The role of municipalities in transformation towards more sustainable construction: the case of wood construction in Finland

Wooden multistory construction as perceived by Finland’s municipal civil servants overseeing land use planning

“…It is only more recently that the literature has broadened to include perceptions also from wood construction firms (e.g., Toppinen et al, 2019aViholainen et al, 2021b), public sector policymakers (e.g., Vihemäki et al, 2019;Toivonen et al, 2021b) and end-users (e.g., Lähtinen et al, 2019b;Kylkilahti et al, 2020;Viholainen et al, 2020Viholainen et al, , 2021aKarjalainen and Ilgin, 2021). Even views from municipal civil servants are now reaching the literature (e.g., Lähtinen et al, 2019a;Salmi et al, 2022). In this dissertation research, I argue that comparing the "advantages" and "disadvantages" levied against wooden multistory construction reveals that municipal civil servants consider serving the public interest as a responsibility of land use planning (Figure 7).…”

“…In answering this question, Article III links research on the uptake of wooden multistory construction to research on land use planning practices in Finland. No literature fully develops this relationship, although the relationship is recognized in the literature (e.g., Hynynen, 2016;Lähtinen et al, 2019b, Salmi et al, 2022. Where research on wooden multistory construction has identified drivers behind why government institutions enable wooden multistory construction (e.g., Vihemäki et al, 2019;Lazarevic et al, 2020;Toivonen et al, 2021b), this remains separate from literature researching how the state's transformation and rescaling drives Finnish land use planning practices (e.g., Mäntysalo et al, 2011;Hytönen, 2016;Hytönen and Ahlqvist, 2019).…”

“…Nevertheless, wooden multistory buildings over two stories necessitate sprinkler systems, an obligation not mandated for concrete multistory buildings. Perhaps for this reason, recent research on municipalities continues to cite regulatory barriers to wooden construction (Salmi et al, 2022).…”

“…On the public side, views from local public authorities responsible for land use planning (i.e., municipalities) are all but absent from the literature (exceptions include: Lähtinen et al, 2019;Salmi et al, 2022). This constitutes a major gap in the literature, given that municipalities are legally legitimized to steer local construction activities.…”

A systemic perspective on transition barriers to a circular infrastructure sector

“…Toppinen et al (2019) took a more systemic view to sector change but focussed on a specific (technological) solution. Salmi et al (2022) considered the wider sustainability transition in construction by focusing on the role of municipalities within the wide landscape of actors. In a similar vein, Ninan et al…”