Speculative real estate practices and the harm they cause affect everyone. The threat of demolition looms over nearly every building, fueled by financial speculation that promotes demolition and new construction. This leads to a scarcity of affordable homes, job losses, and environmental damage. Therefore, we urgently need a socio-ecological transformation of contemporary building practices that extends beyond materials and energy to consider the values we uphold as a society. HouseEurope! advocates for regulations that acknowledge and safeguard the value of existing buildings and campaigns for legislation that prioritizes the preservation, adaptation, renovation, and transformation of existing building stock over demolition and rebuilding driven by financial speculation.
You can read more about this and watch a well made video at www.e-flux.com
Unfortunately, during the relatively few times in Britain and America when new construction is approved, it’s almost always homes priced for the rich or upper middle class, leaving very little for lower income brackets.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with speculative houses, they can be great experiments in new styles, sizes, amenities, etc the market may like. Also, renovation isn’t always a viable option due to zoning, economic decline of a town (this is happening to an ever growing number of small towns and villages around the developed world), the existing infrastructure not being able to support increased density or conversion to new uses, the building being so rundown that it can’t be repaired, or the building is extremely energy inefficient. I definitely agree that repairing old buildings and converting them to houses or apartment buildings is preferable to building new in certain situations.