Future in Wood? Timber Construction in Boosting Local Development

Abstract

<jats:p>Large scale timber construction has been on the upswing for some time in many European countries. Besides the building cluster, also regions and cities have taken advantage of the ongoing timber boom in their economic and spatial development. In this article the focus is on the South Ostrobothnia region and the city of Seinäjoki in Western Finland, where the potential of the business is quite weakly exploited regardless of favourable preconditions. By studying the key actors of the innovation network we are able to better understand the premises of the local development platform that should aim at boosting timber construction.</jats:p>

Why Not Wood? Benefits and Barriers of Wood as a Multistory Construction Material: Perceptions of Municipal Civil Servants from Finland

“…The outcome is a path-dependent construction culture, which has also been acknowledged in other studies [13,36,39]. It was also correspondingly discussed, both in this study and in previous research, that active lobbying by the concrete industry further complicates WMC industry development [37]. The following examples indicate the strong path dependency of the Finnish construction industry culture:…”

“…In contrast, one civil servant believed that the promotion of positive WMC features should rest solely on market actors. This is interesting because it was previously argued that municipalities are aware of the marketing potential of WMC [37], but perhaps not all municipal actors see it as part of their role or responsibility to market the benefits of wood to consumers. The conflicting nature of statements is elaborated below:…”

“…The relationship between limited WMC information and difficulties accessing WMC information have both been discussed conceptually in a previous WMC study from the Seinäjoki region [37]. Hynynen [37] argued that information is no longer the bottleneck limiting the breakthrough of the WMC industry, and that instead strategic awareness and leadership are needed to guide actors on the path to future WMC development.…”

“…The relationship between limited WMC information and difficulties accessing WMC information have both been discussed conceptually in a previous WMC study from the Seinäjoki region [37]. Hynynen [37] argued that information is no longer the bottleneck limiting the breakthrough of the WMC industry, and that instead strategic awareness and leadership are needed to guide actors on the path to future WMC development. Based on civil-servant statements from this research, it might be concluded that, while information about WMC does indeed exists, the perception from within the municipalities is that it does not because civil servants have not been guided (or motivated) to discover such information.…”

“…Unfortunately, such data are very limited, and not only in the international literature [14,[30][31][32][33][34][35], but in the Finnish context as well. Studies from Finland have focused on topical lenses (e.g., technical innovation, the role of sustainability) as opposed to providing a comprehensive view on general stakeholder attitudes, perceptions, or preferences for WMC [10,[36][37][38][39]. In addition, those studies usually discuss the role of public actors as drivers for WMC diffusion [36], but rarely explore how these actors perceive their own role and engagement in this context.…”