feasibility.
Ultimately, the direct integration of these citizen-generated ideas and feedback into the final, built street designs showcased a practical application of participatory planning. The realization of workshop concepts into tangible urban realities not only enhanced the cityscape but also reinforced the community’s trust in inclusive, collaborative city development.
Delivered together with project partners.