Towards human scale cities - Open and happy

With the constant growth of urban population worldwide, there is an increasing need to develop cities that are environmentally and socially sustainable, functional and supporting well-being of their inhabitants. When striving towards these goals, transportation and mobility play a crucial role.

The conference calls for presentations on advancements in the field of transport, communication and mobility. The focus of the conference will be on urban transportation and the new possibilities that open data and digital technologies provide for mobility solutions. For example, presentations may discuss how transport policies are and should be changing, present emerging ways of organizing the daily mobility to make cities more sustainable and more pleasant or present novel ways of analyzing transportation and mobility from the perspective of people.

Helsinki, located on the shore of the Baltic Sea, offers a unique and interesting setting for the 2019 NECTAR conference. It is the home for the busiest passenger harbor in Europe and major transportation hub between Europe and Asia. Furthermore, Helsinki is one of the fastest growing capital regions in Europe. The large infrastructure projects like the new metro line and the recently established bike-sharing system are changing daily mobility patterns of people. Simultaneously, new regional mobility flows emerge with the development of transnational Helsinki-Tallinn twin-city region. The city has also profiled itself as an open city: large amounts of open data about the region have been made available and the city of Helsinki is committed to open and transparent decision and policy making. Even if we Finns have difficulties believing it, Finland has been repeatedly selected as one of the happiest nations in the world.

At the time of the conference, the sun hardly sets in Finland so warmly welcome to the sauna capital of the planet!

The Network on European Communications and Transport Activity Research (NECTAR) brings together researchers in the field of transport, communication and mobility from all European Countries and the rest of the world.