Sustainable community and neighbourhood regeneration and development. Experiences from the approach and implementation of VTT's EcoCity concept

VTT has a long history of research on different aspects of sustainability of the built environment. Findings from and knowledge gathered in EcoCity related projects in the European context led into the second phase of our neighbourhood development projects in Finland, but also in China, Russia and Kenya. The third phase in the evolution of VTT's EcoCity concept started after the previous World Sustainable Building Conference that we hosted in Helsinki in 2011 where we expanded the focus of the international research community to consider people and their needs also in the developing world which led to new projects in Tanzania and Libya as well as our ongoing activities e.g. in Zambia, Egypt and Colombia. This paper describes our approach to and experiences from developing and implementing VTT's EcoCity concept for sustainable community and developing countries.