The Helsinki Living Lab is a unique bilateral cooperation between Helsinki City and the Helsinki-Uusimaa Region and Tallinn, its twin city in Estonia. The city-regions are connected by the 65 kilometre-wide Gulf of Finland and collectively home to over 2 million inhabitants. Supported by the economic integration of Estonia and Finland, high education levels and complementary regional economies, the Helsinki-Tallinn region is making investments between the cities that would offer significant opportunities for both businesses and labour markets.

The Helsinki Living Lab aims to gain a deeper understanding of the social impacts of these changes to the rural and peri-urban areas around the two cities. The Living Lab will also focus on issues that pertain to digital services and other novel solutions that enable multiple locations for life and work, rural and urban. The growing Helsinki metropolitan area seeks sustainable solutions for its dependence on ecosystem services that are located in the adjacent and remote rural areas. Policy guidelines and recommendations of the ROBUST project will have a timely impact on regional development and cooperation models in the Helsinki-Tallinn region, and offer new economic development opportunities to the 1.4 million people living in the Helsinki metropolitan area.