Bridging The Gap Between Reality and Utopia: How to provide empathetic services to citizens

Finnish cities attract people from different social, economic and cultural backgrounds thanks to their job market and infrastructure. As cities become diverse, policy-makers and researchers should consider various stakeholders in the community when designing services. On the other hand, growing diversity also triggers unexpected or new challenges for the city and its members.

Authors view incomparable benefits of service design for developing and delivering utopian services to citizens. In fact, bigger cities such as Helsinki and Espoo have already established solid design strategies at practical levels. In this context, our first research goal is to investigate the current strategies for tackling ongoing challenges in cities and to identify differences.

Additionally, given that every city has its character and different challenges, designing services must be customized to its citizens. Customizing the city’s services requires an empathetic attitude toward its members. Therefore, this study highlights the necessity of empathetic design to build a utopian Finnish city.