Sister Cities of the World

Sister cities of Espoo

Espoo (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈespoː]; Swedish: Esbo, [ˈɛsbo]) is the second largest city and municipality in Finland. The population of the city of Espoo is 259,383 (31 August 2013). It is part of the Capital region and most of its population lives in the inner urban core of the Helsinki metropolitan area, along with the cities of Helsinki, Vantaa, and Kauniainen. Espoo shares its eastern border with Helsinki and Vantaa, while enclosing Kauniainen. Espoo is the only municipality in Finland to fully enclose another municipality. The city is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, in the region of Uusimaa.

Other bordering municipalities of Espoo are Nurmijärvi and Vihti in the north and Kirkkonummi in the west. The national park of Nuuksio is situated in northwest Espoo.

Espoo encompasses 528 square kilometres (204 sq mi), of which 312 km2 (120 sq mi) is land.

Espoo has several local regional centers. Espoo is thus divided into seven major areas (Finnish: suuralueet, Swedish: storområden): Vanha-Espoo (with administrative center), Suur-Espoonlahti, Pohjois-Espoo, Suur-Kauklahti, Suur-Leppävaara, Suur-Matinkylä and Suur-Tapiola.

Aalto University is based in Otaniemi, Espoo, along with a thriving science community that includes numerous startups and organizations such as VTT – the Technical Research Center of Finland. Nokia, the telecommunications company, is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, along with other high-tech companies such as KONE, Tekla and Fortum, as well as video game developer Remedy Entertainment.

The city of Espoo is officially bilingual. The majority of the population, 83.6%, speaks Finnish as their mother tongue, while a minority of 8.3% speaks Swedish. 8% of Espoo's population has a first language other than Finnish or Swedish.

Content on this page is licensed under CC-BY-SA from the authors of the following Wikipedia pages: List of twin towns and sister cities in Finland, Espoo. Note that the data on Wikipedia is highly unreliable. In many cases, sister cities are missing or wrongly listed. Some cities also have different levels of partnership. If you find an error, please make a correction on the relevant Wikipedia pages and cite your sources.