Event – Summer School 2008 Finland, 11-23 August 2008
Regenerating Urban Core 
The 14th YTK/IFHP Urban Planning and Design Summer School was held in Finland in August 2008. The annual course is organised by the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (YTK) in the Helsinki University of Technology (TKK) in cooperation with IFHP. This year the summer school hosted 34 students and young professionals of 18 nationalities. Educational background of the participants varied from architecture to urban planning and further to social sciences making the course multi-disciplinary. Seven of the participants were postgraduate students which brought also theoretical insight to the project works.
Regenerating Urban Core
The theme of this year’s course was “Regenerating Urban Core”. How to support vibrancy without losing local identity of urban cores? How can culture become a key factor in regeneration? What is the role of housing in the urban cores? For whom should urban cores be redeveloped? These were some of the questions the students tackled in their project proposals. Workshops took place in the cities of Turku and Jyväskylä where participants worked on real town planning issues. In Turku the task was to analyse pedestrian and bicycle traffic in the city centre and propose new innovative ways to vitalise the centre. In Jyväskylä participants created plans for a mixed-use block at the edge of the city centre.
Practice
As in the previous years, the best ideas of the projects will be discussed and possibly applied into practise when the planning of the project areas begins in the workshop cities. In addition, in Turku further cooperation in terms of utilising the results of the last three summer school workshops is discussed. One of the goals is to develop projects for the year 2011 when Turku will be the European Capital of Culture.
All the proposals produced in the summer school 2008 will be presented in a book to be published later this year. The publication also contains articles and essays on regeneration written by some of the participants of the course. The aim is to gain theoretical understanding on the theme as well as to create a theoretical framework for the project works.
Next Summer School
The preparations of the Summer School 2009 are already well under way. The concept of the course will remain the same and the YTK/IFHP Urban Planning and Design Summer School will look forward to receiving, again, numerous applications as well as continuing fruitful cooperation with Turku and Jyväskylä.
Publication
The Summer School provides the participants with an opportunity to get their writings published in an official publication. The first half of the annual report consists of articles and essays written by the participants. This chapter outlines the theme of the course from a theoretical point of view. The second part of the report presents summaries of the projects produced in the workshops.
Edition 2007 is available as download (21 Mb).
More information:
Last Updated @ Wednesday, 12 November 2008