Annabel Pops — PALJASSAARE

WOLF LEAP
by Annabel Pops

Wolf Leap is not merely research; it is rather an investigative journey to understand the currently unknown and nonexistent new urban realities in the complex peninsula of Paljassaare, located in Northern Tallinn. The project not only focuses particularly on Hundipea but opens up bigger trends in changing power structures and investor relations regarding society, which is becoming more reliable on technology day by day. As the world seems to be obsessed with terms such as innovation and smartness, and technology seems to be the answer to everything lately, this research tries to unravel this new phenomenon in the world. Estonia, “a small Baltic country described by pundits as Europe’s Silicon Valley” [1, p. 77], offers a perfect ground for unwinding this topic.

@Arhitektuuribüroo PLUSS

The project name Wolf Leap refers back to Tiger Leap, an ambitious country-wide IT infrastructure development program in 1990s Estonia [2], which had just recently regained its independence and had to find a way to catch up with other European countries’ development and economies. During the nineties, Estonia was also in the middle of neoliberal economic reforms, which also meant privatising most public assets [1, p. 80]. From there on, most of the Estonia focus has gone to providing an environment for innovation, as our e-government, transparent and almost incorruptible public sector and easy structures should provide perfect incubation conditions for entrepreneurship and growth. By now, Estonia holds the label of the “digital nation” and the country with the most unicorns* per capita.

As the public money goes for the innovation hub representation and providing somewhat growth-oriented conditions on the market, then it is only logical that we find the private sector and “unicorn* money” now in urban planning and responsible for the public space projects. It is worth mentioning that the project has another “player” in the system, between the state and private sector lies the Tallinn Municipality, which sadly seems to not hold a significant role within big private projects like Hundipea, but this is illustrating example as well.

In September 2021, articles referring to how Estonian investors and entrepreneurs are developing a climate-neutral city district in Northern Tallinn started to blow up in the media [3]. Hundipea OÜ is owned by four juridical bodies: Kasperwiki Laevaomanikud OÜ, Notorious OÜ, Crecco OÜ, Bolton Real Estate OÜ, and from there three bigger names stand out [4]. Heiti Hääl, the owner of Alexela, a well-known Estonian gas station and electricity company, has rather a pollutive image but is now investing in the climate-neutral city district. Heiti Hääl is also the father of Markus Hääl, CEO of Hundipea. Next to him, the biggest share of Hundipea is owned by Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder of two Estonian unicorns*, Skype and Transferwise. Taavet Hinrikus, together with Sten Tamkivi, founded Skaala (Notorious OÜ), an independent investment company that spans diverse asset classes and impact-driven projects. Currently, Skaala is involved with both Hundipea and also with another new human-centred urban district development in Northern Tallinn, Krulli [5].

As it was stated by the CEO of Hundipea – “the addition of new well-known technology investors to the ownership circle gives the project new exciting outputs.” [3], which highlights the opportunities seen within the “technology” and how investor relations are currently changing in urban planning projects.

*The term unicorn refers to a privately held startup company with a value of over $1 billion [6]

@Paulina Gilsbach

Hundipea promises to be a new climate-neutral city district in Northern Tallinn where “both people and nature can thrive”. Seemingly, they want to tackle all the problems others before them haven`t succeeded. Hundipea aims to combine many bigger trends and principles in urban planning currently – they are following the 15-minute city plan and the focus goes on lively public spaces, density, accessibility, community engagement, technology implementation and sustainability practices [7]. By blending nature-based and technological solutions, Hundipea is committed to achieving CO2 neutrality, enhancing biodiversity, and building resilience to climate change.Ultimately, it seeks to establish a harmonious balance between people and nature, while setting a benchmark for future urban developments through its digital-twin sub-project called Wolfscape [8].

@Arhitektuuribüroo PLUSS

Originally I approached the topic with the smart city concept in mind, as the words “smart” and “clever” were common when I was doing the initial research about Hundipea, but after the interview with the Hundipea team, I understood that the situation isn`t as clear as first imagined.

“The Smart City concept is widely used by urban managers, political elites and leading business actors in framing and shaping urban development using utopian urban imageries (green-sustainable, technological-informational) and keywords, such as clean, green, intelligent and efficient, to attract investments, highly skilled workers and tourists. It is put forward as a strategy to address urban growth and social and environmental sustainability [9, p. 1331]”
The difficulties with smart cities usually start already with the term, although everyone seems to know about the “smart city”, it is hard to find one good explanation for the term that is also widely used. It can be said that in a "smart city," technology is used to manage and optimise urban spaces, and especially digital technologies, can be seen as a main driver for change. Usually, the problems with smart cities start even with the very nature of the term; it aims to solve something within the city, which means the concept is often prescribed as incompatible with the city's informal character [9, p. 1330]. Smart cities make urban environments rely more on technologies, and as big corporate companies usually develop these technology solutions. So, it will create problems with governance, as the power is given to the so-called corporate elite and entrepreneurs. The third main argument against smart cities is the inequality and inclusiveness issues it will bring since the SC requires both access to technology and digital literacy [10].

SMARTNESS MANDATE

“Smart cities operate as perpetual prototypes that follow a logic of software development. They are facets of a pervasive “smartness mandate” that calls for optimizing humans’ ability to adapt to the urban environment by means of extensive computational infrastructures, as much as it delivers a “political imperative that smartness be extended to all areas of life.”

– Orit Halpern, through Maroš Krivý [1, p.75]

As I had to set the SC framework aside, then I found myself soon working with the “smartness mandate” term. Orit Halpern and Robert Mitchell first introduced the term “smartness mandate” in 2022, describing smartness as a new mode of managing and governing politics, economics, and the environment. I believe this is the closest term to the existing phenomena described also within the project, where we can see that something is leading to a change in power structures and megaprojects. The described idea of “smartness” isn`t integrated not only into cities, this is seen as promises about integration, ecology, crisis, computation and complexity, which have been widely accepted now by global policy discussions and wider infrastructures as well [11, p. 3].

@Tizian Wojan

TECHNOLOGY AS A TOOL, NOT A SEPARATE GOAL

“We believe that in a smart city, technologies and science are visually and cognitively in the background - they are like a smart skeleton that keeps the city functioning, which is not visible at first glance. In the case of Hundipea, for example, we are planning electricity optimization systems, as well as cement grown by microbes, new generation waste management, economical rainwater solutions and much more - technology lies in all different areas.”

– Hundipea`s webpage [12]

Within my project, I tried to understand what part technologies can really play in urban planning, and Hundipea worked here as a great example. After discussion with Hundipea CEO and Head of Greentech, going through all their written articles and strategic goals, I would say that technology can be seen as a tool for achieving something specific, and if one has a very particular problem to solve, then this is the place where technologies could help. If Hundipea aims to be climate-neutral, then green technologies can be seen as a solution. Currently, it is just hard to see the true potential of these collaborations, as we do not have many examples from all over the world and the framework (”smart urbanism”) about “how” technology and smartness can be integrated into urban planning projects is lacking both the theoretical insight and empirical evidence [13, p. 2106]. Although Hundipea offers us here already one example – the digital-twin platform under the Wolfscape label is a great example where digital technology has been used for a certain goal with a good understanding of “why” this is being done. Wolfscape creates a digital twin model, a blueprint for other similar projects, which also aim to create harmony between natural and built environments [14].

Necessity to mention about Hundipea is that although everything sounds good, it is currently non-existent. The planning phase, when words are only on paper, offers a great ground for giving out different promises and changing these goals. Many other megaprojects before Hundipea have failed even before the building phase, or several other projects have failed with the real result of the project and the initial promises. Hundipea works right now as a promise of the climate-neutral city district where the focus goes on humans and nature, so that leaves us currently with just a hope that these expectations are answered when the real building starts.

REFLECTIONS AND LEARNINGS

From the first tour of Paljassaare, I was both intrigued and amazed by Hundipea's ambitious new city district plan, and I knew I was going to leave Hundipea for my individual project. For me, Hundipea acts as a perfect playground for exploring so many different aspects of where the future of urban planning might be heading, at least in Estonia. I don’t expect people to remember who owns Hundipea or what exactly all of the promises of Hundipea, but rather, I wanted to shed light on some kind of change that is noticeably happening, although it is hard to explain this with one exact umbrella term. The world’s obsession with smartness is getting out of hand, and adding the smartness aspect into cities is incompatible with the nature of the city [10]. With the rise of smart cities, it is a general understanding that there are inherent issues within urban areas, that need to be addressed and that smartness needs to solve - it is necessary to have a second thought about ideas like that.

“Technology needs a problem to solve, so it creates one. Cities aren’t a problem, or if they are, they always have been” [15, p. 424]
Technology can`t ever be seen as a bigger goal to achieve with some project; there has to be a bigger goal within a project, and maybe some kind of technology, whether it is called green, smart, digital, deep or high-tech, can offer some effective solution for the one part of the project. Making a new city district, where technologies and smartness are seen as a backbone for the city, is questionable by its sincere goals and its understanding of what makes the city. Luckily, Hundipea seems to understand this part, and from the interviews with them, it can be seen that they aren’t the biggest followers of the smart city label anymore and have already worked with their understanding and implementation of the technologies and smartness into urban planning.

To conclude everything in a bigger picture – it is worth being critical of topics and labels like that, especially seeing how the obsession with these magical terms isn`t ending soon. It is necessary to question the meaning of words such as innovation, technologies, and smartness – what lies behind them is often emptiness and just rather pointless promises that don't serve any other specific goal. It’s necessary to ask questions: what are these technologies trying to solve exactly, what system or solution they are trying to make more efficient, whose agenda they are representing, for whom these empty promises are given, and who believes in them? And regarding the Hundipea project, we just have to wait and hope and see if they can make their innovative project a reality and if we will have a climate-neutral city district in the Baltics in the next 30 years. At least the Estonian part of me wants to believe in their project, while I hope Tallinn doesn’t receive another windy Noblessner for the elitist upper class, and some initial goals of the megaproject will be achieved.

The Wolf Leap project found its way “back home” as we presented inside the Hundipea cacao warehouse, and in the audience were also Hundipea`s team and the people I interviewed for the project. As it added, of course, a certain level of pressure, and I felt that I needed to be more careful with my words, then in the end, I believe the outcome was useful for all the listeners in the room and offered a source of thought to everyone. As I looked at my research mostly through the critical political economy angle, then I believe it offered a refreshing outcome and variety to the whole tour, plus it made a beautiful and complimenting duo altogether with Paula`s community-building presentation.

References:

[1] M. Krivý, “The Smart and the Ruined: Notes on the New Social Factory,” Thresholds, vol. 47, pp. 75–90, May 2019, doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/thld_a_00675.

[2] Education Estonia, “How it all began? From Tiger Leap to digital society,” Education Estonia. https://www.educationestonia.org/tiger-leap/

[3] Delfi, “Hinrikus, Tamkivi ja Hääl rahastavad Põhja-Tallinnasse rajatavat esimest tervenisti kliimaneutraalset linnaosa,” Ärileht, 2021. https://arileht.delfi.ee/artikkel/94571683/hinrikus-tamkivi-ja-haal-rahastavad-pohja-tallinnasse-rajatavat-esimest-tervenisti-kliimaneutraalset-linnaosa (accessed Jan. 12, 2025).

[4] “HUNDIPEA OÜ,” Inforegister, 2024. https://www.inforegister.ee/14862069-HUNDIPEA-OU/ (accessed Jan. 12, 2025).

[5] “Linnaruum,” skaala, 2024. https://skaala.org/et/communities/ (accessed Jan. 12, 2025).

[6] J. Chen, “Unicorn Definition,” Investopedia, May 31, 2022. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unicorn.asp

[7] “Hundipea - Tulevikust tulvil linnaruum,” Hundipea, Jan. 20, 2023. https://hundipea.ee/en/ (accessed Jan. 12, 2025).

[8] “About - Hundipea,” Hundipea, Jan. 20, 2023. https://hundipea.ee/en/about/ (accessed Jan. 12, 2025).

[9] H. Verrest and K. Pfeffer, “Elaborating the urbanism in smart urbanism: distilling relevant dimensions for a comprehensive analysis of Smart City approaches,” Information, Communication & Society, pp. 1328-1342, Jan. 2018, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2018.1424921.

[10] M. Krivý, “Towards a critique of cybernetic urbanism: The smart city and the society of control,” Planning Theory, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 8–30, Apr. 2016, doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1473095216645631.

[11] O. Halpern and R. Mitchell, The Smartness Mandate. MIT Press, 2023.

[12] “Kliimaneutraalne linnaruum – mida see päriselt tähendab? - Hundipea,” Hundipea, May 12, 2023. https://hundipea.ee/kliimaneutraalne-linnaruum/ (accessed Jan. 12, 2025).

[13] A. Luque-Ayala and S. Marvin, “Developing a critical understanding of smart urbanism?,” Urban Studies, vol. 52, no. 12, pp. 2105–2116, Mar. 2015, doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098015577319.

[14] “Wolfscape”, 2022. https://www.wolfscape.eu/en/home

[15] K. S. Willis, “The death and life of smart cities,” The Routledge Companion to Smart Cities, pp. 411–428, Mar. 2020, doi: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315178387-28.

2024

URBAN STUDIES - EKA

PALJASSAARE TALLINN, ESTONIA.