Helsinki.

Better still.

For me Helsinki is the most important city in the world, and I say that with great passion.

It is a matter close to my heart that Helsinki and the people of Helsinki are doing well. We are a growing, prosperous and competitive city. We have every chance to do even better. That is why I could not imagine a more meaningful role than leading our city with the happiness of the people in Helsinki in mind.

For me, Helsinki and its politics are not about political fire talk nor identity politics.

It is about taking care of people’s affairs. It’s about good everyday life at schools, getting healthcare appointments, getting around smoothly by car, by bike, by foot as well as by public transport. We need a school path that suits every child, opportunities for leisure activities, fitness trails and a local forest. We need to push for the fairness of the tax euros collected from the people, find housing for the homeless. And ensure the fact that Helsinki is safe and offers a good life for everyone.

Deputy Mayor

For Helsinki to flourish even more, we need to be able to give the green light to new ideas and opportunities. Instead of denying, we must allow. To experiment instead of hesitating. That is the best way to keep Helsinki moving.

It would be easy to ban everything, to give the red light. But when we give the green light instead, we see action. This may sometimes mean taking risks. And that can mean we don’t always succeed. But then we fix! It is normal to sometimes make mistakes, but only a fool repeats the same mistakes over and over again.

The Mayor of Helsinki is an enabler, a promoter of urban development, with a strong focus on making life easier for the city dweller. That is why the ability to make decisions and – above all – the determination to turn decisions into action are the most important qualities of a mayor. After four years as deputy mayor, I am ready for this.

1. Helsinki, the magnet of Finland

Helsinki must believe in the future and invest in its growth. Helsinki needs new companies, talent and a bigger slice of global business. Let’s find the most effective measures to attract international companies, investment and talent to Helsinki. To do this, the Mayor should meet regularly with business representatives, work closely with Helsinki’s higher education institutions, and support Helsinki’s start-up ecosystem, with Slush and the Maria01 growth business campus as its crown jewels.

The City should have closer cooperation with tourism operators such as hotels and restaurants. We need investment in marketing Helsinki and our strengths. We need to ensure that we have arenas for major events and enough space for large congresses.

People want to live in cities because that’s where the action is. Let’s increase the amount of public art in urban spaces, such as murals, sculptures and interactive art projects. Let us bring urban sauna culture to a new level of prosperity and bring city squares and market squares to life.

Let’s ensure that small-scale events can be smoothly organised and ideas that enrich urban culture are easy to implement. A great example of this is the need to finish the development of the Suvilahti events area.

2. Wake up Helsinki city centre from its slumber

City centre vitality is made up of people and businesses. We need more residents, shoppers, workers and tourists in the city centre. We have to involve downtown businesses, restaurants and property owners closely in downtown development.

The city centre should be vibrant and welcoming as well as accessible by all modes of transport from all parts of the city. Let’s move car traffic from the streets underground and make full use of the service tunnel under the city centre. Let’s ensure that walking and cycling are pleasant and smooth.

The new blossoming of the Töölönlahti park area showed that a little goes a long way. Let’s continue to develop different parts of the city centre, such as the Senate Square and the Market Square, into experiential urban spaces. Let’s make Kaisaniemi Park attractive and safe again. To welcome residents in all seasons, we need to increase the number of pleasant winter terraces and covered outdoor spaces. We need to develop the cultural and events offering in the city centre. And accelerate the construction of an ambitious architecture and design museum, and the development of the whole South Harbour area.

We should increase the number of people living in and around the city centre by tens of thousands. This needs to be done by developing new areas such as Hernesaari and Hanasaari, and further facilitating the development and conversion of properties.

We should open up more beaches and islands and facilitate access to them through more frequent, diversified and electric water transport. We need to ensure conditions for self-directed waterborne activities such as boating, sailing and paddling.

3. Strengthening education for the young people of Helsinki

Every local school in Helsinki must live up to the reputation of Finnish schools and teachers as the best in the world. Schools in Helsinki provide the skills in reading and mathematics. Kindergartens teach basic life skills and open a pathway to school. We must be able to demand that pupils learn, but also offer them the opportunity to deepen their own interests and make use of their own strengths. Increase, not decrease, weighted-curriculum education.

Every child should be able to find a suitable day-care place close to home. We should build more kindergartens in populated areas.

More time for learning is needed in schools. We should increase the number of lessons in primary schools during the school career, especially in mother tongue.

More time for learning is needed in schools. We should increase the number of lessons in primary schools during the school career, especially in mother tongue.

Helsinki has to ensure that your child’s school path is predictable. Parents have the right to know which school their child goes to in the area. Every pupil should get the support they need. We should strengthen special education.

4. Care and help when you need it – keeping everyone involved

Helsinki supports you when life knocks and offers the best possible help when your health demands it. Access to a doctor must be smooth and treatment must be effective. Older people need access to services when they can no longer manage at home. Child protection must help in difficult situations. The city is making the welfare society a reality: a roof and support for the homeless, clean needles for drug users and food aid for the destitute. It is in the interest of all the people in Helsinki.

We have to ensure rapid access to health centres in all areas of Helsinki. Develop the health care model, where every Helsinki resident has a designated doctor in the health care system. To this end, a practitioner model will also be introduced.

We are at the forefront of developing smarter services. We are open-minded in our use of new technological solutions and digitalisation. Helsinki also takes responsibility for the functioning of HUS. We have to eliminate waiting lists in specialised care and ensure that HUS remains one of the best university hospitals in the world.

Neuvola (the child health center system) is Finland’s pride and joy when it comes to services for families with children. We need to ensure that every family has a smooth clinic visit with a familiar professional and that we address mental health problems and malaise in children and young people. Ensure access to mental health services by fully implementing the care guarantee for children and young people. Reduce the number of drug-related deaths among young people.

Everyone deserves a good and secure life at old age. Help and support must be timely and adequate. When it is not possible to live at home any more, a place in a residential home for the elderly must be available quickly and flexibly.

5. Helsinki, home for all

In every decision, we must remember that Helsinki is first and foremost the home of it’s people. Everyday life must be smooth, services must function and the city must be safe. We must not allow deprivation to worsen and segregation to become entrenched. Helsinki must not be allowed to become a problem neighbourhood.

Every neighbourhood should have a vibrant, welcoming and safe local centre. Let’s clean up run-down station areas and shopping malls. Invest in their regeneration. Ensure that basic city services, such as libraries, are easily accessible from everywhere.

We should keep streets, squares and parks tidy. Fix broken lights or benches, gym equipment or swings immediately. Make sure that ploughing and sanding is done in a way that allows wheelchairs or scooters to move around. It cannot be the case that the street is ploughed and the cycle path is brushed, but the pavement is covered in snow.

Let’s build a more beautiful city by launching the “More Beautiful Helsinki” programme, which aims to promote the construction of quality buildings that stand the test of time, rather than a grey box city. Complementary constructing must be carried out in a way that preserves the originality, spaciousness and character of neighbourhoods.

Helsinki is one of the greenest capitals in the world. Everyone in Helsinki, regardless of their neighbourhood, should have access to a jogging trail or a ski slope. Let’s make sure that the tracks, paths and nature trails are in good condition. Pets also belong in the city, we have to ensure that there are enough well-maintained dog parks throughout Helsinki.

There must also be green and greenery in the urban fabric. We have to plant more trees and other vegetation along streets and in squares. Ensure that new areas have parks and parkways. Helsinki’s most important coherent forest area is the Central Park. It is a valuable natural area that must not be encroached upon by construction.

As the capital of Finland, Helsinki must take its own responsibility for both the climate and biodiversity. Helsinki is on track to meet its carbon neutrality target for 2030. Let’s stick to it. Let’s protect our shared Baltic Sea. Stop dumping dirty snow into the sea.

Rapid growth has defined Helsinki’s development in recent years. Growth creates vitality and prosperity. It is good for the city. But growth must be controlled and managed smartly. Services must not take years to catch up with the construction.

In recent years, the city centre has expanded to the old port areas of Kalasatama, Jätkäsaari and Kruunuvuorenranta. This expansion will continue in the future. Hernesaari, Hanasaari and the Sörnäinen prison area and its surroundings are examples of areas that will create great and inspiring new surroundings in the immediate vicinity of the city centre.

In addition to urban areas, it should also be possible to live close to nature in a detached house in Helsinki. We should ensure opportunities for detached housing by preserving existing detached housing areas and planning new ones, especially in Östersundom.

6. Smoother from place A to place B in Helsinki

A person in Helsinki is a pedestrian, cyclist, public transport user and motorist, many even all in one person. All modes of transport should be based on the needs and choices of the inhabitant, not on the imperatives of politicians. It is difficult to take a child to hockey practice or to go shopping for a week’s groceries for a large family on a bicycle in winter frosts. Kudos to those who do, but not everyone can. People must be able to move smoothly by all modes of transport.

Public transport must function so well that more and more people want to choose it. Let’s make sure that ticket prices do not rise unreasonably by only making profitable investments in public transport. The tram is a great form of transport, but tram rails everywhere are not a value in themselves. We should minimise disruptions such as a complete metro blackout. We need to introduce a single-zone one-way ticket. It will also make short journeys more attractive.

Large and overlapping construction and maintenance projects have hampered the flow of all modes of transport. Let’s improve the planning of construction works. Speed up road and street works. Move traffic underground. Ensure ease and safety of walking. Establish clear rules for electric scooters and strictly enforce them.

The people of Helsinki also have the right to choose a car as their mode of transport. Let’s stop making car travel more difficult by making informed decisions. Accelerate the electrification of transport with incentives, not prohibitions. We say no to a ban on combustion engines. Let’s ensure that the charging infrastructure enables the electrification of passenger car transport by the mid 2030s and electrify the city’s own car fleet.

7. Safe Helsinki

8. Responsibility for Your money

The city must pay more attention to how it spends its money. If we get an inch of first snow overnight, there is no need to dig out the plow on Sunday for the doubled hourly rate. If one person digs, three people don’t have to stand by and watch. There is room for improvement in working methods, and the use of common sense is allowed. City money should not be easy money.

Every euro collected from the people of Helsinki must be spent responsibly and prudently. Taxes should be lowered rather than raised. We will continue to improve productivity in the city. The city must be efficient and the administration must be light. The level of investment in Helsinki must be matched to its investment capacity. We must be able to prioritise.

More and more of the money spent on services in Helsinki comes from the state. This is particularly true for social services, health care and civil protection. We have to ensure adequate and fair funding for Helsinki’s services – uncompromisingly.

Still a lot to do

When you say first yes, instead of just denying new initiatives, it changes the way you think and act. Let’s give the green light to the development of a vibrant, tolerant and equal Helsinki. Envy and scolding will not do that.

We need better cooperation between the city and the thousands of skilled actors, organizations and volunteers who make Helsinki better every day. So much can be achieved through the wideranging activities of various sports, social, health, youth and cultural organisations, neighbourhood associations, churches and other religious communities and the work of individual volunteers. This applies to the whole city, from Kontula to Kaivopuisto and from Haaga to Herttoniemi.

The mayor must be firmly rooted in the everyday concerns of inhabitants. I don’t think there should be such a small problem in a city that the mayor shouldn’t be interested in it. The mayor and the deputy mayors should exist first and foremost for the people of Helsinki. To be present at events – in all neighbourhoods – to listen, and implement tried and tested ideas.

But the mayor’s job is not just about ideas and programme papers. It’s about running the city every day and the basic elements have to be in place. There is no room for failures like the payroll mess or the data breach. The mistakes that have been made show that it matters how problems are solved in a city of the size of Helsinki.

Running a city requires fostering cooperation and finding common solutions between the different parties. There is no government and opposition in the city – cooperation is needed. I will make sure that political parties find each other better.

The future of Helsinki depends on big and small achievements. We need to succeed in both and we need to take action and make it happen. Helsinki is doing well in many aspects but there is still room and potential for improvement.

My decision-making is guided by these principles:

1. Helsinki should be a city where everyone has the freedom and opportunity to live their own lives. Let us remember in all the decision-making that Helsinki is first and foremost home to 680 000 residents.
2. For Helsinki to thrive, instead of denying, we need to allow and do more together, by getting businesses, organisations, communities and Helsinki residents to cooperate with the city to make Helsinki even better.
3. We need to raise the level of ambition in everything we do: believing in the future and investing in growth.
4. Let’s wake up the Helsinki city centre from its slumber. Helsinki deserves a city centre that is attractive and full of life.
5. Let’s strengthen education for Helsinki residents. Schools teach life skills such as, counting, reading and writing. We need to increase the number of lessons in primary schools and invest in weighted-curriculum education.
6. Let’s make sure you can get services and a doctor’s appointment when you need them. Helsinki needs to support its people when life knocks us down and to provide the best possible help when there are health issues.
7. Every neighbourhood should be vibrant and welcoming. Everyday life and services must function. We have to ensure that different areas of the city are distinctive and green – and avoid grey box city building.
8. Residents decide how to get around, not politicians. The people of Helsinki are pedestrians, cyclists, public transport users and drivers, many even all in one person.
9. Helsinki must be a safe city for every resident and visitor. This applies both to everyday life and to preparing for crises and conflicts.
10. The city must spend money wisely. Every euro collected from the the people of Helsinki must be spent responsibly and prudently.