Progress
From Flint, MI via the NYT.
The depressing sign above shows the deeply entrenched mentality that we who care about wise use of resources / preservation are up against - the 1950s era mentality that disposing of the old is somehow forward momentum, modern, green - whatever the buzzword of the day is.
Flint clearly faces different challenges than we do here; it is a struggle my own hometown of New Orleans has had to deal with for very different reasons / circumstances, but with the same net result - more old, often-abused houses than you have population or projected population to inhabit. There isn't an easy answer there, other than moving geographically dispersed structures closer together, and, where demolition becomes a sad necessity, recycling the building materials.
But it should never be a cause for celebration - simply the sad duty of a city that faces striking, pervasive, and persistent economic decline.
We haven't been in that situation, fortunately, and the reasoning for demolition of old structures as we seek new housing for in-migrants, homeless folks, as well as start-up businesses, etc. is shoddy at best.
I'm particularly bugged by the new trend of using 'green building' as a justification for replacing an existing building - or at least an attempt to obfuscate the demolition through touting how the new structure will save the planet. Note the Human Services Complex, or the new structure that replaced the bungalow that once stood on the corner of Markham and Gregson. The latter is on a green building tour this weekend; no offense to the architects, who I am sure designed a very energy efficient house, but the inconvenient truth is that tearing down an old structure to build a new structure is not 'green' - however diluted that is now. Good for them for building something that is energy/resource efficient rather than a McMansion, but as a colleague of mine used to say - that don't make it right.
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5 comments:
The Indy's article on "Builders of Hope" is a nice counterpoint to this. It has all the requisite warm fuzzies about green building, but does make the case about "recycling" housing.
(I have this memory of being incredulous when a coworker of mine, a particularly incompetent one at that, told me how they were looking at new construction because he didn't want a "used house.")
I agree with the general idea of de-densifying decaying older cities. I'm not familiar with Flint, but if it has areas like Buffalo has, then the decisions of which blocks to raze won't be that hard, especially in the beginning. In Buffalo, there are blocks and blocks in some East Side neighborhoods where 1 or 2 houses out of 20 are occupied, 5 lots are empty (generally from houses that burned years before), and the remaining 13-14 houses are vacant and abandoned. Some of these abandoned houses become drug houses or sites for dog-fighting or meeting places for street gangs. They are major arson targets, and when one goes, its neighbors usually go, too, because almost all are frame structures and many are only 3-5 feet apart.
I thought it was pretty funny to see that house on the green building tour. I wonder how many of the same 'green' improvements they could have made to the house for less than the cost of construction.
I saw the original house at the corner of Markham and Gregson prior to demolition. It certainly needed much work, and the costs of rehabbing it properly, to the clients desired design, may have equalled the costs of building new. As always, rehabilitating the original structure would have required far less material, a core principle of green building. Take nothing away from the work of BuildSense - the house is extrodinarily unique, and will be a great home for the occupants.
I would strongly refute the idea that they knocked down the home in the name of green building. This same point is flamboyantly outlined by widely-published preservation development consultant Donovan Rypekma, arguing LEED stands for "Looney Environmentalists Encouraging Demolition". In fact, there's plenty of opportunity to have an old, green, energy efficent home. While I'm generally a big fan of Rypkema, I find this attitude ultimatley provacative and harmful to both preserationists' and environmentalists' goals.
New construction and remodels need to be sustainible. Part of that equation is keeping buildings when we can. When we can't, it's great to see high quality buildings like the one at the corner of Markham and Gregson.
BtB
I've talked to the previous owner about the work that the house needed. I think it's fair to say that her opinion and the opinion of the contractors that she had brought on to assess the work the house needed differed significantly from what was stated by subsequent owners.
As I said, I intend no offense to the architects - or the contractors, who I presume were simply following the wishes of the owners. It's an interesting house in a vacuum. Just don't tout how environmentally wonderful it is on a green building tour. It is that which raises the question to me of trying to greenwash the demolition away.
And good for Rypkema for poking holes in the green building establishment. It does nothing to diminish the good work of building sustainably to point out hypocrisy. I run into the same thing with the affordable housing movement; just because you are pursuing a worthy goal, you are not beyond reproach. It is possible to do stupid things in the name of saving people, or saving the world. The USGBC has done a lot of good, but they became successful largely because they never challenged the notion that perhaps you just shouldn't keep building new buildings. As long as the development community could keep building as many buildings as they wanted to, wherever they wanted to, and could slap on a LEED badge to make it Good, then everybody wins, right?
USGBC has been catching up in this regard, by creating LEED-EB, and LEED-ND, but as one who has worked on LEED certification, I can tell you that the new construction/major renovation standards are far more friendly to new construction than renovation. 2 points for saving 95% of a building - or 2 points for bike racks + paying the USGBC to pass their test.
GK
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