Community garden in Ravilaakso is an important part of the temporary use of the area

The community garden created in Ravilaakso this summer is a part of the Vaasa Spouse Programme’s activities. The communal gardening project was kickstarted in the late spring of 2023 and has already been completed thanks to cooperation between many organizations. The Vaasa Spouse Programme project of the University of Vaasa started its operation in the autumn of 2022 in cooperation with the City of Vaasa, Ostrobothnia TE-services, and the region’s ELY Centre.

– Cooperation plays an important role in the entire temporary use project, including of course this gardening project! Everyone takes responsibility according to their area of expertise, explains Oliver Schulte-Tigges, planning architect.

The community garden project makes it possible for the members of the Vaasa Spouse Programme to be a part of a community that helps them get integrated. The public garden project also allows learning about Finnish culture through gardening.

Garden created in cooperation with the city

The different fields of operation of the city have been actively involved in developing temporary uses for Ravilaakso and creating the community garden.

– I have brought up the objectives of Ravilaakso in various contexts, and indeed this gardening project found its way to Ravilaakso through another project. I got a message from a project colleague, saying that now we might have in our hands a project that might fit well in the Ravilaakso temporary uses project, explains Schulte-Tigges.

The green spaces team of Vaasa’s Public Utility Services has been involved in the concrete realization of the community garden project. The city offered an area in Ravilaakso for the garden project, and then the green spaces team equipped the area with soil-filled planter boxes and water containers for watering.

Temporary use is a fixed part of the Ravilaakso area’s development work

The aim is to make Ravilaakso into a diverse and vivid urban environment, a space with versatile services and communal spaces in addition to housing. This is also the aim of Ravilaakso’s temporary use project.

– The temporary use project aims to make Ravilaakso known and familiar to people and make it as pleasant and safe as possible during construction. Construction of the area will take years, and much of the area can be used as a park for quite a long time. Urban farming was in fact one of the wishes that the residents expressed when we were preparing the city plan for the area. It will be possible to continue having that element here even after the area is ready, says Schulte-Tigges.

Temporary use will be a fixed part of developing the Ravilaakso area and the identity of the neighbourhood. The temporary use activities are low-threshold, a venue for different operators to find ways to cooperate and form networks.