Land use planning for Port of Oulu and its surroundings supports the city’s green transition

The City of Oulu wants to offer attractive locations for green transition industrial projects. Sweco’s experts acted as a land use planning consultant for the detailed plan amendment of the Port of Oulu in Oritkari area, and its surroundings.

Port of Oulu expands on a landfill area in the alteration of plan

The City of Oulu is making a detailed alteration of plan for the Port of Oulu, which is part of the EU’s TEN-T core network. Oulu Port Green Transition Industrial Area project develops the operations of the existing port and creates a framework for green transition industrial projects in its surroundings. An internationally significant transport hub provides, for example, carbon dioxide and renewable energy needed by the hydrogen industry.

“The land area to be designated is exceptional in that it does not yet exist for the most part,” says Suvi Jänkälä, Architect at the City of Oulu. With the alteration of the plan, the port area will be expanded westwards over the sea with land filling.

Over the decades, the entire Port of Oulu has been built on landfill, and now the new land fills are equivalent in scale to the entire Oulu grid plan centre. The change in the local detailed plan covers an area of approximately 440 hectares, of which about half is new land.

“Another special feature of the project was the design of a large industrial area quite close to the city centre,” says Sweco’s architect and planner Venla Leppänen. In addition to traditional industrial plots, T/K plots were planned in connection with the port, which can be used to process and store hazardous chemicals.

The alteration of plan for the port was implemented as a turnkey procurement

The City of Oulu selected Sweco, a framework agreement partner, as the planning consultant for the plan amendment process. At the same time, a general plan was created for an area of about 1000 hectares, which extends to the districts of Nuottasaari, Vihreäsaari, Äimärautio and Limingantulli. Due to the diverse entity, the city experimented for the first time with the turnkey procurement enabled by the framework agreement.

“It required a lot of work in the definition phase, but it paid off later,” Jänkälä says. The operating method made it possible for planning projects to acquire special expertise that is less common flexibly for the needs of the project. “Sweco had a comprehensive approach, and when the content of the work became more specific, the work program could be flexibly modified to agree on additional and alteration work.”

The project combined local knowledge from Sweco with the special expertise of a large group, such as flow studies. “In addition to land use planning, we involved street, traffic, bridge, geo- and environmental planners as well as nature and landscape surveyors,” says Esa Paajanen, Sweco’s architect and project manager for the project.

Flexible and extensive resources were an advantage, because many things went differently than initially imagined. “The giant green transition projects are new to everyone, so we learned and sought good practices together,” Jänkälä says. He also found the pairing between the city and Sweco’s project managers to work excellently.

Surprising added value to the project was brought by the cooperation of the City of Oulu’s framework agreement partners. “It’s a Finnish rarity, which impressed foreign investors. Sweco and the other consultants in the project were able to put the customer first,” Jänkälä says with satisfaction.

Nature surveys protect birds in the re-zoning process

In the plan amendment process, a wide range of perspectives were simultaneously examined, such as the prerequisites for industrial operations, infrastructure and logistics networks, recreational use of shores, natural values and safety. “Creating a functional entity required optimization and compromises,” Paajanen says.

There are already a lot of large-scale logistics near the port, such as a ship, rail and rubber-wheeled terminal. As industrial activity increases, traffic arrangements change. Therefore, the planning process included risk assessments of level crossings and a major accident risk assessment. “In the vicinity of the port, the perspective of national security is always included,” Jänkälä says.

In his opinion, natural values were the number one priority in the project, as the area is home to birds that are valuable for the entire Bay of Bothnia, such as endangered waders. The barren and low-vegetation environment of the harbour is home to bird species, which have declined as the shores have become eutrophic.

“The movement of people in the port area must be restricted in any case, which creates a safe haven for the area’s birdlife,” Jänkälä says. The construction of the industrial plots will take place in stages so that there will be enough empty and unbuilt shoreline for birds at every stage of the commissioning of the area. Eventually, part of the area will be completely excluded from construction as a bird beach.

According to Leppänen, sustainable land use planning must take into account all levels of responsibility, including social aspects. “Although the area is mainly developed as an industrial environment, Oritkari also has a great seashore. In the draft plan, one area was designated for the development of recreational use.”