Espoo Finnish city, part of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. It is built around five district centers (Tapiola, Matinkylä, Leppävaara, Espoonlahti and Espoo center) which are each as large as a mid-sized Finnish town. The population of 205 000 (Q1 2001) people makes Espoo the second biggest city in Finland. The city also has the largest concentration of high-tech companies and educational facilities in the Northern Europe. Espoo is also known as Esbo in the second official Finnish language.