in Helsinki, a city under the city to cope with the growing population

Helsinki, the capital of Finland, hides a secret: a city under the city. To go to work, Kati Nikkanen dives 14 meters underground every day. She has been employed in an aquatic complex for five years. The setting is unusual, but the atmosphere sometimes heavy. “There are no windows here, so sometimes you don’t see daylight at all”she says.

The inhabitants of Helsinki live partly underground. The basement has become an anthill where there are bus stations, supermarkets and hairdressers. A total of 20 km of pedestrian tunnels. “Rather than building walls on the surface, which would be more expensive, we dig. It’s cheaper, it’s solid, and it’s very beautiful, in my opinion”, explains Ilkka Vähäaho, head of underground development for the city of Helsinki. The objective is to manage population growth: more than 160,000 additional inhabitants in ten years. The underground development must also allow the city to make its city center exclusively pedestrian.