Finland - Jyvaskyla Region - Final Self-Evaluation Report.pdf

indoor ice-skating rink, the Rauhalahti peat-fired power plant, the market hall, and numerous shoppingcentres were completed both in the town centre and along its periphery. Another visible change in the townlandscape was the building of the Kuokkala area, which had been preserved as an almost untouched rurallandscape on the other side of Lake Jyväsjärvi. Kuokkala is now home to over 15 000 people. The problemof through traffic was resolved in 1989 with the completion of new Rantaväylä roads along the shoreline ofthe lake. Kuokkala Bridge, half a kilometre in length and crossing Lake Jyväsjärvi, was completed at thesame time as the Rantaväylä roads.As the end of the century approached, the scenery around Lake Jyväsjärvi changed considerably in otherways as well. The low-lying area of Mattilanniemi – former wasteland and dump – was partly composed oflandfill and provides today a location for the university buildings (constructed in 1980-84) and ICT companyNokia (in 2000). The light-coloured University and Jyväskylä Science Park buildings, located at Ylistönrinne(the construction process started in 1990 with the last building, the Nanoscience Centre, being completed in2004), on the opposite side of the lake Jyväsjärvi, and the pedestrian and cyclist bridge connecting theseareas have, indeed, become the new landmarks of the town.Construction work along the shoreline has continued into the new millennium on the Lutakko site vacated bythe former Schauman’s plywood factory. It is now occupied by the “turbine” building of the JyväskyläPolytechnic, a trade fair and congress centre (Jyväskylä Paviljonki), and the highest building in the town, theJyväskylä Science Park Facilities’ Innova building. In addition to the aforementioned, there are alsoresidential buildings. The turbine house is a new type of learning centre, acting as home to the InformationTechnology Institute and Team Academy of the Polytechnic. Lutakko is connected to the new travel centre(completed in 2002), offering both rail and road travel services by a footbridge over the rail tracks. TheLutakko district reflects the structural change from traditional industry to the knowledge intensive economyand the HEIs’ role in that change.HEIs participating in the development of rural areasAccording to the grouping of municipalities by Statistics Finland five municipalities in the Jyväskylä regionare classified as rural areas (Hankasalmi, Korpilahti, Petäjävesi, Toivakka and Uurainen) 16 . The JyväskyläPolytechnic and University of Jyväskylä contribute to the development of the rural areas of the region ofJyväskylä and Central Finland as a whole.The Institute of Natural Resources is an educational unit at the Jyväskylä Polytechnic within the field ofnatural resources, located in Saarijärvi in northern Central Finland. The activities are based on thesustainable use of natural resources, with the objectives of development work being a vital countryside andclean environment. The applied R&D activities of the institute aim at promoting entrepreneurship and goodliving conditions in rural areas. The most important development branches are bio-energy, small andmedium-sized entrepreneurship in the food industry, management of the rural environment, and thedevelopment of villages. They participate as administrators and as experts in several projects financed by theEU. Regional R&D occupies a significant role in the Institute of Natural Resources, as project activityaccounts for half of its turnover. The institute provides education and consultation services that benefit theworking life of the whole region (e.g. in the following fields: preliminary analyses of rural entrepreneurship,village planning and development of micro-areas).The benefits of rural tourism in Central Finland are not yet fully profited upon. The future vision for theregion is that the high quality rural tourism in Central Finland, associated with the Finnish Lakeland, will benationally and internationally well known, sought-after and easily accessible. As a part of the ruraldevelopment process, the School of Tourism and Services Management at the Jyväskylä Polytechnic iscoordinating a project on rural tourism in Central Finland during the period of 2005-2006. The main goalsare the coordination of project activities for rural tourism and the realization and evaluation of regionalstrategies. The project strives to develop business and the cooperation involved in rural tourism, and to16 Definition made by Statistics Finland: Rural municipalities are those municipalities in which less than 60% of thepopulation lives in urban settlements, and in which the population of the largest urban settlement is less than 15 000, aswell as those municipalities in which at least 60%, but less than 90% of the population, lives in urban settlements, andin which the population of the largest urban settlement is less than 4 000.88