Katri Einola and Inna Ampuja
This case report examines a pioneering strategic urban development project conducted in 2024–2025 by Ramboll Finland in collaboration with the City of Oulu. The project addresses a fundamental challenge: how urban planning can transition from mitigating environmental harm to actively promoting planetary and local well-being within the framework of planetary boundaries. Positioned at the intersection of systems thinking, regenerative development, and urban planning, the study explores how a city can reframe its land use principles and practices to respond to complex and uncertain socio-ecological challenges.
The work focused on creating a development plan that integrates planetary sustainability, quality of life, and meaningfulness of life into a unified decision-making model. Through iterative phases—framework creation, participatory futures scenarios, and systemic development planning—the project combined scientific knowledge with stakeholder engagement, including residents, policymakers, and experts. The resulting development plan reconceptualizes the city as a “living system” and introduces proactive impact assessment as a core planning tool. The findings demonstrate that aligning urban planning with planetary boundaries requires not only technical solutions but a paradigm shift in governance, values, and design practices. The project highlights cities as both drivers of environmental pressures and critical leverage points for systemic transformation, offering a replicable approach for embedding regenerative principles into urban development.
Keywords: urban development, systems thinking, social-ecological systems, futures, decision-making