Espoo is the second largest city of Finland, with a population of approximately 240,000. It is part 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. Today, Espoo is the only municipality in Finland to fully enclose another municipality. There used to be rural municipalities fully enclosing a city, for example Rovaniemen maalaiskunta enclosing Rovaniemi, but they have since been merged into the cities.
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. The current population is 241,589 (as of 2008-12-31), in Finland second only to that of Helsinki.
Espoo has several local regional centers. Espoo is thus divided into the following major areas: Espoon keskus (also administrative center), Espoonlahti, Kalajärvi, Kauklahti, Leppävaara, Matinkylä-Olari, and Tapiola.
The Helsinki University of Technology 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, operates from Keilaniemi (and also from Karamalmi), Espoo, along with other high-tech companies such as KONE and Fortum. |
