To sum up the past three months in a single breath would be as follows.

We've raised the salaries of education workers, disbanded the city's propaganda service and invested an additional €1.3 million in planting trees and new greenery. Our first street snow clearing map will be completed come fall. We've gone over roadbuilding projects and their timing to avoid traffic chaos during Peterburi tee, Kadaka puiestee overpass, Paldiski maantee tunnel and new city center bicycle paths construction work. I asked for and received over a hundred suggestions of where riding a bike could be made safer.

We terminated municipal rental contracts with the Russian Federation and the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchy as a servant of Vladimir Putin's regime on Pikk tänav.

One of the most important topics in Tallinn is the transition to teaching in Estonian. While we have complemented the plan both in terms of activities and funding, this topic deserves to be addressed separately.

I am in charge of the city's Urban Environment and Public Works Department, with its budget of close to €200 million and over a hundred employees, a third of whom are new. We have been hiring new advisers, with hardworking people coming to us from ministries and state agencies whose professional character we can count on.

For example, we have put together the 2024-2025 planting schedule, procured planning externally and hired a new landscape architect for the city. We know where we can plant new trees and replace existing ones, the beginning of Viru tänav, for example. We are also awaiting proposals for greenery. Let us know through the Estonian-made city application or by visiting the website of Tallinn's maintenance works information system.

Soon after taking office on April 15, I learned that the asphalt on Paavli tänav would be dug up for underground pipeline work and put back without building pedestrian paths. We only just managed to save the day in effective cooperation with [waterworks company] Tallinn Vesi. But it could have been handled better as the street will not have trees. By then, we had lost all legal levers with which to effect change. Still, we managed to improve matters in the eleventh hour.

But you can't win every time. Faehlmanni tänav was dug up for transmission works, and while it now has new LED street lighting, the way the new lamp posts were installed left the pedestrian path narrower. So much so that there is no longer room for a stroller to get through. We have tried to find a solution midway through the building process all July. The reason is that the project's building permit was issued way back when.

Work in the city government

People want a modern European capital, a functional and lively city, with more greenery, ways to get around on foot, by bicycle or public transport, less noise. They want streets, a shared living space both an eight- and eighty-year-old would be able to navigate independently.

The municipal economy will not normalize before the end of the decade, whether measured in the pace of planning approvals, or the number of new building permits issued and the time it takes to process them, how quickly new streets are constructed, pot holes patched, new school and kindergarten places created. There is a colossal amount of confusion and half-way processes. More than a few new executives have told me that the way the public sector works in the city is nowhere near the central government level.

Tallinn's longest budgeted activity plans span just two years. Examples include plans to construct or repair streets or procurements. The city's four-year fiscal strategy is a list of political wishes. Nice words, with a few numbers and often arbitrary assessments thrown in for good measure. Little wonder then that promises to build safe sidewalks in Nõmme or erect a new kindergarten in Pirita keep getting postponed. I will, over the next year, put together a long-term street building and reconstruction plan.

Tallinn is finally headed in the right direction, while we need to pick up the pace. Next to restructuring departments, chains of command, audits, optimization, budget cuts and other exciting stuff, efforts to adopt AI on a broad scale need to be geared up. We have launched pilot projects with around ten AI companies in Tallinn, while we need to use relevant systems on a bigger scale to boost the pace and quality of work in the city.

A recent study found that AI can help automize 40 percent of public sector work in the U.K. Examples include comparative and text analysis regarding laws, regulations, technical requirements for the height of buildings, width of roads, as well as generating explanatory memorandums of draft legislation. All of it is possible in Tallinn. By the way, Estonian company Pactum is using AI to expedite contracts in the private sector in a similar fashion.

Whence come problems and where does the time go?

A simple example is asking how hard can it be to plant a tree where, instead of its predecessor, the new Estonian national tree – a stump – now sits. The answer lies in underground utility networks and missing agreements with network operators. We are in the process of entering into such agreements for planting, once we've met certain conditions to avoid roots and pipes getting entangled.

Yet another closed sidewalk, with people treated in true Soviet fashion and sent on a detour of hundreds of meters. Why? Because the subcontractor handling the network or roadworks has not been given universal municipal guidelines on how to divert traffic in the case of even the smallest projects. We are working on that too.

Or why have fountains fallen silent? There is presently no happy bubbling in the City Center Police Park. The reason is that a leak somewhere is costing the city tens of thousands of liters of water. Tallinna Vesi cannot yet say whether the fountains or pipes are leaking, but the company is on the case.

Or let us take party food chains, the symptoms of which include officials with party affiliation but without instructions, or the relative importance of executives and their deputies in city district governments or cultural centers. Who is managing what when executives make up 30 percent of total staff? Heads of municipal agencies and city district elders have been tasked with taking a critical look at their departments and functions.

Reading Tallinn's audits, it turns out that truckloads of snow have been removed from the capital, while things are less clear when it comes to whether invoices have reflected real amounts and whether contracts were fully performed. Auditing is an import part of clearing the Augean stables. The city has a new internal audit chief from this summer. Former Estonian Academy of Music and Theater (EMTA) chief auditor Katrin Helendi has taken a job as my adviser. We have our work cut out for us, with the focus this year on auditing municipal bodies, such as the Kadriorg Park.

Overlooked concerns

Examples go beyond rusted pipes or broken trash bins. Prevention is preferable to problems. It is one of the most widespread definitions of a smart city that it anticipates people's needs using technology before they're created.

It has been subpar management standing in the way of long-term budgeted plans for anticipating problems. There is neither an overview nor control, with the city's eyes fixed on the rearview mirror, instead of scanning the horizon for new targets.

Trash bins attached to lamp posts all over Tallinn were removed in July. It turned out they were old and the contracts that saw the city pay rent to a private company were no longer in line with the need to recycle. There has been no coherent approach. We will procure new trash bins this summer, fix contracts, while we will not require the company to return sums for past invoices and are thankful it agreed to remove the old bins itself.

Traffic noise is a major health and everyday concern. The noise level on our streets often matches that of a vacuum cleaner (over 60-65 decibels). Tallinn is spending over €100 million on hospital treatments and over a hundred people die prematurely because of traffic noise (link in Estonian).

The city has not reduced noise levels for years, despite analyses and a legal obligation to do so. In 2021, Tallinn agreed with the European Commission to measurably reduce noise levels and air pollution, render bodies of water cleaner and boost biodiversity (the EU Green City Accord). Tartu got there this summer, while Tallinn will complete its noise reduction plan by year's end.

Other times you're short on tools. For example, when it comes to measuring the throughput of streets. The city has several ongoing AI projects and a top-notch digital service. At the same time, the city's traffic model is limited when it comes to accurate and coherent mobility planning as it has no AI component and calculations overlook cyclists as one of the main groups of road users.

But the city is seeking external advice, and it is a good thing. A recent city center mobility study found that rebuilding streets in a way that leaves everyone with plenty of room to get around safely (the so-called nine streets), throughput would grow from 5,850 people to 6,500. We would build a smart urban environment where 80 percent of people would be able to choose between walking, taking a bicycle or public transport.

Tallinn in service of Estonia

Long-term goals have been set. Tallinn's development is based on the "Tallinn 2035" strategy, which matters for the whole of Estonia as 55 percent of growing transport emissions originates in the capital. At the same time, most urban car rides are shorter than six kilometers.

If Tallinn develops roads and a conurbation where taking public transport or a bicycle is both pleasant and practical, car traffic density would fall to the level of school breaks, to borrow from Mari Jüssi. Clean energy and building renovations would allow us by 2030 to lower the capital's carbon emissions by 40 percent compared to the 2007 level (goal of Tallinn's climate plan).

This will allow the rest of Estonia to breathe a little easier in terms of carbon emissions targets, whether in terms of car use in rural areas or agricultural work. The more we make an effort and get done in the city, the easier life in the country will be.

It is the same in construction. If we erect more buildings in the city center and avoid construction in the outskirts or in outlying fields, we can avoid urban sprawl and the need to use more vehicles and the higher transport costs it creates. Commuting from home to work or school in the city from the suburbs, the distances are long. Buses are few and far in between as relatively few people live in those areas, while there are almost no local jobs.

We need to build more apartment buildings in the city center to lower the price of apartments and make owning one or more vehicles unnecessary. It is good for the environment, good for the public and good for the person's wallet, for Tallinn and Estonia.

What will the future bring?

We will put together the 2025 budget in the fall. We will build new streets and roads, the most important of which is the Tallinn main street project, with planning to start early next year and construction to follow in 2026. In 2025, the new Lauteri tänav, Tehnika tänav bicycle path and the first stage of a 14-kilometer linear park or the so-called Pollinator Highway (Putukaväil) will be completed. We will work with network operators to make sure the same street would not have to be dug up twice for different works.

Working with the private sector is crucial. We will adopt new practices and tools, experiment with cleaner domestic materials, such as lignin. We will hold a roundtable meeting with entrepreneurs in early August to discuss cooperation creating the city's bike share system. We will also look into ways of planting forest – not just streetside greenery – to earn carbon credits or money for the city treasury.

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