The initiator of the Home Street Project was Helka, The Federation of the Associations for Helsinki City Quarters. Helka has been active in developing new channels of participation and obtaining information from the municipalities for common citizens. Together with an other citizen organization in Finland, The Association for Local Culture, and with the Helsinki University of Technology Helka launched the idea of a digital neighbourhood forum. The financing of the project comes from several public sources: The city of Helsinki: Culture Capital of Europe 2000 Project, Neighbourhood Renewal Project, The city of Vantaa, The city of Espoo, The Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities, Ministry of the Environment, Ministry of Education, Ministry of the Interior.

Goals

Towards communicative planning and administration

The main goal of the Home Street Project is to increase the inhabitant empowerment in urban planning and design. Being architects, the authors of the project in the Helsinki University of Technology are especially interested in the changes of the built environment and their impact on the everyday life of the inhabitants. The financing authorities are also conscious of the growing need for interaction between the municipality and the citizens. This first pilot project (Case Pihlajisto) develops and tests one very modern instrument, Internet, for the need of the communicative planning process and city administration.

Feeling at home in the city

"Lets draw the map together". The Home Street Project approaches the city as a network of different city quarters. By structuring the large variety of information and the knowledge of the city from the local perspective and gathering together the stakeholders of the city quarters it is a try to strengthen the grassroot local culture and urban identity.

Internet as a Participatory Channel

Today Internet is the channel that offers new and interesting op-portunities for citizen debate and participation. Internet is also a very rapidly developing sector where the data and the technology are under a constant change. The distribution of the Internet communications in the households is yet rather small. It is, however, presumable that in the future Internet will become a channel for the masses. With the establishment of new technology Internet will facilitate the access to these "arteries of knowledge".

Pihlajisto is a compact neighbourhood unit of 3000 inhabitants in the North West Helsinki built in the early 70´s. During the 90´s the inhabitants of Pihlajisto have been active and innovative in improving their housing environment.

The main target of the Home Street Project has been to create home pages for Pihlajisto, a www page entity, which gathers together all the stakeholders of Pihlajisto, as well public as private. In addition to general informatory pages the home pages of Pihlajisto also include interactive fora. Through them the inhabitants can make their comments, ask questions and offer suggestions for improvements direct to persons and municipalities in question.

The Association For Local Culture has the copyright of the common domain name of the Home Street Network which is www.suomenkotiseutuliitto.fi. The members of the association can use this address.

The Home Pages of Pihlajisto offer a varied range of regional infor-mation, links and activities as inclusively as possible. Locality is the key word.

The pages are branched under five main rubrics hereby shortly described:

Pihlajisto The presentation of the city quarters. A short history, a map of different projects in the area, children´s pages, chat channel, 3D animations of the area, a local picture and photo gallery, latest news.

Housing Everything related to housing. A real estate map of the city quarters, the pages of the housing corporations, the descriptions of the renovations, the pages of the maintenance and real estate management corporations, a notice board.

Gallery The pages of the inhabitants´ association. Information of the Association and the pages of the Pihlajisto local paper, the pages of the Youth Club, the list of the forthcoming events.

Services A Service map. Private and public services available in the area. Links to the service producers´ own home pages.

City Channels to the decision-makers and planners of the city. Contacts to the municipalities and links to the offices, some city plan applications and visualizations, an interactive "Better Pihlajisto" -forum.

The Home Street is a concept applicable in other neighbourhood units and city quarters as well. The enterprises, the citizen asso-ciations and other communities in the area can join the network with the service pages of their own. The Home Street Project is working now in Lauttasaari and Maunula, which are neighbourhoods of 8000 and 20 000 inhabitants in Helsinki. Home Street has also developed an interactive internet-assisted planning tool model for Nature Management Plan in co-operation with Public Works Department of the City of Helsinki.

In the future the home pages of the city quarters will form a Home Street Network which will open a totally new perspective for the inhabitants to their home town and neighbourhood. The home pages in the net will hopefully become a natural part of everyday life, an easy way of checking the local events guide and the topics of conversation, seeing the advertisements, and, for instance, following the process of the city plan, etc.

Home Site of Pihlajisto: http://www.suomenkotiseutuliitto.fi/pihlajisto/
Home Site of Lauttasaari: http://www.lauttasaari.org/
Home Site of Maunula: http://www.kaupunginosat.net/maunula
Nature Management Plan: http://www.hkr.hel.fi/viher/index.html?luonnonhoito.html
Picture Gallery of Home Street Project with pictures and text:

TKK/Arkkitehtiosaston kirjasto,
Pl 1300
02015 TKK

a-kirjasto@hut.fi 

Price: 70 mk

Aija Staffans, architect

Address:
Helsinki University of Technology/
Department of Architecture/ Urban Planning and Design
P.O. box 1300
02015 HUT
fax 451 3960