It is much easier to point out and talk about negative things

in life, so today’s presentation by Anna Broberg (researcher

at Aalto University) with the topic of “Urban happiness” was

a very pleasant surprise.  It is good to see that in urban planning of Helsinki it is becoming more important to think about immaterial values like the wellbeing of citizens, as we heard from the presentation.

 

The research showed interesting results about Helsinki how people can also enjoy living in quite “packed” areas of the

city so the myth of Finns wanting to live in cottage by a lake was actually broken (or busted J!). A park in the middle of block of flats was enough to bring the feeling of nature for the city dwellers, and for example the closeness of services and transportation were important sources of urban happiness. The team of researchers has created special

software called soft-GIS to help to collect and analyze immaterial values of urban spaces and the city. 

                                       

Helsinki is a growing city that has just reached the metropolitan level of population. In places like this it is very important and handy to use applications like soft-GIS to know about peoples preferences.

The tools and methods presented were really inspiring since some of them were simple enough to be used not only by specialists. One simple method is for example to ask the citizens to rank statements concerning social life or appearance of the environment in positive and negative. A short research about people´s preferences like this could be done easily in a neighborhood and the results could influence the decision makers not only to start developing the place but to do it in a way how people want it.