At its meeting last week, the city of Espoo city planning board decided to apply a more lenient norm for parking spaces for Otaniemi student apartments. AYY thanks the city planning board and those involved in the preparation and decision-making for an excellent, sensible and well-founded decision.

What did the city planning board change, and what does it mean in practice?

Previously, there was a construction norm that, in short, required the construction of student apartments in Teekkarikylä to include one parking space per 250 k-m2 or even one parking space per 150 k-m2, depending on the location. K-m2 stands for square meters of living space in apartments per floor, and a smaller number means a higher requirement for parking spaces.

The change that takes place now is a result of a parking survey conducted in the Otaniemi area in the autumn of 2016 that measured the utilization rate of parking spaces at the current student apartment buildings. Currently, the utilization rate is about 50%, or 74% at the highest. One must also take into account the development of Otaniemi into a public transportation hub, and the expected increasing popularity of alternative traffic solutions, such as car sharing, so there are definitely grounds for revising the calculation model.

The new decision lowers the requirement for zones further away from the metro station, so that from now on, the calculating model in the Otaniemi area will be 1 parking space / 500 k-m2 on the average. These requirements far better match the realities.

Why does this decision benefit AYY and its members in particular?

Due to the previous calculating model, when planning new student apartments in Otaniemi, there was simply not enough room for reasonably zoning new apartments with a number of parking spaces that meets the norm. In practice this meant, for example, that the parking spaces for new student apartments required by the norm would have had to be implemented as underground garages, which in turn would have raised construction costs by several millions and significantly raised the rents of these apartments. From now on, the planning projects for student apartments so badly needed in the Otaniemi area may progress much more cost-efficiently, with parking spaces implemented to match the needs.

The official minutes of the decision and the Servinniemi and Otaranta parking survey are available for viewing at the City of Espoo web site at http://espoo04.hosting.documenta.fi/kokous/2017401287-8.HTM (in Finnish)

For more information: AYY board member Pyry Huhtanen, pyry.huhtanen@ayy.fi or 050 520 9436