The City of Espoo

Espoo is the second-largest city in Finland with almost 300,000 residents, and the city’s population grows by 3,000–5,000 people each year. Espoo is home to highly educated, multicultural residents, high-quality education, research and innovation as well as world-class businesses. Aalto University and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland are located in Espoo, and almost half of the Helsinki Stock Exchange turnover comes from companies based in Espoo. These companies include Nokia, Kone and Fortum. Espoo is known as the best Nordic city for start-ups and growth companies. Many Finnish unicorns started in Espoo. These growth companies valued at over one billion dollars include MySQL, Supercell and Rovio. 

According to the city’s strategy, known as the Espoo Story, Espoo is a network city with five urban centres. Espoo is a responsible and humane pioneer city and a good place for everybody to live, learn, work and be an entrepreneur. In Espoo, residents can truly make a difference. We develop Espoo in an economically, environmentally, socially and culturally sustainable manner.  We promote the green transition and digitalisation together with local residents, businesses and scientific organisations. With the help of digitalisation, we will increase the openness of our activities, develop new platform solutions and speed up service processes. Sustainable and intelligent urban solutions will make daily life and mobility smoother. Espoo will actively combat climate change, strengthen biodiversity and achieve carbon neutrality by 2030.

We develop our services based on a culture of experimentation and co-creation. This means that Espoo opens its doors and invites all stakeholders of municipal services from companies to associations, research institutions and residents to refine old services and innovate new ones together – in line with the Make with Espoo concept. Through co-creation and open-minded experiments, we promote wellbeing, job creation, new expertise and vitality in Espoo and the entire Finland. Our partners, Aalto University, VTT and businesses in particular, play a key role as Espoo strengthens its position as the internationally most interesting and attractive centre of innovation in Northern Europe in terms of competence, science, art and economy.