this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
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Solarpunk Urbanism
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A community to discuss solarpunk and other new and alternative urbanisms that seek to break away from our currently ecologically destructive urbanisms.
- Henri Lefebvre, The Right to the City — In brief, the right to the city is the right to the production of a city. The labor of a worker is the source of most of the value of a commodity that is expropriated by the owner. The worker, therefore, has a right to benefit from that value denied to them. In the same way, the urban citizen produces and reproduces the city through their own daily actions. However, the the city is expropriated from the urbanite by the rich and the state. The right to the city is therefore the right to appropriate the city by and for those who make and remake it.
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I don't think a generic building that is suitable for all purposes is possible though. Inevitably the needs of a housing unit and an office are fundamentally different, going all he way down to the plumbing. It wouldn't make sense to build an office building with enough plumbing to easily become an apartment, or vice versa, because taking a down-the-middle approach could just as easily lead to a building that serves no useful purpose at all. It's not "just" about the money. He goes into the plumbing issue in particular in great depth. I highly recommend watching the whole video
@ssorbom @maegul Since the 1960s, we typically haven't designed buildings that are usable for a range of purposes. But I'm not sure that's necessarily the same thing as we couldn't, if we wanted to.
Typically, at least in the US and Commonwealth countries, since about the 1960s we've tended to have single-use zoning codes, that are highly prescriptive around what uses are acceptable on a given piece of land.
So you end up with entirely residential suburbs, and shopping centres or strips, and office parks.
If you look at most of the rest of the world, and even older buildings in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, you often find different uses taking place on different floors. So shops and restaurants on the ground floor, with flats and offices above.
And with many older buildings, the use has changed over time.
Since the 1960s or so, there's been a few assumptions that have tended to inform how buildings and cities are designed:
The first is that buildings and cities should be designed around cars.
Second, that form follows function. (You'll hear this phrase a lot with modernist architecture.)
Third, that buildings are essentially disposable.
Fourth, that they should generally be built as cheaply as possible.
And fifth, zoning codes prescribe what uses are allowed in a building, and how it should be designed.
There's no reason why building codes couldn't mandate that new structures shouldn't have floorplates that could be used for both offices and residential, or enough piping and conduit to support both uses.
Or enough windows and natural light to make it a comfortable place to be, no matter how it's used.
Yes, the upfront costs of buildings would be higher if we did. But the trade-off is that it's not a full tear-down-and-rebuild if you want to reuse the building for a different purpose in the future.
And here's why we should, in the words of the World Green Buildings Council
"Buildings are currently responsible for 39% of global energy related carbon emissions: 28% from operational emissions, from energy needed to heat, cool and power them, and the remaining 11% from materials and construction."
https://worldgbc.org/advancing-net-zero/embodied-carbon/