After an initial Request for Qualifications, a maximum of five teams will be selected to participate in the competition. Resources will be allocated to each team to enable them to develop the following outcomes:

• a design strategy and approach
• an indicator of sustainability
• a vision that will inspire stakeholders to overcome the challenges of systemic change

Selected teams will travel to Helsinki for a two-day workshop on the development context. Teams will then have approximately four weeks to develop their proposals. A local and international interdisciplinary jury will review the proposals and select a winning team.

It is our goal not to lose the valuable content of the proposals by selecting one winner and discarding the rest. For this reason, we are scheduling the final meeting with the competition teams after the selection of a “winning” team. This will allow us to align future opportunities with the other teams and to disseminate the know-how generated by the competition to the community.

In the short term, Sitra is working to identify the best team rather than the best solution. In the long-term, it is expected that the competition process will:

• Implement an innovative sustainable urban development solution in Helsinki
• Develop a sustainable development framework applicable to other contexts
• Develop a sustainability indicator to evaluate performance
• Spur innovation in the field of energy efficiency and sustainable development

Because Sitra is a public procurement entity under public procurement legislation (Finnish Act on Public Contracts), public procurement rules shall apply to competition process.