Joensuu wants be a platform and a collaborator for smart and sustainable city development – we aim to be carbon neutral by 2025. We see smart city in a broad perspective and want to show examples of how towns can profit from using the smart city toolbox and to be sustainable as the same time. Collaboration with other towns and cities both in the Nordics and internationally is crucial for us.
Together with the University of Eastern Finland, companies and other stakeholders we have agreed on innovation platform collaboration related to forest bioeconomy and education cluster. Examples of our work are showcased in “Biocities Forum 2018”, which is hosted on 14th November. The event is realised in collaboration with European forest institute and the Smart City Expo World Congress. https://www.efi.int/biocities.
We emphasise new solutions in public investments and procurement to facilitate development. In 2018, 20% of procurement has an innovative aspect. In addition, 70% of our purchases in 2017 included green criteria. Joensuu City Challenge was an international innovation competition www.joensuu.fi/challenge . We are currently implementing the winning solutions from Copenhagen, Zurich, Barcelona and Joensuu, including technologies such as machine vision, sensor network and open data approch.
Joensuu is a university town and growing regional centre with 76,000 inhabitants. One third of Joensuu’s population is less than 30 years old and every fifth citizen is a student. The core areas of expertise are forest bioeconomy, education and pedagogic knowledge, photonics and ICT.
