Joensuu

Joensuu lies where the Pielisjoki reaches Lake Pyhäselkä, a position that attracted proposals for a new town. During the 1780s the idea of establishing an urban centre beside the river revived, and in 1785 Lieutenant Stephen Bennet prepared a plan for it. The plan belongs to the choice of a river-mouth site and the attempt to organize a new commercial centre in northern Karelia, but no town was founded here in the eighteenth century.