NATTOURS – sustainable urban nature routes using new IT solutions

Cities around the Baltic Sea are rich in natural and cultural resources. The cities are mainly well known for their history and architecture, but the cities around the Baltic Sea can also boast with richness in biodiversity and high value of nature in urban areas. Most of these urban nature areas are undeservingly poorly recognized even by local inhabitants, not to mention tourists. Since business and leisure tourism between Helsinki and Tallinn is very dense, it is reasonable to develop and adopt joint nature tourism attractions and products between the two cities.

The objectives of this project were to improve public recognition of nature tourism attractions in the two cities and to develop joint tourist attractions and products for sustainable nature tourism between Helsinki and Tallinn.

These objectives were reached by building a new common web portal and developing applications for nature tourism and education in Helsinki and Tallinn, which include all the major urban nature areas for observing, learning about and enjoying nature. In addition, new sustainable nature attractions in nature watching areas such as bird-watching towers or nature trails were developed in both cities.

The project was funded 85% by the European Union Regional Development Fund’s INTERREG Central Baltic programme, with co-financing from the Estonian Environment Investment Centre.

The project started in March 2016 and ended in October 2018.

NATTOURS project partners:

City of Helsinki Environment Centre

Environment Department of Tallinn City Government

SEI Tallinn