Curiously Pioneering a Human-Centric Citiverse: Tampere, Finland
By Tampereen Kaupunki, City of Tampere
IEEE Metaverse Newsletter, 2025
Tampere has a strong history as a smart city, shaped by its dynamic technology-driven startup culture, collaboration between the public and private sectors, and strategically targeted development programs – one of the latest being Data-Driven City for Citizens.
The Citiverse is the next step in smart city development, and it’s the path we are currently on.
Citiverse emphasizes human-centeredness and the pivotal role and responsibility that cities hold in shaping this development. In the Citiverse, the virtual and physical worlds seamlessly merge, creating new opportunities for people, innovative businesses, and groundbreaking solutions.
On the journey towards the Citiverse, Tampere is guided by the city’s Metaverse vision 2040, developed in collaboration with The Metaverse Institute from London. This vision outlines what a future city, leveraging smart technologies, could look like: one focused on a good and happy life, efficient and trustworthy governance, impactful climate actions, and the equality and well-being of its people. In the Citiverse, an inspiring and enjoyable environment, as well as unique experiences, are key elements. Tampere is not walking this path alone; the city is co-creating the Citiverse with other cities, both in Finland and internationally, alongside research institutions and businesses – all with a human-centered approach at its core.
We are building a city that anticipates, learns, and innovates sustainably. Tampere’s range of innovative solutions are designed to meet the needs of a rapidly growing city, and our scalable solutions address its everyday challenges.
A further example of our innovation is our internationally awarded approach to utilizing smart technologies as we won the Enabling Technologies -award in World Smart City Expo & Conference 2023. Our city’s smart management comes to life through an IoT platform, where data analysis and artificial intelligence enable us to respond to residents’ needs in real-time. For instance, we provide predictive visitor flow insights to empower businesses through our Pulse application, which utilizes anonymized data from the city cameras. Through the Pulse application, entrepreneurs can see forecasts of the number of people expected to be in the city center, helping them plan staff levels based on predicted foot traffic.
Our IoT platform is also highly beneficial for city maintenance. In addition to cameras, our platform is connected to road surface sensors, which are especially valuable in Finland’s varying weather conditions, enabling timely road sanding, for example. Sensors are also installed in playgrounds to help us address their maintenance needs efficiently.
Another example is our AI model, which has led to the creation of new, needs-driven services for children, young people, and families – developed in collaboration with the community. We also use digital twins for urban planning, making participation easy and the plans more understandable for residents. However, we don’t just use digital twins for planning the physical city; Tampere has developed a Digital Twin of Skills Inventory. The solution is created in partnership with national employment organizations and the private sector, addresses the challenges of labor market matching, paving the way for more efficient workforce solutions.
The LEA project (Early Childhood Analytics) is an initiative that uses Data and AI to provide continuously better services to different kinds of family types. Important value of the work is the continuous development – families and their needs change constantly and over a time. Not only about data, algorithm and utilization of those, work done around LEA has led into learning and development within city organization. LEA is an example of continuous cycle that brings together Data, AI and people.
This said, Tampere’s Citiverse brings together the city’s physical, social, and technological dimensions, leveraging data and the latest technologies to enhance everyday life for people and residents.
Tampere aims to be a frontrunner and matchmaker in the development of the Citiverse, which is why the city is organizing the Imagine the Citiverse event in 27-28 May 2025. At this event, selected cities will have the opportunity to present their challenges, while companies can showcase their innovative solutions to address them.
Links:
Tampere Metaverse Vision 2040 (PDF, 7 MB)
IMAGINE 2025
