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Tampere University Urban Lab

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Collaborating with stakeholders

Urban Lab is a project-based course included to the Sustainable Urban Development program at Tampere University. In this course, we concentrated on engaging with Tulli area in Tampere city center and its development. In the first part of the course multiple stakeholders gave us presentations on their perspectives to the Tulli area. Later, we kept in contact with the stakeholders, as we had a chance to ask questions and interview some of them as part of our data collection for our project work. Having experts from different fields as part of our course was certainly one of its most fruitful elements. However, it was a challenge for us students to try and combine all the perspectives that the stakeholders presented, especially as they were not always aligned with one another. In this blog post, I want to reflect on what I learnt about interacting with stakeholders and dealing with their different perspectives and include some tips for my future self in similar collaborations.

Embracing Change: Discovering New Angles in Project Work

Why should we change our way of doing things, when the current has been witnessed to work? As humans, we often find solace in our comfort zones, and we feel hesitant to expand beyond what we know. Especially in project work, where there’s a lot of work that must be done along the way, trying a new method, or working style can feel like an unnecessary addition to the load. At least I have thought this. However, during Urban Lab 2, a project-based course of the Sustainable Urban Development -program at Tampere University, we were handed multiple opportunities to expand our methods, and I feel like I ended up getting much more growth not only in my way of working a project, but also how I think about new challenges. Let me share some bits of the journey of reevaluating working styles and embracing new ways of presenting work.

What about green space?

The word “urban development” could create the picture of a city full of high buildings and traffic on roads. Many can think that is the same as concrete jungles. Even though individuals with some background knowledge of Sustainable Urban Development understand that it does not always mean this, people who hear about urban development for the first time in their lives could have different opinions on the meaning of the urban city.

Imagining the future of urban lighting

Urban Lab 2: Planning Policy and Infrastructure, is a challenge-based course that is part of the Sustainable Urban Development (SUD) program at Tampere University. For the implementation of the course, the Tulli district acted as the living lab; a dismissed urban area next to the central railway station in Tampere. The course excited me in the battle against light pollution while our group project aimed to identify policy objectives for addressing urban light and noise pollution using our collective expertise in social science and technology. Unfortunately, we had no members from administrative science stream of SUD, but that didn’t hold us back

Students envisioned a more sustainable Tulli

Challenge based learning and transdisciplinary teaching in two Urban Lab courses are core elements in the Bachelor's degree programme in Sustainable Urban Development (SUD) at Tampere University. In spring 2023, the Tulli area in the heart of Tampere acted as an urban lab, offering a great opportunity for the students to solve real life challenges in close cooperation with the stakeholders of the area. Students’ visions were communicated to the public in a poster exhibition in the Tullintori Shopping center.

Local Cooperation A Key to Successful Nature Preservation on Ireland's West Coast

In April, we embarked on a unique opportunity to broaden our horizons and traveled to the west coast of Ireland. Our weeklong field trip took us to the County of Mayo, where we had the chance to explore captivating landscapes and learn about environmental change and its drivers, as well as the challenges of environmental management and climate change. Throughout our journey, we gained a deeper understanding of the dynamics of human-nature interaction and the environmental and societal challenges.

Skateboarding in urban environments: the value of skateparks

Skateboarding is one of the most controversial topics in urban planning circles. This year’s Urban Studies Conference in Tampere was launched with a pre-excursion to the Hiedanranta neighbourhood with an emphasis on skatepark development. The Kenneli DIY skatepark is a magnet for young people searching for a community, and the initiators have hired unemployed youth that are interested in skateboarding, thus contributing to the social life of Hiedanranta. Nevertheless, both planners and city dwellers are discussing the benefits and harms of developing skateboarding in urban environments.

Islands, bubbles and ecosystems – Why the boundaries of urban studies should be porous?

Urban studies is a multidisciplinary field that combines concepts, theories and research methods from social sciences, geography, history, architecture, economics, and many other disciplines. Therefore, the Finnish Urban Studies Conference, held in Tampere on April 28-29, 2020, was a natural setting for holding a panel discussion on inter- and multidisciplinary. The theme of the conference was Sustainable cities, which pointed to a transformation that requires systems thinking, as well as combining the perspectives of multiple disciplines. As a first-year student of sustainable urban development, I got a lot of food for thought from the discussion.