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  Economics of Preservation

  
  

  
  

  I imagine that hundreds of similar sites have been demolished. It's an international crisis. The following is copied from a US-based blog I follow: 

  
  

  Blog Host

  “The fact that there is little home building reduces the number of jobs available in the building industry. The lack of jobs in this industry helps hold down the demand for oil, because these workers would use their wages to buy goods for themselves, such as food and vehicles. Food is grown and transported using vehicles powered by oil.”

  
  

  Trevor Burrowes

  As you have recommended before, there could be a lot of jobs remodeling existing houses–many could go from single family to multiple family easily enough–especially remaining two-story Victorians. (Places like Detroit had a monstrous number of these demolished.) That would also have the effect of increasing tourism to such sites–more coming and going, more ancillary businesses, more publicity, etc. So I don’t see where not building new houses has to reduce jobs. Also, the current norm of tearing down old buildings to make more modern ones–the religion of progress–decreases the tourist attraction of the historic fabric. So that creates one kind of job at the expense of another. It also implies the loss of embedded energy lodged in the old, to say nothing about the environmental cost and aesthetic loss of new construction.

  
  

  Blog Host

  "Just thinking about costs involved, I think that demolition and rebuilding add more energy use and human jobs than simple remodeling. Also, it is easier to make the new structure energy efficient with the rebuilding. Needless to say, many people place a high priority on up to date styling of kitchens and bathrooms. Also, today’s fashion is more square feet of better insulated housing, and the demolition provides this. So as long as debt can be obtained cheaply by the well-to-do, I suppose they will be buying new homes. The not so well to do, not so much."

  
  

  Trevor Burrowes

  Yes. Such a pity. Humans can’t abide working a little harder for style and class, or to be vaguely civilized. Same problem everywhere with our contemptible species.

  
  

  Here’s another idea they won’t go for: Give preference to and subsidize shelter for the working homeless. You wouldn’t need to build much more than a shed roof to keep water off school bus or a retired-RV homes. Artists and landscape architects would get work making them beautiful tourist drive-bys. But I can hear the cries of disaster tourism….

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