At least if you live in Finland, you must have noticed the “cultural city” fever that has taken Finland by storm. This year the city of Turku is one of two European capitals of culture (the other one is Tallinn just across the Gulf of Finland) and in 2012 Helsinki will be the World Design Capital.
Both “culture city” initiatives are highly events focused. With a lot of events and venues, the word “mobile” takes on a whole new meaning. Accessing the stuff by phone could be an option, but obviously you want to get to the events to really get the most out of them. Meaning you need to be “mobile”.
Even thought Finland has a very high penetration of cars, the city centers of both Turku and Helsinki are best travelled on foot or on a bus. One can only hope that public transport between events and venues is on the agendas of the two cities.
One model to provide visitor and inhabitant mobility alike are the Connective Corridor projects in the US. Personally I think the one in Syracuse, NY looks very nice as it focuses on culture and education. Great concept to copy to create personal mobility to art! And the bus looks great, doesn’t it!
And while waiting for cultural corridors: If you are in Helsinki and want to move easily between various places, the Helsinki Region Traffic has a very good mobile journey planner to find how to get from A to B using public transport. Bookmark it for your next visit to Helsinki!
The 3 Inch Canvas 