"The neighbourhood is a fundamental physical and social horizon for human life."

Welcome to the Parkly Place Ideas Newsletter! Each month, we curate ideas, inspiration, and insights for those passionate about urban development, fostering more welcoming, social, and greener cities. We believe that inspiration propels individuals to reconsider the places, cities, or neighborhoods they engage with or reside in, while sharing knowledge empowers action.

Neighborhoods are more and more recognised as fundamental building blocks of cities, and their planning and development are critical for creating sustainable, inclusive, and livable urban environments.

The My Neighbourhood guide and check list published by UN-Habitat (United Nations Human Settlements Programme) inspires and empowers different stakeholders to design more human scale, connected cities. It is great to see the neighbourhood scale and concept being prioritised for urban planning! At Parkly, this guide resonates with our mission across the five city concepts, with each of our projects addressing one or more of the following goals: Compact city, Connected city, Inclusive city, Vibrant city and Resilient city. Read the guide here.

Mission Neighbourhood Book Launch & Talk in Helsinki

The Mission Neighbourhood book explores the urgent, urban issues of our time – from social infrastructure, nature and biodiversity, to mobility and urban governance – in a neighbourhood perspective. Intent on inspiring action, the book offers a rich variety of best practice projects, perspectives and hands-on advice. Christian Pagh , Director and Chief Curator of the Oslo Architecture Triennale and co-editor of the book (and who we quote on the title of the newsletter), will introduce the book’s background, concept and key insights.

Additionally, we will hear commentary from Hanna Harris , Chief Design Officer of the City of Helsinki and P?ivi Raivio , designer and co-founder of Parkly, which is one of the solutions selected in the Neighbourhood Index.

The event is held in Helsinki on the 16th of May from 5pm onwards. For more information about the book and event registration. If you are too far from Helsinki, not to worry - we'll publish the key findings of the event as well as Christian's interview soon!

Sneak peek to summer!

The upcoming months promise exciting new projects, and here's a sneak peek!

Miniforest: Together with InnoGreen we are creating a green pocket park, which brings the Finnish forest right into the heart of the city in Lahti city centre's pedestrianised area.

Children's Pop Up Spaces: Commissioned by the city of Helsinki, we have realised already three different pop up spaces for children. They continue to invite for play and movement with some added features and illustrations by Traffic Design . In our recent study, children and young people stated that the space had increased sense of safety and place attractiveness significantly.

Green way finding route: Parkly-modules will form a green route from the underground station towards a museum through the business improvement district WeAreWaterloo Business Improvement District (BID) in London.

...and more: we will transform grey office park yards into vibrant meeting areas, continue our work on tactical urbanism projects, and implement phased projects as part of urban regeneration efforts.

Parkly awarded the Design From Finland Mark

Design, in many of its discplines is deeply rooted in Parkly’s mission, concept and products. We advocate many fields of design from design thinking, circular design, urban design, industrial design to graphic design - and beyond. Parkly’s co-founders are design professionals - and design is integrated in our company’s culture also through the Makers Studio concept which initiates creative design collaborations.The Design from Finland mark, awarded by jury consisting of design professionals, indicates the origin of unique Finnish design and marks the innovative companies which utilise design in a fundamental way. Read more about our mission and how our unique design based on circular economy ensures sustainability.

Playful cities inspire interaction

And here's still an inspiring place story we wish to share! Parkly's co-founders P?ivi Raivio and Daniel Bumann have a long background in urban design, placemaking and spatial art. Recently the duo RaivioBumann was invited to take part in the Concentrico festival by the chief curator Javier Pe?a Ibá?ez . The installation Basic Forms (of Urban Life) turned a square outside the local library into playful square, with daily changing pattern. Read more about the work here.

The installation embodies the same philosophy as Parkly's urban furniture system: multifunctional, basic shapes that accommodate various uses, and flexibility to adapt to our ever-changing cities! We're pleased to announce that the installation will continue to be in use even after the festival, contributing to the future evolution of urban spaces.

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