Wooden buildings have the advantage that in an active seismic area they can survive (or let the occupants survive) earthquakes much better than brick. Building codes in California prefer wood pretty much for this reason, even though they are more susceptible to fire. Fires can be controlled, versus having every masonry house in a city fall down simultaneously.
Obviously it's a science and you can't be cheap with cement or rebar. A lot of them went kaput in Iran and Turkey...did not follow code.
A major drawback is that utilities (water, heating, electricity etc ) must be build in. There's no just replacing some sheetrock. But encased pvc probably lasts 100+ years.
There are some brick buildings in the Mediterranean which are seismically resistant. Italy, the birthplace of concrete, is seismically active after all:
I'm curious as to whether wood-over-brick could allow taller structures than wood or brick alone. Building cheaply in the 50-85 foot range (high-rise regulations kick in above a floor height of 75 feet) is an important challenge going forward and hard to do with wood alone.
It turns out concrete and brick have completely different, almost polar opposite, seismic properties. Here in CA, concrete is what you want a foundation to be made from. We learned the hard way that brick foundations are prone to crumbling.
Brick is certainly strong up to a point, but when it fails, it fails spectacularly.
The latest changes to the international building code include some rules allowing masonry under wood, which is why there's an explosion of midrise apartment buildings in my area at least.
