Jyväskylä (by Molo and Oberleutnant)

[Molo]

Jyväskylä is a small inland town around 300km north of Helsinki, the Finnish capital. Jyväskylä’s municipal population is about 84’000, but only 23’000 or so actually live in the town. Here’s a tour around some of the town’s central areas, photos of which we (me & Oberleutnant) taken in the past 18 months.

For my part I can say I have enjoyed living here enormously, and I know Ober agrees with me.


The town is amazingly lively, and not the least because of the fairly large number of foreigners constituting of both immigrants and exchange students, who’ve come to study in the university for a while. Ober has actually made friends with a Lithuanian student, as well.


O = Oberleutnant’s photo
M = Molo’s photo


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[taimis]

Seems like a very cozy and frindly town , and thanks for very nice collection of photos.

[vytauc]

Thanks to you and Ober, Molo. A very very very interesting bunch of pics Jyväskylä seems to be a very nice and lively town.

Did you use a tripod for your night shots?

[ArTuRAs]

Great pic`s! Nice town!
I`m surprised that there`s only 23,000 living there, it looks a lot bigger.

[Molo]

Thanks, yes we did use tripods in the night-scenes. In winter-time it's often so dark that tripod is the only way to go, really.

[vytauc]

Thanks, yes we did use tripods in the night-scenes. In winter-time it's often so dark that tripod is the only way to go, really.

Thanks, that's exactly what I thought

[Quack]

WOW! Thanks Molo (you should've warned that there's gonna be a loooot of pictures though ).
Looks very lively as for the city with population of only 23,000 and cozy indeed
And if i had to choose between Helsinki and Jyväskylä i'd go with the last one. Looks really lovely place

[Molo]

if i had to choose between Helsinki and Jyväskylä i'd go with the last one. Looks really lovely place

I tend to think the same way. Hki has more subjects for photography, though.

[Quack]

Hki has more subjects for photography, though.

Yeah, and Moscow has WAY more subjects to take than Vln and Hki together but i would never ever like to live there

[Molo]

A couple of new ones from me:

Tivoli:






Town center:









Suburbs:

[Svajoklis]

It looks much more lively and cosmopolitan than its ickwe population might suggest.

[Whose Homepage]

/\ That's because such fine, fun folk as Molo and Oberleutnant live there, Svajoklis!

[Molo]

It looks much more lively and cosmopolitan than its ickwe population might suggest.

It seems that mine and Ober's Jkl propaganda has been working. Seriously though, Jyväskylä isn't that big - we just present it as urban and cosmopolitan as possible. Still, your words flatter me - here up north we don't get much international recognition.

[liutass]

Kada musu miesteliai su 23.000 gyventoju taip atrodys

[Oberleutnant]

As Molo states in the first post, 23,000 is the figure for residents in the city proper, while there are 83,000 living in the entire municipality that covers a very large area of 136,9 km². Source: http://www.jyvaskyla.fi/info/suuralueet.php By comparison, Tallinn is about as big area-wise.

If we use the primary shopping street as the center and draw a 3 kilometer long radius around it, there's perhaps about 30,000 people in that area and this includes several suburbs. Calling this a city of 83,000 is quite wrong, because with the same logic we could claim that Helsinki has 1,2 million people because that's the population figure for the region.

Finnish cities like to pretend that the municipality figures reflect the size of the city, while in the international perspective they are greatly bloated and don't reflect the actual size very well. For example, Finland's third largest city Tampere has officially 205,000 residents -- but that's from an area of 690,6 km². Another example: Rovaniemi in Lapland calls itself a city of 60,000 people, but area-wise it's a municipality of 8 017,20 km²!



Glad if you liked the photos. Here are some more from me.

1950s buildings are a common sight in the suburbs near the inner city.






We call this street the "Little Soho" or, alternatively, "Little-Amsterdam"


January ...




Typical inner city area outside the primary shopping street






These guys were operating a falafel grill in downtown








A building that stood here on the empty plot was demolished few years ago to make room for a new music / art center that is expected to go under construction in the near-future.