Election Special: Atte Harjanne wants to be the new Mayor of Helsinki

Atte Harjanne is worried.

Worried that his daughter, now a toddler, is at the age where she wants to run and climb: making her a bit of a liability on the campaign trail when her politician father is touring market squares, libraries and shopping centres looking for votes.

At 40 years old, Harjanne is practically ancient in an election cycle that will see generational change at City Hall, as one of three likely candidates to become the new Mayor of Helsinki.

When Finland goes to the polls in municipal elections on Sunday 13 April, Helsinki will see a changing of the guard in a system where you can’t vote directly for the mayor, but where each party nominates their mayoral candidates in advance, and voters cast their ballot knowing the largest single party will be able to install their candidate in City Hall.

Since this system was first introduced in 2017 the National Coalition Party has held the mayoral office for two election cycles, with first Jan Vapaavuori and then incumbent Juhana Vartiainen in the top job. Vartiainen is not running for a second term.

This year, the Greens are hoping to break through the Kokoomus barrier with their eco-engineer candidate.

“A Vihreät-led Helsinki City Council is first and foremost an open and liberal city that welcomes new people and ideas. That’s my ethos,” explains Harjanne, who is currently a sophomore Member of Parliament and was previously the party’s Parliamentary Group leader.

“There’s the idea that equality and integration are also part of the city, so we leave no one behind, and all parts of the city are considered important,” he tells Finland Insider.

A new poll from public broadcaster Yle puts Harjanne in equal first place with his Left Alliance opponent Paavo Arhinmäki as the most popular choice to be the next Mayor of Helsinki - although the Left Alliance have a distant chance at best of being the biggest party on the council.

As you would expect from the Greens, they’re promising a progressive stewardship of the Finnish capital if they come out on top as the biggest single party - but what about some of the everyday practical challenges of a growing Helsinki?

With the shoreline almost fully developed, and a need for more housing, city planners will need to build more homes inland, and that usually means clearing green or forest areas. Atte Harjanne admits it’s a “challenging balance” but he has a partial solution.

“Over the last decade Helsinki has grown by 70,000 people, that’s similar in size to the whole city of Hämeenlinna. At the same time we have been able to conserve the total green areas on the city level but of course it gets more challenging as the city grows, the geographical limits are there.”

Harjanne says that industrial areas can be converted first to residential neighbourhoods, building upwards where it fits in with the surroundings. He’d also like to see fewer cars overall on the city’s streets, as they take up a disproportionate amount of space for parking and garaging - but that also involves forging a new pact with residents about how they move around more efficiently on public transport, or walking or cycling, and encouraging them to leave their cars at home.

“Too much focus on cars has led us to lose land use. I think this is where we as a party have really separated ourselves. This is our core and we believe it. For the Social Democrats and Kokoomus” - his main rivals - “it seems to be a tricky equation.”

One local Kokoomus candidate recently published an advert giving the middle finger to public transport over cars, an image the Greens think neatly defines their opponents.

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Welcoming for foreign residents

On a national level, the right-wing government has been accused of fomenting a ‘hostile environment’ for foreigners: putting more restrictions on students bringing their families; cutting short the amount of time foreigners have to find a job at the end of their degree programmes before they have to leave the country; adding more years and barriers on to attaining permanent residency and citizenship, among other policy initiatives that have drawn fire from Finland’s international residents.

Like many opposition politicians, Harjanne says he’s “concerned” about the government’s policies saying they “hurt Helsinki.”

“But what Helsinki can be here is an advocate for other voices, to be an advocate for better policies. And our party can do more to make Helsinki and Finland a more welcoming place.”

“If you come here with a partner and kids, rest assured you can build a life here, including in job markets which I think are still far too segregated. We even tend to put too strict language requirements which eat into the incentive of companies to hire international experts.

“The whole atmosphere here in Helsinki needs to be a welcoming one, and this is one are where the city can counterbalance the government and whatever it says.”

Reversing Helsinki’s downtown decline

One of the biggest post-COVID challenges in the Finnish capital has been the exudos of businesses from the downtown core. A number of well-known brands have left their established locations on Aleksanterinkatu, heading for destinations at shopping malls on the city’s periphery.

A number of initiatives to use public spaces creatively have been welcomed by residents and brought more people into the city centre area for example the popular summer bar terrace at Senate Square. But Harjanne reckons there’s still more which can be done to reverse the downtown decline.

“There’s several factors driving this problem, first the changes in retail trade with so much now bought online, but we also made the mistake in the city of enabling many car-based shopping calls to be built. And if we look at cities like Copenhagen and Stockholm we see this is a Helsinki problem - well actually it’s a Finland problem.”

“As the city grows we need to take care the centre has its commercial potential. It’s a walkable city centre, easy to get around and this is the way to build a living city centre we know this recipe from all over Europe.”

Harjanne cites an initiative to use car parking spaces as temporary outdoor terraces for bars and restaurants - first introduced by a Green politician to Helsinki City Council - as the sort of creative solutions the capital needs, cutting down on the traditional Finnish red tape and bureaucracy to just make stuff happen.

“We've seen that when we put efforts into doing interesting things in the city. it is successful, creating events and reasons for people to come.”

Learning from local and national politics

Harjanne has served two terms so far on the Helsinki City Council, and was arguably a surprise new MP in the 2021 general election.

But his ascent up the Vihreät hierarchy has been a testament to his effective work as a politician who has made a career out of being as rational on economics and national security as any right-wing hawk, but balanced with the softer side of left-wing Green party politics.

It’s an unusual mix, but it turned out to be crucial as the zeitgeist changed from the environment and climate crisis issues being among the top concerns for voters, and flipped to national security and defence.

“Since I’ve been on the city council I think I learned a lot about constructive cooperation. There’s no opposition, there’s no government, so you have to build solid coalition support for your policies and that requires an open mindset to show that ideas matter more than the people behind them,” he explains.

That’s a contrast, he says, to the national parliament where the driving force is the dynamic between the government and the opposition: more combative, less conciliatory.

“Parliament is a hostile place towards Helsinki. It’s still not near enough well understood how important Helsinki and other big cities are towards the country’s economy.”

“We need a more clear voice for Helsinki at national levels and that’s one of the key roles of the mayor.”