Industry life cycles of a resource town in Finland – the case of Lieksa

Abstract

Abstract:The article aims to show how local industry life cycles impact the development of Finnish resource-based rural towns. This study reveals five long-term and overlapping industry cycles which were based on natural resources, assembly industries and service production. In general, the cycles have shortened over time.Transitions from cycle to cycle were enabled by the phases of resilience, which were highly dependent on political and economic processes at different scales. However, the political interventions of the last decades were unable to compensate for the disadvantages in competitiveness of this remote area and lay sustainable foundations for new industries. In the long run, the only exception has been the forest-related processing industry which has a capacity to renew its own operations and adapt to changing market situations. The results demonstrate the high significance of absolute advantage in rural development.Keywords: industry life cycles; resource dependence; local resilience; employment; regional policy; forested areas; Finland Abstrakti: Suomalaisten resurssiperustaisten maaseutukuntien kehitykseen ovat vaikuttaneet keskeisesti paikallisten toimialojen elinkaaret. Tutkimuskohteessa havaitut viisi toisiinsa limittyvää sykliä ovat perustuneet paikallisiin luonnonvaroihin, tuotuja raakaaineita ja puolivalmisteita käyttävään teollisuuteen ja palvelujen tuotantoon. Teollisella kaudella yksittäisen elinkaaren pituus on lyhentynyt. Syklistä toiseen siirtymiseen ovat vaikuttaneet eritasoiset poliittiset ja taloudelliset uusiutumisvaiheet. Viime vuosikymmenten poliittiset interventiot eivät ole kyenneet kompensoimaan tutkitun resurssiperiferian heikkoa kilpailukykyä ja luomaan kestävää perustaa uusille aloille. Parhaiten muuttuviin markkinatilanteisiin on sopeutunut paikallisia luonnonvaroja jalostava metsäteollisuus.

Small Towns - Engines of Rural Development in the South-Moravian Region (Czechia): An Analysis of the Demographic Development

“…Big changes in small towns are connected also with the process of industrialization and later with the post-industrial development. Such chages were explained by Halonen et al (2015) on the example of the Finnish town of Lieksa and in the post-Soviet context also by Printsmann (2010) Kwiatek-Soltys et al (2014). They point out the focus on the quality of life, among others.…”

Миграционные Намерения Молодежи Арктических Промышленных Городов

“…Recently, it has been analogously adopted to describe the durability of regional economic systems. As stated by Halonen et al [2015], the interpretation of regional resilience has been given different connotations, but essentially as stated by Martin and Sunley [2015] it is about the capacity of a region to withstand or recover from shocks to its developmental growth or to transit to a new path [see also, e.g., Martin, 2012;Halonen, 2019 among others for more detailed accounts on the definition of the concept]. According to Boschma [2015] regional resilience should also be approached from an evolutionary perspective; i.e.…”

The long-term adaptation of a resource periphery as narrated by local policy-makers in Lieksa

“…The latest position(s) of interviewees and years in local public duties in total. In Lieksa, the initial boom of the forest-industry dates from the beginning of the 20 th century (Tykkyläinen et al 2017) when the growing European timber market expanded the utilisation of forest resources, increasing the demand for the local labour force (Aarnio 1999, 166-173) and accelerating population growth (Halonen et al 2015). Rural population growth was sustained up to the mid-1960s, with the assistance of the Finnish government, as a corollary of the post-WWII settlement policy when 9.1% of the land area was redistributed through the Land Acquisition Act (Tykkyläinen 1995, 139-140).…”