Just west of downtown Helsinki, on the site of a port that will soon be relocated, an entirely new city will soon rise from nothing, with aspirations to become a model 21st century urban center. We've been hearing of many sprouted-from-seed green projects like this in Asia, such as New Songdo City in Korea, Dongtan in China, and Masdar City near Abu Dhabi; but most of these are in developing areas. Finland's Jätkäsaari will take its place on a continent already considered environmentally-conscious, though of course Europe's wealth makes its ecological footprint much larger than that of almost any country in Asia.

Jätkäsaari is planned as a city of 15,000 that will be compact, pedestrian-friendly, high-tech, low-impact, affordable, and all of the many other things a city should be in a resource-strapped world. The environmental implications of the city's actual construction are unclear, but the projections for its operations are uplifting. A Finnish site describes the project as Helsinki's "chance of the millennium to make a planner's dreams come true."

The city will be nearly car-free, with public transportation and walkability forming central tenets in the formation of the urban zones. Residential areas will all be cul-de-sacs, and multi-story parking towers will minimize acreage required for idle vehicles. The housing will consist primarily of apartments, but larger penthouse-style homes will be built on top of the multi-family buildings. The city will have a green belt running through it, inspired by Central Park in New York, to encourage outdoor recreation and fill a good percentage of the overall area with greenery.

The city is due to be complete in 2023, which is an age in terms of the potential changes we'll see around the globe due to the rapid progression of climate change and the exponential population growth of most countries. Hopefully, though, the planners' foresight will create this "city of the future" so that it's perfectly at home when it arrives. The wardrobes of the future are already in play.