Abstract
Sweden has a housing shortage, which the Swedish authorities expect to continue until 2025. Producers of wooden multi-family buildings have a relatively small market share in comparison to traditional building materials. The limited capacity to fulfil the increased building demand also restricts the possibilities for development towards innovation, bio-economy and sustainability. The municipalities in Sweden have responsibility for the planning of the building development in their region based on their projected requirements and strategies. Combining this with a desire to develop sustainable building solutions based on wood increases the complexity. Currently, public building developments are achieved through the public procurement act or the land allocation activity, dependent on their development strategy. This normally involves the development of local strategies regarding, for example, design, material choice and geographical development. This study aims to identify drivers that will enable improved market activities related to actions in public building initiatives using wood-based solutions, which is conducted by studying a specific building project managed by the Växjö Municipality in Sweden. The result indicates that improved transparency in the land allocation activity generates possibilities for developers to respond successfully to the requests submitted by the municipalities, and thus, increase the possible use of sustainable building methods using wood. This knowledge improves the understanding of the required strategic development for the companies, the government and the municipalities, to increase the use of sustainable building materials in Swedish multi-family housing projects.
Highlights
Background of WoodBuilding Development within the Växjö MunicipalitySeveral buildings out of wood had been constructed in Växjö, even before the first wood construction strategy was adopted in Sweden
This study has focused on the operational activities linked to the land allocation process, that is, when the building development divisions have identified suitable developers to be included in the process [16]
Växjö Municipality has for some time made a strategic decision to be profiled as a green city with a focus on sustainability
Summary
Issues regarding the sustainability within urban planning practices have increased in line with urbanisation and are firmly on the political agenda in Sweden [1,2]. The changed strategic approach in public governance is seen as a governmental guideline towards processes and activities that can identify both public and private stakeholders that make governance possible [9,10,11,12] This means that some power and control of municipalities has been transferred to private or other social actors [13], which is a situation that has affected the building planning process and is intended to encourage positive development of wood-building solutions. The change in strategic governance is seen as a control model to handle cooperation between actors based on their capability to manage a particular project (i.e., getting public and private actors to work together for a mutual interest) [10] Today, this is largely based on market actors fulfilling the requirement, and municipalities are expected to develop controlling instruments in line with the goals mentioned in the environmental and housing policy [14]. The government, on the other hand, is attempting to influence the actions of municipalities towards sustainability through the planning and environmental legislation that regulates construction
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