From BlueCity to Jyväskylä: Rethinking Shared Buildings
By Janne Viitamies, City of Jyväskylä – GOOD CITIES Project Partner
After our recent GOOD CITIES consortium meeting, I had the opportunity to visit Rotterdam’s BlueCity hub. The reason for my visit was simple: I wanted to see a successful shared building concept in action. Here in Jyväskylä, our goal is to develop a similar action-based concept for a shared building right in the heart of our city. We believe such a space could be a major asset for creative businesses and the sharing economy.
Creating a feasible and implementable shared building concept with stakeholders is one of Jyväskylä’s key responsibilities in the GOOD CITIES project.
BlueCity was an inspiring example. It’s a large building that used to be a public swimming pool as recently as the 2010s. Today, it’s under private ownership—a detail that’s quite relevant to us. In Jyväskylä, the building we’re focusing on is not a swimming pool, but a library building. Still, the scale and the vision are comparable. Like in Rotterdam, our aim is to transfer the building to a committed and ambitious private owner who can bring it to life in a new way.
As a project manager, I found the visit to BlueCity very empowering. I walked through the building, took lots of photos, and had great conversations with people involved in the project.
BlueCity hosts a variety of events on a regular basis. It also features attractive offices and shared spaces. Some of these offices are rented out to long-term tenants, while others are available for short-term or even shared use. The flexibility is impressive and something we’d like to replicate in Jyväskylä.
The biggest lesson I took from Rotterdam was that transforming the purpose of a large building in a way that is both economically sustainable and business-wise viable takes time—and skill. A crucial part of BlueCity’s success, in my view, is that the building is owned and driven by an entrepreneur. That’s the number one insight I’m bringing back with me.
Just as it has taken years to transform the former swimming pool into BlueCity in the center of Rotterdam, we can expect a similar timeline for our project in Jyväskylä. Turning the old library into a shared building won’t happen overnight. But because the process is long and complex, the most important thing we can do is to start—without unnecessary delay.