Helsinki: The Capital City
Of the three largest municipalities in the region, the capital Helsinki is the heart of Finland's political, economic, educational and cultural life. "Helsinki is the center of administration," Tuominen says. "The government is here."

Business, though, is also a major component of the Helsinki economy. For instance, Helsinki has more industrial jobs than any other municipality in Finland.

Above & Below: ABB's profitable Finnish operations capitalize on the country's strong engineering talent. Some 3,200 workers - almost half of them engineers - are employed at the firm's two Helsinki plants.

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The largest new business development is the construction of telecom giant Nokia's research center in Ruoholahti, a former wasteland in the west of the city that is being transformed into a high-tech wonderland. But the area will also be home to the Helsinki High-Tech Center (HTC), a 387,700-sq.-ft. (36,000-sq.-m.) project consisting of four eight-story towers and a smaller gateway building, scheduled to open for business in 2001.

"We aim firstly to build an excellent physical environment for work and secondly to put together a creative and inspiring community there," says Hannu I. Miettinen, who is in charge of the project. "This is going to be a superb business center. Our location is great, as we're close to both science communities in Helsinki and the technology cluster in neighboring Otaniemi. This means businesses operating in the HTC will be able to harness local expertise centers efficiently."

Other large-scale projects currently under way include Helsinki Science Park, specializing in bio-science, and a new harbor.

Facts on Finland and the Helsinki Region • Some 24 cities make up the Helsinki region. The three biggest, which form the metropolitan area, are Helsinki (Finland's capital), with a population of 550,000; Espoo, a high-tech center (pop. 209,000); and Vantaa, a key distribution and logistics hub (pop. 170,000). • About 93 percent of the country's population speaks Finnish as its mother tongue, and about 6 percent speaks Swedish as its primary language. A large percentage of Finns also speak English. • Finland is two hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. It has warm summers and cold winters. The country shares borders with Sweden to the west, Norway to the north and Russia to the east. • Education levels are high, and fully 100 percent of the population age 15 and over can read and write. Finland's educational expenditures are very high, and it has top-notch universities and institutions of higher learning. • Finland is a member of the European Union and a participant in monetary union (the euro). It is a parliamentary democracy with a republican constitution. • According to the World Competitiveness Yearbook 1999, Finland ranks No. 3 worldwide in economic competitiveness. • A true high-tech center, Finland leads the world in per-capita mobile telephone use and Internet access. • Recent corporate investors in Finland include Fujitsu, Tellabs, VTI Hamlin, L'Oreal and SmithKline Beecham.