I repeat that the number of inhabitants in Helsinki is very low, and therefore everything looks empty. You see far more cars than people.

By the way, this depends on the place and time of the day. On the central roads, there are very many people and an incessant stream of cars, but you only have to leave the road to discover lots of small side streets like this one. Only the people who live here, come here, and somewhere close by, the parking space for their cars is hidden... A quiet idyll.
It's the same with the time of day. If you're outside in the morning, just before the shops and offices open, there are quite a few people around by Petersburg standards. In the metro during rush hour, people stand in the middle of the carriage, as well as sit in the seats. But in the evening, especially after 8-10 pm, the streets are literally dead. All the Finns sit happily by their television sets, and afterwards, they go to bed...

This area is situated by a strait. The small boats from the next picture lie only 20-30 metres from these houses.

The houses by the coast are more expensive than elsewhere.

Their houses are usually by the sea, with one house for one family. They look impressive, both in size and scale. But this is still on a level slightly above what is common for a middle class family in an American movie. Some houses are surrounded by proper stonewalls similar to the ones one often see on Petersburg's Kamenny Ostrov (Kamenny Island).

By and large, one can see that rich people live there, but one also feels a sense of proportion.

In general, Europeans are characterised by their wish to enter into compromise and reach agreements (unlike us).

On the photograph you see more houses by the sea. It's the same Hertoniemi area coastline.
There is a separate beach for dogs nearby with corresponding facilities.

And more about wealth:

You somehow don't feel that the Finns envy someone with a clearly higher income than themselves. At least, nobody envies the rich neighbour. This can be rather puzzling: One of the best city beaches is in Marjaniemi, and beside it is the property of a very rich man. This property is situated in a way that allows visitors to the beach a full view of the man's house and backyard. Hundreds of people watch his lawn while they tan, and they also watch his magnificent yacht by the pier just down from the house. It's a swim of about thirty metres from the beach to the vessel, which has several decks. And in general, this rich man has no private life by our standards, and he would want a fence to protect him from all the strange glances. But no, everything is quiet, and the two sides don't take any notice of each other. It's just not appropriate to intrude in other people's private life here.

It's interesting how they manage to attain measured spending levels to maintain all these buildings. For each type of building, you have to produce a certain range of sections, details, and maintenance equipment. It's impossible to standardise everything, especially because there are many building firms.

Notice the glass panels. They are constructed and adjusted in a way that one can open them from inside and move the sections to the side. One may also move all the glass panels in an accurate "pile" to one side. For example, you may have a completely open balcony in the summer, and in the winter, a closed one. This balcony at the moment has one open shutter, and it is not a mistake in the construction, but how it's meant to be.

A house on the banks of a small river through a park (also within the city boundaries).

By the way, the swan is one of the national symbols of Finland. There were even swans on the old coins and notes of the Finnish markka, which was changed when the Finns switched to the Euro.

Well, the lawn opposite was literally covered with ducks :)

Now, the bomb shelters are used for storage and other public service purposes.

For example, in one of the bomb shelters, there is a go-cart centre. In general, the Finns like to have things under ground. Did you know that the largest underground water pipe is a tunnel that is many kilometres long, which was blasted through the rocks to provide the Helsinki region with water? In the artificial underground river, clean water runs from a group of lakes far away, by gravity. They say that when some visiting American tourists heard that this record-breaking construction was situated here, and not in the US, they became envious. :-)

On the top of this hill, there is a small net fence. This is to stop children, when playing, from falling down.

The "walls", several floors high, are offices and shops. On the underground and roof levels there are parking lots. Underground there is also a cinema, an attached interchange metro station... The "streets" and "squares" in this "shopping city" are named after real streets in "big" Helsinki.
The trees are real, and green the whole year.
The ventilation and heating make it nice to go into the shopping centre in windy and cold winter weather and sit down on a bench in the warm weather, under green crowns...

In general, drunkenness is widespread among the Finns, but it doesn't really hit the eye. It's said that they take to drink more easily than Russians.

This appears to be at the genetic level.. But drunken Finns are luckily mostly friendly disposed towards people around them.
In addition, when the police take them away, they don't "offend" them by our standards. For example, it's possible a policeman cautiously leading (by the hand) a tipsy, singing drunk, clearly a heavy drinker, away from a pedestrian underpass in the centre of the city... And the drunkard will use his free hand to hold on to his bottle in order not to lose it :-) But of course, if the drunk is aggressive, the police respond precisely and adequately. They say that the detoxification centres here are expensive. :-)

It's interesting that it was deliberately built, and is continuously developed, as a decentralised town, with alternating built-up and green areas. There is no centre at all, only relative central areas, like the "eastern centre", where there are more large shopping centres and railway stations.

One would like to know whether this is because they are cleaned or painted (I didn't see this going on while wandering around), or whether they just use materials that attract less dirt?

It is at least partially because of the clean air: there is very little dust compared to in Petersburg.

How do our builders start the building process? They mark off a foundation pit, and around it they uproot all the old plants, at least ten metres away, if not fifteen. ("To allow the machines to enter..") Solid, nice trees are ruthlessly uprooted. After the construction is completed, the house lies in the middle of a desert of garbage, stones and sand, without any grass. Then they bring in a lorry of turf and try to spread it around on the territory.
Then they put down a few panicles around the entrance. They used to be young trees, but they forgot a long time ago. And their end is more often than not a sad one...
Now, how do Finnish builders start the building process? They mark off a foundation pit on the site, cut off the grass layer accurately and put it aside nearby. Afterwards, they use extensions to stiffen the trees and wrap the tree trunks for protection. ("To allow the machines to enter..") Even if this tree stands a few centimetres from the foundation pit. I don't have to go on, you see the result in the photographs...

In general, the wild fauna of the city merits a discussion of its own. In the green zone by the houses there are not only hares (everywhere, not just one in this yard or region), but also foxes (far less often), pheasants, hedgehogs, and the very common squirrels. This is really wild fauna, they find feed not on garbage heaps (the garbage heaps here are pretty well closed), but look for it themselves.

It is unrealistic to do the same, with the same methods, in Russia. This is because the existence and maintenance of what I have photographed here first and foremost depends on the behaviour of ordinary citizens, and not of those who governs them. It cannot work differently at all.

It is a realistic task to make everything look the same on the outside in Russia (that is, clean, beautiful, with high technology, etc.). However, the methods one would have to use to achieve this will be completely different and not to the liking of the people who most of all would want this beauty and high technology.