The vision of the City of Espoo it to be a good place to live, learn, work and do business in, where citizens can fulfil their potential and participate in developing their community.
Like many fellow Educating cities, we work towards our vision challenged and pushed forward by demographic and socio-economic changes alongside urbanization and diminishing resources. We believe that the best way to answer to these crucial challenges is by pro-actively building a sustainable city that values learning in all fields of society.
By providing learning opportunities and resources, Espoo encourages its citizens to be competent and creative residents who can succeed in an uncertain future with the help of learning spirit. We provide everyone with the opportunity to learn throughout life, we develop our learning city in partnership collaboration and we invest in education development. As a result of our continuing investments in lifelong learning, we were awarded by UNESCO as a pioneering Learning City in 2015.
Espoo has recently also been recognized as the most sustainable city in Eu-rope, socially, ecologically and economically. We are strongly committed to the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and we were the first Finnish city to join the Society’s Commitment to Sustainable Development in 2015. We build a sustainable future on a wide front, together with the residents and near their daily lives. All initiatives in which we include the voices of the residents are successful – whether it involves planning a learning center or building a garden.
With more than half of the world’s population living in cities now, and an estimated 70 % by 2050, cities are the change-makers of the future. In Espoo we think we are on the right path of change-making when we invest in building a sustainable educating city together with our residents, companies, associations and communities.