Marketta Kyttä

Marketta Kyttä works as a professor of Land Use Planning in the department of Built Environment in Aalto. She received her PhD in the Department of Architecture from Helsinki University of Technology in 2004. Her doctoral thesis about child-friendly environments received two scientific awards, Lea Pulkkinen and Tapio Nummenmaa awards.

Having background in environmental psychology, her interests cover widely human aspects in planning. Her research topics include environments that promote health and wellbeing, active living, child- and age-friendly environments, social sustainability, urban lifestyles, perceived safety and new methods and practises for public participation. The innovation of her team, “softGIS” methodology, that is an advanced example of PPGIS (public participation GIS) methodology, enable the provision of people's place-based knowledge in the GIS format, complementing the traditional GIS-data. Geospatial World Forum granted softGIS team a webGIS Innovation award in 2010. Currently, The Maptionnaire methodology, that is the commercialised version of softGIS, has been used in over 15 000 projects in more than 40 countries.

Professor Kyttä has authored more than 100 scientific articles with over 11 000 citations. Kyttä has worked in several universities abroad, e.g. Milan Polytechnics (Italy), University of Queensland and Melbourne (Australia) andSan Diego State University, US.

Kyttä has established a new master’s programme, Spatial Planning and Transportation Engineering that integrates the fields of land use and transportation planning without forgetting the human focus.