A ?15 billion project to link the capitals of Finland and Estonia via a tunnel beneath the Baltic Sea will create a metropolitan area "much, much better" for tech startups than Silicon Valley, according to CEO Peter Vesterbacka.
The Finest Bay Area project will add 200,000 homes in four new districts, including affordable accommodation for 50,000 people on an artificial island in the Baltic.
The vision is to attract talent from around the world to an area that is already a leading hub for tech startups while avoiding the inequality of Silicon Valley, Vesterbacka said.
Top: the tunnel could trigger development around station areas such as Otaniemi/Keilaniemi in Helsinki. Above: Peter Vesterbacka
"We're not Silicon Valley; we're better much, much better," said Vesterbacka at the Utopian Hours conference in Turin earlier this month. "That's the starting point. Silicon Valley has a lot of challenges and inequality is one of the biggest ones."
Vesterbacka claimed that Estonia and Finland are already the first and second most successful countries at attracting venture capital and that Helsinki has the highest number of gaming companies per capita in the world.
"We're much more successful than Silicon Valley"
"We have the highest density of startups, the highest amount of venture capital deployed into those startups per capita," he claimed. "We're much more successful than Silicon Valley, much more successful than China."...