The New Urban Agenda is the outcome document agreed upon by world leaders (nearly 170 countries including the United States) at the 2016 United Nations Habitat III Conference to which the AIA sent a delegation. Intended to guide national and local policies on the growth and development of cities through 2036, the New Urban Agenda is a roadmap for building cities that can serve as engines of prosperity and centres of cultural and social well-being while protecting the environment. It underscores the important role of design professionals. It is a time of immense opportunity.
Look around. What do we have an endless supply of? Existing buildings. Some might be just a few years old, some might be centuries old, they are precious and mundane, big and little, everywhere we look in every neighborhood and town and city, buildings already exist. We know, of course, because we hear it ad nauseum, that existing buildings are bad, consuming consuming consuming energy, water and electricity. Yes, existing buildings are a problem, but they are also the solution, offering hands down the quickest and the most effective way to a new healthier world. Study after study, from scholars at the Rocky Mountain Institute, the New Building Institute, the Brookings Institute and the United Nations proclaim that our greatest opportunity for operational energy and water use reduction is in our immense stock of existing buildings.
We have billions of square feet waiting to be transformed and to be renewed. When we do this, when we reuse what already exists, no matter how old or young the building is, we avoid the very substantial environmental impacts of replacing it with something new.
Of course, we want our new buildings to be the best they can be, but for even the greenest building, it takes many years for operational performance to offset the environmental impacts of construction. New buildings are not the answer to our environmental crisis. We cannot consume our way out of the mess our throw-away society has created. Every new product, no matter how green, has environmental impacts - these include carbon emissions, water and energy consumption, pollution, toxicity, and waste. It is consumption and waste which have brought us to where we are. The statistics are grim, reminiscent of Al Gore’s scissor lift to emphasize the exponential increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Our consumption is even more exponential. In my lifetime, in less than my lifetime, humans have used more raw materials and created more waste than in all previous history. To quote Pope Francis, “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.” What is the single biggest culprit in this cycle of consumption and waste?—the built environment—responsible for half all raw material extractions and an estimated two-thirds of all downstream waste. We rarely quantify the upstream industrial waste which might be 20 to 90 times bigger than the final product itself (imagine that in relation to a building) Industrial waste is often on the other side of the world. Out of sight out of mind. Or as, my favorite contractor used to say about punch list items – “you can’t see it from my house”, unless, of course, your house is actually the whole planet.
Reduce, reuse, recycle—the mantra of the environmental movement is now our mantra. Let’s reduce our material consumption, by reusing our biggest objects, buildings, even as we recycle our smallest.
Did you know that money spent on renovation creates more jobs than new construction? It makes sense, renovation is labor intensive, and, of course this labor is usually local, so renovation fuels the local economy. Donovan Rypkema, an economist in Washington, says that a million dollars in new construction creates 30 jobs, but a million dollars in renovation creates 35 jobs. After 30 years as a preservation architect this feels right to me and I suspect that construction dollars in renovation actually climb in recessions as owners decide to refurbish rather than replace. Old is the new...new in a sustainable world.
Sustainability is about us, about creating a healthy world for us. Can we be emotionally healthy without heritage? I don’t think so! Heritage is a fancy word for stories. Stories are attached to places and often buildings. Just like buildings, these stories come in all shapes and sizes. There are little stories, like where I went to third grade, and big grand stories like where does the US government meet? Every day, as we go through our lives, we create new stories tied to places. These places are often quite mundane. It might be the weekly trip to the grocery store. We may not think of the building at all, but when I am telling the story to my grandchildren, it’s so much easier if the building is still there, even though it might have changed from a grocery store to an art center. Regardless of the age of a place, maintaining what already exists helps to maintain the stories that make every place unique. This is not about freezing places in time, but about allowing new stories to layer upon the old. Of course, we won’t tell every story and, much as I might wish for it, we won’t reuse every building, but I do think we need to be less arrogant in our constant drive to replace what already exists. Stories provide a sense of place and we need this more and more as the world changes around us.
Let’s link this to urban vitality.
In 1961, Jane Jacobs wrote, “Cities need old buildings so badly, it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.” This was revolutionary at the time when urban renewal was in full swing. For me, watching our continuing propensity to build newer and bigger, it still feels revolutionary. Revolutionary but accurate. Since 2013, the Preservation Green Lab, a research arm of the National Trust for Historic Preservation has been using linked data to map the character and economic activity of cities. The evolving Atlas of ReUrbanism, is an interactive tool allowing users to explore the built environment of a city, block by block, layering on information about the age and size of buildings, how much energy and water they use, how much waste is created, who owns the buildings, who uses them, what they used for? How much economic activity happens here? What is cell phone activity? Time and again what the GreenLab discovered is that established neighborhoods with a mix of older, smaller buildings outperform the districts with larger, newer structures – outperform economically, socially and environmentally. Including, which I found noteworthy, having a higher percentage of women & minority-owned businesses and affordable housing opportunities.
Our great opportunities in the coming years are because old is the new...new in a sustainable world.
It is estimated in the coming years that up to 70 percent of billable architecture hours will be focused on existing buildings. THIS is the opportunity. Let's take these hours and establish the beauty, utility, and health of our cities. Let's take these hours and make yesterday's buildings work today and tomorrow. Let's take these hours and make...the new urban agenda...happen...old is the new NEW!
Jean Carroon, FAIA is a past chairman of the AIA Historic Resources Committee. She is a principal with Goody Clancy, a Boston-based design firm with a diverse practice in urban design, planning, and architecture. The remarks transcribed above were delivered at AIA Grassroots 2017.