Tallinn begins drafting long-term plan for city development

Tallinn has begun preparing a new comprehensive plan that will guide the city’s development for the coming decades, ERR reports. Urban planning experts say it will be the city’s most important strategic document, shaping future buildings, transport, the green network and public space.

Residents can submit proposals for the plan until the end of August.

“A comprehensive plan makes it possible to plan the city as a whole and decide where housing and businesses could be located and where green space should be preserved,” said Martin Karro, head of the Tallinn City Planning Department. He said the plan would also cover roads, utility networks and other infrastructure needed for the city to function.

The plan will apply both to undeveloped land and to built-up areas. For example, office buildings could eventually be replaced by housing, Karro said. He described the comprehensive plan as the “skeleton” on which the city’s development would be built over the next 20 years. All detailed plans, and ultimately all building projects, must follow it.

Tallinn’s chief architect, Andro Mänd, said the previous comprehensive plan was drawn up 25 years ago, and that both the city and planning principles had changed significantly since then.

Mänd said the plan would establish a framework but would not require landowners to change their plots immediately. Existing building rights, including those granted through detailed plans, would remain valid.

The city plans to avoid setting out rules for every individual plot. Instead, it is considering a pixel-based approach similar to that used in Helsinki, with land uses defined on a 100-by-100-metre grid. Mänd said this would provide more flexibility because it was impossible to predict every process 25 years in advance.

He said large structural decisions made through comprehensive plans could take years to implement. Helsinki’s public sector owns 80 percent of the land, compared with 20 percent in Tallinn, making it easier for Helsinki to enforce its plan. Tallinn therefore has to take private landowners’ views into greater account.