Finland's built environment needs - and deserves - an administrative organization that is competent and meets today's needs. Changes in society have driven past the current, very fragmented regulatory apparatus. The control of land use, housing, transport and construction should be centralized in the same ministry.
An example of the corresponding super ministry can be found nearby. The Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Labor, which have been in operation for more than a hundred years, were combined with certain tasks of the Ministry of the Interior at the beginning of 2008 to form the Ministry of Labor and Economic Affairs. The experiences have been overwhelmingly positive, and the benefits brought by the merger have been significant.
Built assets make up more than 70 percent of our country's total national wealth. It accounts for 60 percent of annual investments. The built environment consumes 40% of the end-use energy and causes about 45 percent of greenhouse emissions. The built environment is closely intertwined with both the national economy and the natural environment.
Questions about the needs of the built and unbuilt environment are sometimes also thought of as a confrontation between cities and the countryside. However, it is good to remember that agricultural buildings are a significant part of the Finnish building stock. They make up no less than a tenth of all the annual starting blocks for house construction. It would be more than natural for the new Ministry of the Environment to also take over the control of agricultural construction from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.
As the ROTI 2015 report shows, the service capacity of Finland's railway system has received far too little attention. A prerequisite for the flexible mobility and availability of the workforce is that solutions related to the transport network and housing are linked together more closely than before. Of course, the condition of the road and working connections should also be taken into account outside the growth centers. The natural resource and bioeconomy in particular clearly require a greater investment than currently in the so-called lower level road network.
The world of the built environment has become more complicated and its interdependencies are becoming more and more tightly intertwined. The need for overall management is acute, because without a functional highway network serving business life and the related housing policy, Finland will wither. They are essential in terms of competitiveness and economic growth: it is the basic foundation from which the whole of Finland builds.
Connecting the growth centers' infrastructure projects and zoning together last summer was the first big step in the right direction. However, the recent sählink of the drop race shows that it is difficult to agree on things effectively with the current way of organizing. That is why the fateful connection of housing, transport and services must be sealed in a joint ministry whose task is to focus on the factors that bring about growth - long-term, comprehensively and sustainably.
Tarmo Pipatti
CEO
Confederation of Finnish Construction Industries (CFCI)
Write a comment