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Comment by blagie | Hacker News Reader

Why? That seems dumb.

We have concrete buildings going back to Greek and Roman times, mostly standing.

Wooden buildings have a very finite lifespan, and, aside from earthquakes, much less so in a disaster. A wooden city and a steel/brick/concrete city react very differently to firebombing.

Especially with declining populations, it makes sense to build structures to last. The old school brick/concrete/stone/... European buildings from 1500 are largely in good shape, at least where they weren't demolished by war.

Traditional European construction is also much more friendly for heating / cooling. The thermal capacity of stone-based materials helps a lot.

To me, it feels a bit like Germany banning nuclear power plants, and switching to Russian fossil fuels instead...

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What do you mean by "Traditional European construction"? In much of central and northern Europe almost all construction is traditionally wood.

>In much of central and northern Europe almost all construction is traditionally wood.

That is woke bs and you know it. If it ain't 100% roman concrete, it ain't right.

Im not sure what you mean by "woke bs" as it is evidentially factual. Most of central and northern Europe wasn't even a part of the roman empire...

I was joking.

that went way over my head :D

Only barbarians with beards use wood.

Drop a Google Streetview in the middle on downtown classical Gothenberg, and try to find a wood construction building. Sweden is about as northern Europe as it gets. Head over to Amsterdam, and it will look pretty similar.

It will be relatively similar to most other major European cities; solid masonry construction has historically been the norm.

You'll find some wooden houses in smaller towns and rural areas, but even there, if you head over to e.g. Poland, most things will be solid masonry. And the wooden construction is mostly relatively new; what you'll rarely find is old wooden construction.

You don’t know what you’re talking about.

I live in the northern part of Central Europe and have spent over a decade travelling through these countries. Ive worked with log and timber frame construction and have a solid understanding of traditional and modern building methods. I know how buildings are actually made, not just how they look on googles street view...

In Sweden around 80% of standing homes are wooden. About 90% of new single-family homes are timber construction. Gothenburg is an outlier because of 19th-century laws that limited wooden buildings to two storeys, which is why you get the Landshövdingehus with a brick base and wooden upper floors.

The Netherlands is western Europe, not northern or central. That’s basic geography...

Timber is the dominant material in residential construction across Sweden, Finland, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Denmark is more mixed, and Poland leans more towards masonry, but the south has a strong timber tradition, especially in the Tatra region.

And even in places like Germany or Denmark where it looks like brick, it's often just a clinker façade over a timber or frame structure. It’s aesthetic, not structural.

Honestly, it's laughable to compare the dense inner city to the massive volume of buildings outside it. You're looking at a fraction and pretending it's the whole. It’s just not serious.

Wood buildings can and have stood for hundreds of years, I'm in one right now. The ROI has been met after a few decades regardless of the material... at this point it becomes more economical to transport lighter materials that are easier to work with. Wood is also better for carbon storage as long as we're sourcing it sustainably. Concrete is one of the most carbon-intense materials out there.

> Wooden buildings have a very finite lifespan

What is "very finite" here? Where I grew up there are wood houses/barns/structures made entirely out of wood and still standing/being used after hundreds of years. Is that not enough?

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