A few recent items that are variations on a theme:
- “New York to Approve One of the World’s Most Ambitious Climate Plans” by Jesse McKinley and Brad Plumer of the New York Times is about a law to be passed by the state legislature to eliminate net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It should be noted that the state gets about a quarter of its electricity from hydroelectric: the picture above is from the old Niagara Falls power plant.
- “Cities Start to Question an American Ideal: A House With a Yard on Every Lot” by Emily Badger and Quoctrung Bui of the New York Times is about the use of zoning to force development into a specific, semi-suburban or suburban form.
- “T-A-L Statement on the Green New Deal” by the unnamed authors at The Architecture Lobby is a manifesto on how the architectural profession (and, by implication, engineering and construction) should approach issues concerning climate change and social impact.
In short, what we build and how we build it are not neutral decisions. To some degree the big decisions are out of the hands of designers and builders – if a developer wants to drill a hole, he’ll find a drill bit – but within the constraints of making a living and servicing clients we still have a good amount of influence. To make this conversation personal, OSE tries to reduce energy and material use by promoting reuse of existing buildings. Every time we are able to repair or strengthen a building rather than having it replaced, we are contributing a little bit.
As the T-A-L manifesto describes, and the two newspaper articles hint at, it’s not possible to separate one social issue from others. Density in residential development is better in terms of energy use, but it also tends to put more focus on mass transit, and may require upgrades of sewer, water, and school infrastructure. Multi-tenant housing needs more careful design than stand-alone single-family houses in order to function properly. Development has to be tied into resiliency to address expected future changes. There may be vacant land on the Rockaway peninsula, but it’s vulnerable to flooding. And given that the creation of new Portland cement is a major contributor to greenhouse gases, we need to be reusing the concrete buildings we have.
None of this is earth-shakingly new. As I’ve said before, its worth repeating anyway. And the fact that it aligns with my personal beliefs about building reuse is why I saved the links to these three items.
