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Tampere University Urban Lab

Students envisioned a more sustainable Tulli

SUD students' poster exhibition in the Tullintori shopping centre
Students presented their project works of Urban Lab courses in the poster exhibition organized in the Tullintori Shopping center.

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.

The Urban Lab 1: Living with the city and Urban Lab 2: Planning Policy and Infrastructure courses were implemented from January until May 2023. In the first phase of the challenged based learning, the students engaged in the Tulli area by listening to inspirational talks and interacting with diverse stakeholders. After that the groups framed a relevant challenge they wanted to solve during the course. The challenges varied around different themes such as winter design, cultural impact, social interactions, noise and light pollution, and green spaces, taking into account social, environmental and economic sustainability.  After investigating their challenges and acting to develop a solution, every group produced a poster presentation of the outcome. The posters were showcased in May 2023 in the Tullintori Shopping center.

A selection of the posters is shown below (click a poster to view a PDF). In the coming weeks, we will be posting blogs written by the SUD students, where they reflect on their experiences working together – and with people outside of the university – to develop their ideas for the Urban Lab.

3rd space. Empowering communities through collaboration. Poster by Rowan van der Kaaden, Aino Leppiniemi, Veera Uusitalo & Oxana Ivanova.
Poster by Rowan van der Kaaden, Aino Leppiniemi, Veera Uusitalo & Oxana Ivanova.
Student friendly Tulli. Poster by Aku Puskala, Shamsur Chowdhury, Ellen Heinaro & Linh Nguyen.
Poster by Aku Puskala, Shamsur Chowdhury, Ellen Heinaro & Linh Nguyen.
Our Tulli is... Your Tulli. Poster by Teemu Heino, Malak Abdel Hafez, Aino Huujärvi & Severi Kaarnakorpi.
Poster by Teemu Heino, Malak Abdel Hafez, Aino Huujärvi & Severi Kaarnakorpi.
Lively Tulli Square. Poster by Aino Räisänen, Alexander Golovkov, Dilnaz Zhumabayeva, Reetta Pitkänen & Roosa-Maria Rinta-Säntti.
Poster by Aino Räisänen, Alexander Golovkov, Dilnaz Zhumabayeva, Reetta Pitkänen & Roosa-Maria Rinta-Säntti.

Keep reading

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.