Lahti
Lahti is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Päijät-Häme. It is located in the Finnish Lakeland. The population of Lahti is approximately, while the sub-region has a population of approximately. It is the most populous municipality in Finland, and the sixth most populous urban area in the country.
Lahti is situated on a bay at the southern end of lake Vesijärvi about north-east of the capital city Helsinki, south-west of Heinola and east of Hämeenlinna, the capital of the region of Kanta-Häme. Lahti is situated at the intersection of Highway 4 and Highway 12, which are the most significant main roads of Lahti. Its neighboring municipalities are Asikkala, Heinola, Hollola, Iitti and Orimattila.
Lahti is a long-time pioneering city in environmental sustainability, dating back to as early as 1990 and before. The European Commission has named Lahti as the European Green Capital of 2021. Lahti is also the headquarters of the Salpausselkä UNESCO Global Geopark, one of 4 UNESCO Geoparks in Finland; Salpausselkä was added to the list of over 170 UNESCO Global Geoparks in the world in 2022. In January 2026, the British newspaper The Guardian highlighted Lahti as one of its readers' favorite travel destinations in the Nordic countries, praising its good transport connections from Helsinki, charming little cafes and "quiet, down-to-earth people".
The coat of arms of the city depicts a train wheel surrounded by flames. It refers to the Riihimäki–Saint Petersburg railway, which had a decisive influence on the birth of the city at its crossroads.
Etymology
In English, the Finnish word Lahti literally means 'bay'. Lahti is also dubbed the "Chicago of Finland" due to the similarity of early industries of both cities, when they were known as "slaughterhouse cities". Also, the troubled history of both cities in terms of crime has been seen as one of the similarities.History
Lahti was first mentioned in documents in 1445. The village belonged to the parish of Hollola and was located at the medieval trade route of Ylinen Viipurintie, which linked the towns of Hämeenlinna and Viipuri.The completion of the Riihimäki – St. Petersburg railway line in 1870 and the Vesijärvi canal in 1871 turned Lahti into a lively station, and industrial installations began to spring up around it. For a long time, the railway station at Vesijärvi Harbour was the second busiest station in Finland. Craftsmen, merchants, a few civil servants and a lot of industrial workers soon mixed in with the existing agricultural peasantry.
On 19 June 1877, almost the entire village was burned to the ground. However, the accident proved to be a stroke of luck for the development of the place, as it led to the authorities resuming their deliberations about establishing a town in Lahti. The village was granted market town rights by Emperor Alexander II of Russia in 1878 and an empire-style, grid town plan was approved, which included a large market square and wide boulevards. This grid plan still forms the basis of the city center. Most of the buildings were low wooden houses bordering the streets.
Lahti was founded during a period of severe economic recessions. The Russian Empire was encumbered by the war against Turkey, which also affected the economy of the Grand Duchy of Finland. The recession also slowed down building of the township: land would not sell and often plots were not built on for some time. In its early years, the town with its meagre 200 inhabitants was too small to provide any kind of foundation for trade. At the end of the 1890s, Lahti's Township Board increased its efforts to enable Lahti to be turned into a city. In spring 1904, the efforts finally bore fruit as the Senate approved of the application, although it was another eighteen months before Tsar Nicholas II finally gave his blessing and issued an ordinance for establishing the city of Lahti.
At the end of 1905, the area that now comprises Lahti accommodated around 8,200 people of whom just under 3,000 lived in the city itself. All essential municipal institutions were built in just ten years, including a hospital and a city hall. At the same time, a rapid increase in brick houses was taking place in the centre of the city. The Battle of Lahti was fought in the 1918 Finnish Civil War as the German Detachment Brandenstein took the town from the Reds.
In the early 1920s, the city gained possession of the grounds of the Lahti Manor, an important piece of land previously blocking the city from the lake. Large-scale industrial operations grew rapidly in the 1930s as did the population; Lahti, at the time, was one of Finland's fastest-growing cities, and before the start of the Winter War its population was approaching 30,000.
Through the addition of new areas in 1924, 1933 and 1956, Lahti grew, both in terms of population and surface area. The increase in population was especially strong after WWII, when 10,000 evacuees from ceded territories to the Soviet Union were settled in the city, and then later in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of urbanization. The rapid population growth came to a sharp end in 1975 and the city has since grown significantly slower albeit more steadily, with the latest notable growth in population happening in 2016 when the municipality of Nastola became a part of Lahti.
In December 2018, Lahti became the first new university city in Finland after Rovaniemi in 1979 when the Parliament accepted a change in the university law. LUT University nowadays consists of two campuses, Lappeenranta and Lahti.
Geography
The terrain of Lahti is dominated by the first Salpausselkä ridge, a terminal moraine that cuts through the city from west to east. The city is located in the transition from the southern coastal area to the Finnish Lakeland; prominent to the north of the Salpausselkä are rocky hills and fragmented lakes, while its south side is dominated by forests and small rivers. The divide is also apparent in the soil, which mostly consists of till in the north and clay in the south. The biggest lake is Vesijärvi which also is a gateway to Central Finland via Lake Päijänne. There is also a pond called Pikku-Vesijärvi near the Lanu-puisto park.Subdivisions
The area of the city of Lahti is divided in two ways: first, the 40 individually numbered districts, and second, the 9 greater areas, which are divided into 41 statistical districts and further into 169 statistical areas. The definitions of the districts and statistical districts do not necessarily match each other. Below are listed the districts:- Keski-Lahti
- Kartano
- Paavola
- Niemi
- Kiveriö
- Kivimaa
- Mukkula
- Kilpiäinen
- Pesäkallio
- Kytölä
- Viuha
- Kunnas
- Ahtiala
- Koiskala
- Myllypohja
- Möysä
- Järvenpää
- Kolava
- Kujala
- Kerinkallio
- Ämmälä
- Renkomäki
- Nikkilä
- Laune
- Asemantausta
- Sopenkorpi
- Hennala
- Jokimaa
- Okeroinen
- Kärpänen
- Pirttiharju
- Salpausselkä
- Jalkaranta
- Villähde
- Nastola
- Uusikylä
- Seesta
- Ruuhijärvi
- Immilä
- Pyhäntaka
Climate
Demographics
Population
The city of Lahti has inhabitants, making it the most populous municipality in Finland. The Lahti region has inhabitants, making it the fifth largest region in Finland after Helsinki, Tampere, Turku and Oulu. Lahti is home to 2% of Finland's population. 11% of the population has a foreign background, which is close to the national average. However, it is lower than in the major Finnish cities of Helsinki, Espoo, Tampere, Vantaa or Turku.Languages
Lahti is a monolingual Finnish-speaking municipality., the majority of the population, persons, spoke Finnish as their first language. In addition, the number of Swedish speakers was persons of the population. Foreign languages were spoken by of the population. As English and Swedish are compulsory school subjects, functional bilingualism or trilingualism acquired through language studies is not uncommon.At least 100 different languages are spoken in Lahti. The most commonly spoken foreign languages are Russian, Arabic, Estonian, Ukrainian and English.
Immigration
, there were 12,841 persons with a migrant background living in Lahti, or 11% of the population. The number of residents who were born abroad was 12,146, or 10 per cent of the population. The number of persons with foreign citizenship living in Lahti was 8,268. Most foreign-born citizens came from the former Soviet Union, Estonia, Iraq, Russia and Ukraine.The relative share of immigrants in Lahti's population is close to the national average. Furthermore, the city's new residents are increasingly of foreign origin. This will increase the proportion of foreign residents in the coming years.
Religion
In 2023, the Evangelical Lutheran Church was the largest religious group with 60.6% of the population of Lahti. Other religious groups accounted for 2.9% of the population. 36.5% of the population had no religious affiliation.Economy
The economic region of Lahti, which includes the surrounding municipalities, was strongly affected by the collapse of Finnish-Soviet trade and by the recession in the early 1990s. The value of production slumped, especially in the mechanical engineering industry and other manufacturing industries. Production also decreased in the textile and clothing industry. In 1990, there were 90,370 jobs in the Lahti region. The number of jobs diminished over the next couple of years, so that in 1993 there were fewer than 70,000 jobs in the region. The number of jobs had slowly increased to 79,138 in 1999.| Employment by sector | 1980 | 1990 | 2000 | 2007 |
| Services | 52.0% | 59.3% | 63.5% | 72.4% |
| Industry | 47.1% | 40.1% | 36.4% | 27.4% |
| Agriculture & Forestry | 0.9% | 0.6% | 0.1% | 0.2% |
In 1995, R&D expenditure was FIM 715 per person, while Finland's average was about FIM 2050. The amount of Tekes funding in the Lahti Region grew 40% during 2004–2007 while the average growth in Finland was 60%.
| Gross domestic product | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 |
| GDP at current prices; million € | 3,449.3 | 3,709.7 | 3,697.5 | 3,982.3 | 4,136.8 | 4,242.4 | 4,381.9 |
| Changes of GDP; year 2000 = 100% | 100.0% | 107.5% | 107.2% | 115.5% | 119.9% | 123.0% | 127.7% |
| GDP per capita; whole country =100% | 80.7% | 82.0% | 79.4% | 84.3% | 83.9% | 83.4% | 81.2% |
| GDP per employed; whole country =100% | 86.6% | 87.3% | 83.6% | 88.9% | 88.7% | 88.6% | 87.1% |