About Ülemiste City

Ülemiste City is the city of the future, where talents can grow, utilise their potential and succeed.

In 2005, Ülo Pärnits started an exciting project that was called Ülemiste City – an ambition to create an intellectual environment for active young Estonian talents who would not have to leave their country but could impact the world from here; to be a smart business city and an engine of the Estonian economy. Today, that vision has grown into a future-focused urban environment with nearly 16 000 talents from more than 70 countries working, studying and living here.

Nearly 500 companies are doing business in Ülemiste City, today earning a total turnover of more than 2 billion per year. Based on the labour tax coming in from business ventures, the contribution of Ülemiste City to the Estonian economy is in the third place after Tallinn, Tartu, Pärnu and Narva. The elite of Estonian ICT companies has gathered together here, exporting a third of its production that makes half compared to the rest of Estonia and constitutes all together 1/3 of the total export of the Estonian ICT sector.

In the next 5 years, this diverse community is going to almost double. An environment that was initially created for Estonian young people and active talents is now attracting talents and ambitious companies from every corner of the world so as to curiously step into a more exciting tomorrow together, to a place that is probably the most attractive talent environment in the entire world.

Future City Professorship

In 2019, the professorship of the City of the Future born in cooperation with TalTech, Mainor AS, Technopolis Ülemiste AS, Mainor Ülemiste AS, the city of Tallinn, Ericsson Eesti AS and Telia Eesti AS was ceremonially opened at Ülemiste campus. The goal of the professorship of the City of the Future is to research the urban environment, develop and create new data-based solutions to make it work better. Surveys of the professorship concerning the present-day city, urban environment and local talent create the capability to develop new tools and planning methods to contribute to growing a viable, revolving and quality urban environment. Topics researched in the professorship are mobility (accessibility, traffic, movement), urban space (buildings, functionality) and urban economics (talents, efficiency).

“Cities are complex systems that encompass social, economic, cultural, architectural and other aspects. None of these elements can be viewed separately, they’re closely interrelated. We can see more and more digital technologies in the urban space that have a huge potential to solve the problems of cities and even improve the quality of life of citizens.” – Jenni Partanen, City of the Future Professor

Ülemiste City Future Forum