The royal Lahti

The Swedish royalties Victoria and Daniel arrived in Finland on Sunday and the Finnish media seems to be full of stories of how they love our country, how they have enjoyed the visit and how they think everything they have seen is so interesting. (It would be interesting to do a comparison of Swedish newspapers.)

As part of their stay the royalties also visited the city of Lahti. This is a city that in the 1980's wanted to build an image as 'the business city' in Finland. The slogan became a joke rather than anything else, especially after Lahti, with other Finnish cities, plunged into recession and deep unemployment in the 1990's. The slogan and the reality did not match.

                                                        Victoria and Daniel in Lahti, research centre Energon.

                                                        Kuva: ESS/Mirja Hussain

Now Lahti is building a new image and wants to be 'the Green City'. Vickan was therefore dragged to visit a research centre of renewable energy. What Lahti hopes, of course, is that the media also prints a few stories about Energon besides Victoria. Maybe also some of the glamour and the gold dust of the royalties will cling to the greyish city of Lahti and brighten the image of the whole city.

Cities today are in fierce competition with each other worldwide. They try to create images that attract people and business and try to get their message through, get people talking - a difficult task and some help from a princess would not hurt. Cities also strive to have a good reputation which is more than an image. It is more concrete. According to professor Pekka Aula, a city can only gain a good reputation through real actions - building a fashionable image is not enough. (Kunnallistieteen päivät 13.10.2010) In other words without a relevant content, slogans are useless and images empty. 

It remains to be seen if Lahti really becames the 'Green City' - if the slogan becomes reality. But at least Lahti can boast of being the city that Victoria visited in 2010 - a royal city perhaps?