Last week, the Digital Geography Lab organised a workshop for the European Researchers’ Night (Tutkijöiden Yö), one of only five to be hosted by the University of Helsinki’s evening programme at the Helsinki Observatory in the city centre.

At our workshop, we engaged visitors with concepts around urban accessibility, such as multimodal travel times in the Helsinki metropolitan area, one’s personal 15-minute city, and mobility justice between different groups of residents and between different neighbourhoods.

Together with a fantastic team of students, we prepared three interactive tasks for the visitors of the event, that targeted the general public, and was met with ample interest.

At one station, visitors were asked to locate a place important in their everyday lives on a large printed map, and mark it with a small sticker. Next, they would draw their estimate of how far they would reach around this point within 15 minutes, walking. For the next step, we prepared a piece of string that we measured and cut to represent the exact distance an average healthy adult would walk in those 15 minutes. Laying it along the streets and paths in the map, the visitor could then draw the area they can reach precisely into the map, adding to the personal accounts of numerous other visitors before them. Finally, we asked visitors to reflect whether or not the identified area contained all services they needed to access in their everyday lives, such as grocers, libraries, pharmacies, and public transport stops.

Continue reading “URBANAGE workshop as part of the European Researchers’ Night”

Note for our international audience: This post deals with public transportation connections around our campus in Kumpula / Helsinki. As the matter is local, we publish this post in Finnish only.

Otimme hiljattain kantaa uuden Kalasatama-Pasila ratikan pysäkkisijoitteluun Vallilanlaaksossa.

Tausta:

• Helsinkiin on valmistumassa uusi poikittainen raitiotielinja Kalasatamasta-Pasilaan, jota parhaillaan rakennettaan. Linja ohittaa myös Kumpulan kampuksen.
• Kumpulan kampuksen saavutettavuudesta on keskustelu siitä lähtien, kun kampus valmistui vuosituhannen alusta. Myös me tutkimme jo 13 vuotta sitten Kumpulan kampuksen saavutettavuutta. Tuloksia julkaistiin esimerkiksi raportissa Solmukohta vai pussinperä? – Kumpulan kampus pääkaupunkiseudun joukkoliikenneverkossa
  
• Nykyisellä suunnitelmalla, uuden raitiotielinjan varrella on 14 pysäkkiä noin 250 metrin välein.
• Vallillanlaaksossa kampuksemme kohdalla pysäkkien välinen etäisyys on kuitenkin yli 1 km. Se on pisin etäisyys Helsingissä raitiotielle ilman pysäkkiä (tilanne ennen uuden pikaratikan käynnistymistä lokakuussa 2023).
• Keskeinen argumentti julkisessa keskustelussa on ollut, että lisäpysäkki hidastaa ratikkaa “liikaa” ja että “puistossa ei ole ketään”.
• Argumentoimme, että
  • Pysäkittömyys jättää merkittävän määrän potentiaalisia raitiotien käyttäjiä huomiotta niin Kumpulan kampuksella, kuin Vallilanlaaksoa ympäröivillä kasvavilla asuinalueilla. Myös viheralueen käyttäjät ja esimerkiksi Valillanlaakson jalkapallokenttien käyttäjät tarvitsisivat mielestämme pysäkkiä.
  • Kalliin raitiotielinjan suunnittelu ensisijaisesti kulkuneuvon nopeuden näkökulmasta on yksipuolista suunnittelua. Joukkoliikenteen tavoitteena on palvella kulkijoita myös reitin varrella, mahdollistaen lyhyet ja laadukkaat pysäkkimatkat.
• Olemme koonneet alle:
  • Alkuperäisen kannanottomme Helsingin Sanomissa 21.8.2023
  • Helsingin liikenne- ja katusuunnittelupäällikkö Reetta Putkosen vastineen 23.8.2023
  • Oman aikaisemmin julkaisemattoman vastineemme Reetta Putkosen kirjoitukseen

Continue reading “Miksi Vallilanlaakso jätettiin vaille omaa ratikkapysäkkiä?”

We have published the Travel Time Matrix 2023 for the Helsinki Metropolitan Area

What’s new?

• Updated travel times for Walking, Cycling, Public Transport and Private Car based on 2023 situation
• More variation within travel modes (e.g., slow, average and fast walking) to reflect different life realities
• A new computation framework that allows us to easily produce travel time matrices for other cities

The dataset extends the history of travel time matrices from the region produced by the Digital Geography Lab (since 2016, before that ‘Accessibility Research Group’). This also marks the 10-year anniversary of the first travel time matrix, published in 2013. Matrices were also published in 2015 and 2018.

Read more about the data and download it

https://www.helsinki.fi/fi/tutkimusryhmat/digital-geography-lab/paakaupunkiseudun-matka-aikamatriisi-2023

DOI:10.5281/zenodo.7907548

Continue reading “Travel Time Matrix 2023 for Helsinki Metropolitan Area is out”

This week has been special for the Digital Geography Lab and our Doctors 2023 group! The faculty councils of the Faculty of Science and Faculty of Biosciences did the following official decisions:

🌟 Elias‘s thesis Measuring sustainable accessibility: Geospatial approaches toward integrating people and the environment was accepted with honors! Elias defended on the 2^nd of June 2023 with Trisalyn Nelson, Jack and Laura Dangermond Endowed Chair of Geography, University of California Santa Barbara, as the opponent.

🌟 Aina got permission to advance to the public defense with her thesis Shaking Environmental Education Paradigms. Practitioners’ narratives, contextual elements, and biocultural approaches. The public examination will take place on 20th September 2023, at 10 in Porthania (Yliopistonkatu 3), lecture room P674 or online. Senior Research Fellow Sarobidy Rakotonarivo, Department of Forestry and Environment, University of Antananarivo, Madagascar will act as the opponent. Aina did her PhD in the Global Change and Conservation research group.

🌟 Tuomas got permission to defend publicly his thesis Diversity of places and people: Using big data to understand languages and activities across geographical space. The public examination will take place on 10^th November 2023.  Grant McKenzie, Associate professor of spatial data science in the Department of Geography at McGill University, will act as the opponent.

🌟 Kerli thesis Capturing segregation through space and time: New insights from the activity space approach and big data was sent for pre-examination. The tentative defense date is 24^th November 2023!

Hooray & hugs to #Doctors2023🥳🤗

Elias heading to defend his thesis on the 2nd of June. Tuuli as custos and Trisalyn as the opponent follow. Photo by Christoph Fink.

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The Digital Geography Lab is an interdisciplinary research team focusing on spatial Big Data analytics for fair and sustainable societies at the University of Helsinki.

The Digital Geography Lab has been participating actively in the curricula development of the Geography MSc and BSc Programmes. During 2020-2022 Tuuli acted as the Director of the Geography Degree Programmes.

Therefore it makes sense to share an article covering the renewal process of the Geography MSc degree programme structure in the Digital Geography Lab blog. The article has been translated from the original publication in Finnish:

Toivonen, T., Kainulainen, H. T., Kosonen, K., & Ruth, O. (2023). Havaintoja maantieteen maisteriohjelman uudistamisprosessista. Terra, 135(2), 98-105. [https://terra.journal.fi/article/view/130170/80100]

Observations on the reform process of the Master’s Curriculum in Geography

In this article, we describe the process aimed at reforming the curriculum of the Master’s Programme in Geography at the University of Helsinki. The reform process was carried out during the years 2021–2022 and it was coordinated jointly by the Degree Programme Director, Deputy Director, Education Planner and one dedicated university teacher. The impetus for documenting the process in the form of this article came from the leadership studies by Professor Tuuli Toivonen. Toivonen served as Degree Programme Director and Olli Ruth as Deputy Director during the reform. The roles changed in summer 2022. Coinciding with this change, the processes moved from planning the structure of the curriculum to planning the implementation of courses.

Background of the curriculum reform

Teaching at the university is defined by the curricula of study programs. Typically, the curricula define the general degree structure and study tracks, as well as the learning outcomes, contents, scopes and competence assessment methods of study modules and courses – as well as the teachers responsible for the courses.

The curricula of the University of Helsinki have been in transition during the past 20 years. In the turn of the Millenia, European countries started the so-called Bologna process that aimed at harmonising the university degrees in Europe. This led to degree reforms at the University of Helsinki first in 2005 to be continued in the mid-2010s. The aim of these reforms was to make the bachelor’s and master’s degrees clearly separate, thus improving students’ opportunities to move from one degree programme to another between these study stages. In addition, efforts were made to strengthen the link between studies and working life. In the next phase, in 2017, the University of Helsinki implemented a reform called the Big Wheel, which introduced new system of three-year curricula. The old majors were replaced by degree programmes and minor subjects by elective study modules. The first curriculum period of the reform was 2017–2020 and the second 2020–2023.

Continue reading “Contributing to the development of Geography Master’s degree curriculum”

Our new article Measuring just accessibility within planetary boundaries has been published in Transportation Reviews! The paper was the led by Elias Willberg and it was the last paper of his PhD to be published. The paper suggests that we should measure and evaluate accessibility in a more comprehensive way, expanding from time-based measures to measures that take into account the environmental costs and impacts on social justice.  The paper was a fantastic collaboration between Digital Geography Lab and Henrikki Tenkanen (Aalto University), Rafael Pereira (Institute for Applied Economic Research, Brazil) and Harvey Miller (Ohio State University).

Please find the press release below!

Press Release: Doughnut thinking supports sustainable mobility planning

Transport and mobility produce a significant part of cities’ carbon emissions and other environmental burdens, but at the same time enable the satisfaction of many basic needs, from going to work to meeting friends.

The scientific article, carried out in collaboration between Finnish and international researchers, shows how the doughnut model, which examines the overall sustainability of societies, can be applied to transport. The study published in Transport Reviews was led by Finnish researchers from the Digital Geography Lab of the University of Helsinki and Aalto University.

“The central idea of the doughnut model developed by the economist Kate Raworth is to provide the basic conditions for a good life for everyone without exceeding the critical boundaries of the environment,” says postdoctoral researcher Elias Willberg from the Department of Geography, who led the research. “We propose that this idea should also be applied in the transport sector, where reducing emissions has long been difficult. You only have to look at the current extreme weather around the world to notice that there is a great and urgent need for a change in ways of thinking and acting,” he continues.

Continue reading “New article out! Measuring just accessibility within planetary boundaries”