Wanton Destruction

All over Australia its common to see perfectly good buildings, both residential and commercial, being destroyed for no other reason than financial. An overly large family home may be out of range of most average renters, and owners often capitolise on the large block size and rely on subdivision to create a larger portfolio, with the bulk of the value being in the actual land itself.

Buildings often not even 50 years old, of very solid construction, destroyed because they are now considered 'ugly' or need repairs and upgrades. The owners, with poor financial intelligence, and low enviromental awareness send in the demolition squads and raize them to the ground, to make way for a few ugly brick boxes; or, even worse, half a dozen concrete tilt up buildings that all look the same, and start life as characterless, ugly ducklings, never to grow beautiful.

The costs to the environment for this sort of behaviour is large, for example

From an enviromental point of view, it is obviously much wiser to renovate or remodel the existing building to house more family units in the 1 space, as is done in Europe, where large houses are renovated into several various sized flats and bedsits for singles, couples and small families.

Not only is this approach a truly greener option, but it has a much faster impact on the housing availability, which in itself has the potential to save lives. The NIMBY (not in my back yard) people who complain about this particular solution, are often the very same ones who are squatting in our roads telling us car drivers to stop using oil, all while wearing clothing made from oil by products- such as denim and training shoes.

While the 'climate emergency' is a questionable reality, we certainly do need to become much more enviromentally aware and sensitive when building homes and other structures. However, it also calls on governments to stop pushing a specific agenda and instead invest the (taxpayers) money into better recycling solutions and improved guidelines for those wanting to utilize the many wonderful greener products that are actually available for use today.