Anna Broberg and Maptionnaire

Whenever I visit a major foreign city, I try to learn about it from the people who live there. As we were preparing to travel to Finland, I decided to see if I could locate people in Helsinki who could tell me about their city’s planning, design, culture and current challenges. Through APA, I connected with Anna Broberg, Co-founder and COO of Maptionnaire. As she explains it, her company “was born when a group of urban planning researchers and professionals based in Helsinki discovered an emerging problem: there was an increasing need for cities and urban planners to engage the public and to get real input from local residents.”

Anna and I had a really fascinating discussion at her office in Helsinki in June. It turns out that in addition to our common interest in the design of future communities, we are also connected by geography – Anna started her company while she was living in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I grew up, and with a connection to Stanford, my alma mater.

Our conversation ranged widely. Finland provides a far more extensive community and social safety net for residents than the US. Affordable housing has been an important issue for a long time, particularly in Helsinki. We discussed the ways Helsinki and Finland are balancing concerns about housing and jobs with strong values of environmental protection and pride in the unique Finnish natural environment. Though the US has a different mix of value priorities, I still came away with some new good ideas for the future of communities and nature here.

Maptionnaire is a really creative platform for map-based online community engagement. Don’t be surprised if you see more about it here as nature.city.cool develops.