In this week’s episode, Monocle’s editorial director, Tyler Brûlé, joins the outgoing mayor of Helsinki, Jan Vapaavuori. They discuss the path to realising Helsinki’s potential – and why functionality is sexier than it sounds.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Over the past few weeks, the chiefs has profiled the Baltics best in class.
Today, before we take a short break, we draw things to a close with the man in charge of Helsinki's affairs, outgoing Mayor Jan Vapovori.
When Mayor Vapovori took office in the summer of 2017, Helsinki was a reliable and predictable city.
But it hadn't quite worked out how to market itself as such.
In his time in office, Mayor Vaporvori has turned this around.
And as the pandemic shifts our priorities, both as city dwellers and visitors, will Helsinki's functionality prove an even greater selling point?
Joining me today from the Finnish capital, Mayor Vapori gives us a masterclass in city strategy, taking us through the challenges and solutions to realizing Helsinki's potential and what he leaves behind for the city's successor.
I'm Tyler Berle and Zurek, and this is the Chiefs on Monocle 24.
It's wonderful to talk to you, as you know, and of course many of our listeners will know we're Helsinki fans, so we should probably get that out of the way right away.
But I want to start today with the topic of maybe perceptions and realities when we think about Helsinki.
I want to maybe rewind to when you came in office and maybe tell us a little bit about the city that you took over.
If I start with a story from the summer 2017 when I actually took office, it was at that time when the Brexit discussion was going on and became evident that some EU institutions needed to be moved from London.
And the biggest one was European Medical Agency ema.
And then the commissioner who it was opened a challenge way competition to apply for that agency.
And Helsinki was competing with something like 18 other European cities.
Then finally Amsterdam won the race and the agency went there.
But what it taught us was that the rest of the world were not that well aware of Helsinki.
So we had some surveys among the employees of the medical agency in London, asked them where they wanted to move, and Helsinki was not placed well in that competition.
At the same time we had a similar kind of survey among the European Chemical Agency, which is already located in Helsinki, the fifth biggest European institution, and asked them how they liked their life in Helsinki.
And it became evident that actually the European Chemical Agency had the personnel which were most pleased with the location of the institution among all European agencies.