Tartu aims at completing an Integrated Action Plan that will set very certain next steps for their newest department at Tartu City Government – the Spatial Planning Department. Tallinn, our capital, has recently established a very similar new department and in order to initiate good future cooperation we decided to give them a visit.
At 03.11.2021 the Health & Greenspace team, the Spatial Planning Department and the closest ULG members made a local study visit to Tallinn. Tartu's team was hosted by nine urban planners and architects form Tallinn City Government who gave them a city tour to show their best public space examples and share their firsthand experiences with the strategies, planning and building processes.
Best practices from Tallin:
- Tallinn has recently given a fresh look for their main bicycle paths in the city centre by painting them bright red.
- It has been decided to keep and rebuild an abandoned railway and power lines corridor as a linear park. The corridor stretches along 9 kilometers through the entire city and some sections on the line already function as a green pathway for walking and cycling. The entire concept is built to support biodiversity, so the project is called „The Pollinator Highway“.
- In August Tallinn completed the largest new park in the Baltics – The Tondiraba park. 29 hectares of former wasteland has been carefully redesigned to fit the widest range of varieties and activities. It is important to mention that a large part of the territory was left untouched, only adding accessiblity and legibility. This way the best features of an ecologically functioning environment were put to the best public use.
Written by Anna-Liisa Unt
