The cities of Helsinki, Espoo, Tampere and Vantaa managed to reconcile their views on land use planning models in the experimental project. The new working methods make it easier to anticipate the land-related costs in town planning and construction. This makes savings possible and improves convenience. In future, the same models can also be applied in the whole country.

What kind of problem was the project trying to solve?

Soil conditions, land use and town planning play an important role in the national economy. However, the source data used at the initial stage of land use planning is usually lacking and there are no practical systems for estimating the land-related costs of different solutions. In future, the new land use planning method will be an easy way to estimate and compare the costs of different solutions in land use planning.

Objective: Making the costs of land use planning visible

The solution was aimed at making the land-related costs visible to land use planners and infrastructure designers. This provides significant social benefits in the whole country.

• The costs of town planning and infrastructure design will become more predictable
• Life cycle costs for the built environment will be reduced
• Working hours and resources will be saved
• Planning/design will be easier
• The number of errors and the level of costs will fall
• Decision-making will be faster and better
• Environmental and climate impacts will be reduced
• The need for materials in foundation construction will decline
• Considerable savings will be reached in foundation construction costs

What was done in the experiment?

The topics experimented with were drawing up a constructibility model, acquisition of source data, harmonisation, cost accounting and testing new reference methods. In addition, different ways of visualising cost data based on the purpose of the plan were piloted and feedback was collected from end users.

Who benefits?

Professionals and decision-makers engaged in land use planning and city planning. The savings and smoother processes benefit the entire society widely.

What were the outcomes of the experiment?

The experiment produced a joint view of four large cities on the constructibility classifications for the soil map and on the data structure created when the soil information is presented as a so-called grid.

At the same time, a proposal for a uniform way to structure and present constructibility data was created. The project proposes that these results be standardised as national practices.

In addition, the project produced a proposal for a machine-readable data model structure for plan information, especially for city plan information, and investigated its relation to the real estate code and the permanent building code. The work to standardise the information structure of the plan model continues in the Ministry of the Environment and in another KIRA-digi experiment lead by the City of Helsinki.

The publication of standardised soil, constructibility and plan data as an interface with a standard format (WFS) enables versatile use of the data in information services that benefit public and private operators and provide significant added value in society.