LIFE CYCLE
A circular model for demolition applications and urban regenerations
The constant population growth comes hand in hand with an increase in building projects and demolitions in the United Kingdom giving rise to questions about the life and purpose of the building and the materials after it has been dismantled.
How can a conscious understanding of the cycles of a building have a positive impact on waste reduction?
What is the impact on citizens when erasing segments of the landscape, and what is the effect in displacing communities by demolition and urban reactivation?
The urban environment is made of built infrastructure and constant change, making us question if architecture’s purpose should be about building and unbuilding. When building removal occurs, a blank slate reveals the minimum attention paid to what was destroyed as the decision taken in what needs to go or stay happens with minimus or nonpublic consultations or social and cultural analysis.
The practice of demolishing buildings produces more material waste than renovation and construction together. It is estimated that in England, the construction industry produces 89.6 million tonnes of construction and demolition waste yearly, from which only 9 percent is reused while the rest goes to landfill and land reclamation. (Hamidreza, 2019, p1) Demolition practices lack government planning stages (not procedures); hence the most substantial influence in producing a sustainable and cultural conscious demolition relies mainly on the economic aspect. (Thomsen, 2011) For example, the taxes established on land filled with material waste or the income that could be produced by re-selling second-hand materials recovered from the site. However, there is a social aspect that needs to be considered before demolition as citizen lives and community systems could be directly affected.
DEMOLITION PROCESS AND WASTE FLOWS
To reduce the waste stream, the built environment use of materials should be changed by salvaging buildings and construction materials and giving them a new purpose by always considering the needs and value of the specific neighbourhoods.
Demolition and dismantling are two different processes of removing a building. When dismantling, materials are removed from a building as intact as possible in a slow and technical process. On the other hand, is a process of destructing a building into waste in which materials cannot be recovered or reused. By de-constructing instead of demolishing, the materials could be saved up to 80 % for them to be reused, preventing and reducing carbon emissions and waste growth. (Thomsen, 2011, p 328)
If demolition is the total elimination of a building and its parts in a specific time and space, then this process ends the life and the use of the building while altering the existing urban landscape and affecting the citizens of the area. Unlike the initial phases of design and construction, the building’s final phase has mostly been ignored and underestimated; however, it is in this stage that waste is produced with no other purpose than being disposed of. What needs to be acknowledged is that demolition starts to partially happen during the inhabited years in which maintenance and replacement of elements take place over a building’s life-span. This results in constant production of construction waste over several years and not only at the moment of elimination. This is a problematic issue as it relates to material waste flows and social, environmental and economic areas that are affected by the demolition.
London is a diverse city in which planners, developers, contractors, designers, government and investors have a saying in what to do and how to develop the city’s architecture and material business but, where in this equation is the citizens’ opinion? Dialogue is essential and should be implemented when proposing demolition of any kind since it could be used for economic reactivation and affect the community lifestyle and worth.
The major concern is whether design can rediscover social progress and economic justice by proposing fewer demolitions and more adaptations, giving a new life to a building. Activating a specific neighbourhood’s economy is manageable without eliminating segments of it, but rather restoring them and proposing sustainable long-term property management.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS IN THE EFFECTS OF URBAN REGENERATION
The lack of data on quantities of demolition waste and buildings’ post-construction stages raises questions about the effects on the environment, the citizens, and the lack of sensibility on the surroundings when building trimming occurs.
On average, the life of buildings being demolished in the UK is sixty years according to the British Standard Code of Practice for Demolitions and over a third of the waste produced by this industry originates from demolition itself. The existing regulation policies such as the Demolition Code of Practice BS 6187:2000 are concerned with the processes of execution and site and risk assessments as well as health and safety. However, none of them talk about cultural protection or address citizens consultations the previous demolition. Unlike the consultation process stated by the Localism Act 2011 in which public consultation needs to be carried out during the first and second stage of the RIBA Plan of Work, there are no existent public consultations related to eliminating buildings. (legislation.gov.uk)
Demolition can be analyzed as a technical and environmental issue which also involves context regeneration and social implications. The process of discontinuity and eradication is a form of violence, as destruction is affecting urban aesthetics and cultural importance. This phenomenon has multiple reasons behind it; it could be referred to massive eradication for modern city developments, political transformations, cultural displacements of specific groups such as Latins and the lack of citizens opinion and knowledge about urban regeneration. In this sense, the main demolitions problem is the abuse of economic and political power for city transformations and economic reactivation. This form of decision making often ignores community’s opinion and don’t provide enough data of the use of the material waste after demolition, the possible loss of value of the area and the buildings life management after it has been delivered.
THE SEVEN SISTERS CASE STUDY
If we understand the life cycle of buildings as a circular process in which the end of one cycle is the beginning of another, then we can close the loop between the construction and demolition sectors as part of the same industry and propose strategies in which the waste of demolition becomes the resource for construction. However, this simple strategy is not enough as it is only considering the construction industry and not the citizens’ opinion and needs in the future of a building and a city.
The seven sisters market’s regeneration development plan is a clear example in which economic and social interests overlapped. Since 1972, the Wards Corner in Tottenham, London became a market managed by Latin migrants and the Latin community’s core in the city. The idea redeveloping of the area has been a priority for the Haringey Council since 2004 by which Grainger PLC was commissioned to create a proposal that would ‘revive’ the area. According to the Council, the primary purpose is to recognize the social value of the town by working directly with the community and the stakeholders to transform the area by providing modern services and housing assuring these are the needs of the local citizens. (Grainger plc, 2018) The developers have come with a process of engaging with the local community through statistics and interviews. However, how consultation is carried out is mostly presented as a medium that supports urban development with a solution of relocating the existing businesses. The development plan proposed concerns local citizens about the effects of gentrification as the market will be transformed into a multipurpose building of luxury housing and commerce.
At the moment, the market houses more than 43 businesses and 150 jobs, resulting in a cultural hub of Latin migrant communities. It is an architectural landmark and a dynamic cultural space, as stated by the United Nations in 2017. The building is an inclusive asset of people from diverse origins and generations. (Wards Corner Community Plan) The change in the social structure of the area will increase living and renting costs, forcing many of the residents to displace, causing them to lose their community and causing the neighbourhood to lose its cultural worth.
“ Save latin Village, a campaign group protesting fervently against the demolition, has suggested the reality of this regeneration will see the market reduced in size by 50%, while rent fees are forecast to increase by 300%.” (Barrow)
“What the proposed demolition of Latin Village reaffirms to the migrant community is that their livelihoods are at the whim of corporate greed; that providing further space for the rich is a priority far outweighing the needs of working-class citizens.” (Barrow)
This specific example reaffirms the lack of sensitivity from councils and developers towards a cultural centre and the economical interest behind massive demolitions. Isn’t then demolition a failure in the system of economic reactivation and urban development? Is there a way of changing the planning system from a hand full of people in power to a public and active discussion? Moreover, how can waste reduction be a priority in the strategies of environmental and social justice?
PROPOSITION: SOCIAL REGENERATION PLANNING BY COMMUNITY CONSULTATION
To restore and regenerate our current environment, future urban developments should be made through a collaborative dialogue between public and private institutions, citizens and developers. The current planning systems in the Uk focus mainly on the pre-production of a building, considering the construction, design, spatiality and handover, but has no specific stages of planning for the end life of a building and how it should be addressed considering the local citizens. (Thomsen, 2011)
In New York, community planning takes place in a successful manner that parts from an active relationship between university programs, social movements and developers. In New York for Sale, Angotti explains how community planning will have a starting point the needs and desires of a community allowing developers to identify with them and establish a personal relationship beyond a simple gathering of information. (Clavel, 2010) The process consists of two actors, the developers who are main interest is economical, and the citizens whose lives are affected by displacement and cultural loss. In his book, Angotti insists that social inequality and cultural value need to be the pillars for urban development and that although tensions will exist, dialogue and participation will produce a fair outcome. (Clavel, 2010)
What if, the strategy consists of democratizing the use of land by planning with community consultation. A participative design first exposes the knowledge and value of a community, so that the projects to come can respond to the necessities of the users and regenerate the existing context positively. This model understands that citizens cannot take decisions by themselves as they require technical experts to make their participation valuable and their interests explicit in the urban plans. Thus, the model proposes a community panel democratically formed with a series of citizens representatives that include common individuals and experts such as architects, technicians, academics and students as head representatives of the needs and desires of the people. A strong alliance between urban planning and education reinforces research work and alternative propositions for controversial plans. It is fair to say that various age and gender are required to cover as many points of views as possible.
The proposed community planning would be a key step for a more fair development of an existing neighbourhood and would happen before any massive demolition or urban regeneration project; plus they can also develop proposals and counterproposals for the existing plans. This step must consist of a public consultation that gathers accurate data of the existing context and the social problematics that will then be applied to any proposal and be exposed to the public.
The community planning organization should exist within each local council to raise the citizens’ voice and their needs and shift the hierarchy of power between government and citizens. Community planning should have a holistic approach to design intertwining culture, land, individuals, environment, community, economy and development. If a building is understood as a set of relations, then the decisions for demolition and economic growth will need to be re-imagined and re-considered thinking about the long and short term consequences.
Moreover, in a system that struggles with a lack of transparent and public information, the 0.WASTE.LAND platform aims to free the information to promote a healthier co-designing relationship between stakeholders and local communities. Simultaneously, the information collected will create a sense of responsibility on the citizen who will be in close contact with the cases of demolition and waste flows. Therefore, the waste reduction will be part of the strategical model shifting the lens from only economic advantages to social and environmental restoration.
0.WASTELAND ROLE IN SOCIAL MANAGEMENT
We as an open-sourced platform want to be active participants of society by giving a service to the communities who feel they lack resources and knowledge to counteract violent urban renovations. Our system analyses previous researches and gathered data from existing demolitions and waste flows and then, presents them in a transparent and graphical form to the public with no alterations or personal opinions. In this way, we want to stimulate the citizens’ consciousness about the danger embedded in economic reactivation plans that lack of social voice and cultural value.
The debate about environmental and human well being should be at the top of the construction sector priorities. The data gathered about the materials re-use and the demolition processes will be publicly exposed through our platform and this will be key to balancing out and equalizing the power between the citizens and the public and private sectors in the urban growth. Doing good with data is a priority, hence in the 0.WASTELAND proposal there will be an area that focuses on gathering and presenting data from the built environment in terms of waste production, circular economy of materials and demolition. This is an ethical responsibility of making information public to everyone and assuring a transparent work of the platform.
CONCLUSION
The proposed negotiatory and dialogue generator model embedded in the platform increases the connectivity between architectural firms, government and citizens by sharing publicly the gathered information and making them all active participants in the city’s alterations and reductions of waste materials. In order to redirect the traditional forms of demolitions and urban regenerations, we want to expose in our platform the data collected, and introduce a public consultation model in which the citizens voice is not only heard but its use as part of the solution.
Demolition in general terms should not only be about the physical consequences of elimination, but also about the social threads that could arise towards weak and marginalized communities. Considering the revised problematics, we can argue that the current systems of demolition for regeneration are not the most effective in terms of waste management and cultural health. There are still changes that should be made in order to redirect the urban planning systems towards an active decision making directly involving and acknowledge individuals.
In order to democratize the development of the city considering social, economical and environmental justice, education and active participation are key elements for collective and proactive decisions.
Bibliography:
Barrow, H, Save Latin Village: The Threat Gentrificationposes to Seven Sisters’ migrant community, Immigration news.co.uk, viewed 28 December 2020, https://immigrationnews.co.uk/save-latin-village-the-threat-of-gentrification-to-seven-sisters-migrant-community/
Clavel, P,(2010),New York for Sale: Community Planning Confronts Global Real Estate Tom Angotti, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2008, https://www.plannersnetwork.org/2010/01/new-york-for-sale-community-planning-confronts-global-real-estate-tom-angotti-cambridge-ma-mit-press-2008/
Construction Resources and Waste Platform, Overview of Demolition Waste in the Uk, viewed 21 December 2020, http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/CRWP-Demolition-Report-2009.pdf
Grainger PLC, (2018), Community Engagement Report 2017–2018, Grainger Seven Sisters limited, 01–269.
Hamidreza S, Burman M, Braimah Nuhu, Pathways to circular construction: An integrated management of construction and demolition waste for resource recovery, Brunel University London, 2019, 1–9.
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Save Latin Village and Wards Corner CIC, Save Latin Village, viewed 28 December 2020, https://savelatinvillage.org.uk/
The Reuse People of America 2021, Deconstruction, The Reuse People of America, viewed 21 December 2020, https://thereusepeople.org/
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Wrds Corner Community Plan, Significance to Latin American Community, viewed 1 January 2021, https://www.wardscornerplan.org/wards-corner
