Neighborhoods in Helsinki

[parisdepaul]

Hi all,

I'll be moving to Helsinki at the end of August for school (HSE) and I want to find out about neighborhoods (if any) in Helsinki. Like where are the artsy area? gay? rich? poor? alternative? ethnic? etc. Also where is the interesting architecture? I heard Eira is pretty architectually pleasing.

Thank you for your input!

[Pursuivant]

kallio is reportedly the liveliest area in all kinds of aspects. eira is where rich people reportedly live - or not so rich after paying rent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:D ... f_Helsinki
most stops on the train and metro have a shopping centre. just go to one and snoop around. it doesn't take much time to figure out the nature of the hood. can see that in going to a different citymarket - one got bear meat and all kinds of iittala glasswares on display, and the other one got cheap sausage and plastic boxes... theres also a lot of talk, the areas are really small villages - especially in the banlieus to vantaa, so many have heard of other villages but seldom go there. thumb rules is the more there is rental highrises, the more there is "social cases" the more theres drunk finns and weird foreign people and single moms with five teenage kids running wild and student communes with 24/7 partying and all that kind of "lively" atmosphere that requires police patrols visiting regularly, and that reputation then sticks... but those places don't strike as much anything strange to people living there. also depending where you are coming - the finns say of someplace its a ghetto council flats the bloke thinks its luxury apartments where he comes from - the mileage varies.

[Mark I.]

Interesting that wikipedia does not have Ullanlinna district.

In Finnish http://www.city.fi/artikkeli/Helsinki+ranking/1643/

[Pursuivant]

Punavuore sounds to be full of pikkutakkimies