24.05.2022

Helsinki City Strategy (2021-2025): Methods and solutions for aligning differing strategy priorities

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Akordi assisted the city of Helsinki in aligning conflicting interests in the city strategy. The interests in question were city growth, biodiversity, and local recreational areas.

Helsinki’s new city strategy (2021-2025), titled ‘A Place of Growth’, places city growth as one of the main goals, and one way to accomplish this is constructing more housing. However, the strategy also states that no new construction shall take place at the city’s most pristine nature sites, biodiversity is protected and increased, and that the significance of local nature is increased in planning. The Helsinki Urban Environment division has identified these conflicting interests to be very challenging to reconcile. The division asked Akordi to join the work in building consensus within the division on how the city’s goals for growth can be reached without compromising the sustainability goals.

Akordi’s role as an external neutral partner was to:

  • assist the Urban Environment Division’s management in figuring out and structuring key issues,
  • identify any possible tensions within the unit that might impact the planning and to
  • create a forum where the management can build consensus and contemplate, and to draft and refine aims.

The work was done in summer 2022, and it included two stakeholder workshops. One for the Urban Environment Divisions management and one for its staff.

Juha-Pekka Turunen
Juha-Pekka Turunen
Senior Mediator
juha-pekka@akordi.fi
+358 40 7294842