What does a Repair City look like in everyday life? In Lahti, one answer can be found at the Sustainable Textile Workshop (Kestävä tekstiiliPaja), a monthly, Repair Café–style workshop at Lahti Palvelutori Service Centre.
The workshop brings together residents who want to repair, alter or give new life to textiles instead of throwing them away. With shared sewing machines, overlockers, basic supplies and practical guidance, it offers an accessible setting for hands-on repair and learning.
An existing example of Repair City Lahti
On 7 October 2026, Smart & Lean Hub visited the workshop as part of the EU co-funded Circ@Home project to introduce and discuss the Repair City Lahti concept with local residents.
Repair City Lahti explores how repair, reuse and sharing can become more visible and accessible parts of everyday urban life.
The monthly textile workshop offers a concrete example of this approach. It brings repair activities into an existing public service environment and makes equipment and practical support available to residents.
Learning from residents
During the visit, we spoke with workshop participants about sustainable living, their motivations for repairing textiles and the opportunities offered by the Repair City Lahti concept.
The conversations also explored how residents had discovered the workshop. Recommendations from friends and personal networks, alongside internet searches, were mentioned as ways of finding the activity.
These observations provide useful initial feedback for future Repair City Lahti communication, particularly the importance of making existing repair opportunities easy to discover.
From a local workshop to a wider circular city
The workshop illustrates a key idea behind Circ@Home: circularity is not only about changing individual behaviour. Residents also need accessible places, shared resources, practical guidance and local services that make circular choices possible.
Through its Town–Home–Services approach, Circ@Home explores how municipalities, households and circular services can support one another.
In Lahti, the Repair City concept provides an opportunity to connect existing repair initiatives and services with residents’ everyday needs.
A circular city does not necessarily start by creating something new. It can also start by recognising, connecting and strengthening the circular activities that already exist.
The Sustainable Textile Workshop – Kestävä tekstiiliPaja shows how the Repair Café spirit can already be found in Lahti – one repaired garment at a time.
Learn more about Circ@Home: https://interreg-baltic.eu/project/circhome/