WPSC 2026 Helsinki, Day 1 — Between the Craft of Planning and Democracy

On the opening day of the World Planning Schools Congress in Helsinki, Finnish planning scholars turned a critical eye on their own country's digital transformation of planning, asking whether new information systems support planning decisions or begin to steer them.

The 6th World Planning Schools Congress (WPSC 2026) opened on June 29 in Espoo and Helsinki, Finland. Co-hosted by Aalto University, the University of Helsinki, and Tampere University, this year's overarching theme is "Peripheral Visions: Rethinking Planning." Since planning schools from around the world gather only once every four years, the registration desk and opening sessions were packed from the very first day.

Walking from Helsinki Central Station to the congress venue, the historic station building and the pedestrian-oriented city center unfold like a textbook illustration of the '15-minute city.'

Day 1 Keynote Session — "Democracy, Technocracy, or Techno-determinism?"

The most striking moment of the first day was a keynote session bringing together Finnish planning scholars under the title "Democracy, technocracy or techno-determinism? — Insights into the digitalisation of planning in Finland." The speakers were Hanna Mattila (University of Turku), Pilvi Nummi (Aalto University), and Eveliina Harsia-Mikkola (Aalto University).

The session ultimately posed a single question: "In a rapidly changing world, how can planning remain democratic, inclusive, and responsive?" The speakers took a critical look at the digital transformation of planning in Finland — one of the most digitalized countries in the world.

A Nation of Engineers, and a History of Planning for Efficiency

The presentation began with Finland's own self-identity. Finland has long described itself as a "country of technology and engineering," with engineers stepping to the forefront at every moment of crisis — most notably in the postwar period, when Finland had to pay war reparations to the Soviet Union while rebuilding destroyed infrastructure and housing, followed by a belated (1960s) but highly efficient wave of industrialization and urbanization.

That era was dominated by a so-called "technostructure" — an alliance of engineers with administrative and financial elites. The role of Finland's well-known architects was, by comparison, secondary, and urbanization was above all a matter of "efficiency." Citizen participation existed, but was limited and organized from above. After the recession and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, Finland rapidly recovered through a knowledge economy epitomized by Nokia, leaving behind today's high level of digital infrastructure and IT capability as its legacy. Planning law reform in the late 1990s made citizen participation mandatory in every planning process, institutionalizing "communicative" planning.

What's Happening Now — The National Planning Information Model and Machine-Readable Plans

The core of the presentation concerned the digital transformation now underway. Finland is replacing its existing Land Use and Building Act with a new system (the RYHTI system) that requires every plan to be produced in the format of a National Planning Information Model. Led by the Ministry of the Environment, the initiative sets a goal of achieving "a world-class, knowledge-based, sustainable living environment" by 2030. The transition period runs until the end of 2028, by which point every new land-use plan must be published in a machine-readable format.

A decisive shift lies here: the regulations and guidelines of a plan must now be selected from predefined code lists so that they can be machine-read. In other words, planners must now rethink the content of planning itself "through the information model." The speakers framed this as both an opportunity and a challenge, while voicing concern that standardization could rigidify planning — particularly the creativity required in regional and comprehensive plans.

Is the information model a tool that "supports" planning — or has it begun to "steer" planning itself? This was the question the session held onto until the very end.

Three Concepts, and Thirteen Interviews

The speakers read the phenomenon through three concepts: democracy, technocracy, and techno-determinism.

Three concepts presented in the Day 1 keynote session — Democracy, Technocracy, and Techno-determinism

Interviews with 13 experts surfaced concrete voices from the field.

Two worlds: Planners and information-model/IT specialists meet in workshops but never truly understand one another. Lacking a common language, planners struggle to translate "what planning is" into the language of system development, and the IT specialists' perspective ends up taking precedence by default. As a result, there is a risk that the system is designed around technical feasibility alone, without a foundation that understands planning as a political, deliberative process.

The paradox of citizen accessibility: The information-model environment can feel alienating to citizens. Making digital tools more accessible requires opening up data as widely as possible (private developers need data to build apps), yet security, privacy, and geopolitics simultaneously push toward closing that data down. It was a sharp observation that there is almost no public discussion of how to balance security against democratic values.

Who produces planning data, and for whom: The central government shapes the system for statistical purposes, while planners see themselves as "gatekeepers" of planning data, worried about misuse, misinformation, and the spread of "alternative truths." It was also suggested that decision-makers might increasingly cherry-pick data, bypassing planners who hold the full picture — a shift toward a more selective, populist use of data.

Planners' time: A note of self-reflection emerged that well-trained, well-educated planners now spend a substantial share of their working hours managing metadata and system architecture, leaving less time for the "core" work of planning — interaction, deliberation, and design.

Conclusion — Technology Is Not Neutral

The message the speakers delivered to policymakers (the Ministry of the Environment and legislators) was clear: technology is never neutral — it changes the process and the goals themselves. Systems are said to increase transparency, yet paradoxically they can erode it, as security concerns and the outsourcing of development to private actors turn them into "black-box platforms." Path dependency is also pronounced, with past decisions narrowing today's choices.

Above all, there was strong concern that the planning expertise built up over a generation of communicative, deliberative planning — place-based judgment, work embedded in cultural context, and the facilitation of democratic debate — could be weakened as it is replaced by "data analysis." Their recommendation was that digital transformation should not be pursued separately from reform of the planning system, but must be carried out together with land-use planning reform — only then can the promise of "greater efficiency and greater democracy" be kept.

A Question Left for Seoul

Korea, too, is rapidly pushing forward the digital transformation of its spatial information and urban planning information systems. So the questions raised in this session are not someone else's story. If data and AI are to "support" planning rather than "replace" it, how do we design equity and deliberation into the process alongside efficiency? This connects directly with the research to be presented at this congress — optimal allocation of living-area facilities in response to demographic change, balancing efficiency and equity.

Data does not replace judgment. It only makes the grounds for judgment more solid. And for that judgment to be democratic, people — not systems — must remain at the center of planning.

On its first day, Helsinki itself seemed to show the balance between technology and people in physical form — a city center full of pedestrians, and green trams moving quietly through it.

Tomorrow (6/30), I will deliver an oral presentation in Track 1 (Accessibility and Mobility). More to follow.