Impact of PURE in the Helsinki Metropolitan Region - a reflection from Ilpo Laitinen

PASCAL Universities' Regional Engagment programme (PURE) has been a highly visible project in the Helsinki metropolitan region. It belonged to the official research strategy and programme of the city of Helsinki from 2011-2015.

The Regional Cohesion and Competitiveness Programme for the Greater Helsinki Area-programme (COCO-GHA) collaborated very closely with the Pure program. The field of actors participating in COCO-GHA was extensive and some of the involved parties may have been partly unknown to one another. The PURE program enhanced knowledge sharing and brought different actors together. It also influenced in many various ways the KatuMetro program (Street-Metro). It meant that PURE served as a predicative tool in relation to the launching of a limited number of strategically significant projects. Thus the implementation of metropolitan policy was supported with the aid of the metropolitan area’s comprehensive KatuMetro urban research and cooperation programme. The contentual focal areas were aligned well with those of COCO-GHA, enabling the two programmes to support one another.

PURE familiarized the different actors with each other and deepened cooperation. It brought together key persons to discuss common issues (mainly triple helix and regional competitiveness). Those people have been responsible for implementing the review reports of PURE, its various development recommendations and drafting the development plan. Thus it had impact on collaboration, agenda setting and participation, and implementation of these issues.

The PURE programme increased collaboration between the different departments of the City of Helsinki and universities elsewhere in the PURE family. After the regional visits there have been several other pieces of collaborative research eg. between city’s HR department, social services and the RMIT (in Melbourne), with the Universities of Glasgow and Lapland (about co-production) and with the Northern Illinois University (regional innovation policy and innovation ecosystems).

The PURE reports have been and still are on the city’s web site. The programme was reported also on the regional authorities co-operation web-site.

The programme and its proceeding and reports were reported as various fact sheets, departmental bulletins and in newspapers. The programme and its results were published in a book Existing Knowledge in Use (only in Finnish), published by the city of Helsinki with 1500 copies delivered to city’s directors and managers. That material has also been in the use of some courses at the local polytechnics. 

Overall we consider in Helsinki that PURE continues to influence our work.