Issue Focus: Building Rehab

Rehab is bringing some corners of our cities back into prosperity.  And I don’t mean the Amy Winehouse version–I’m talking about the rehabilitation of the building stock that we invested in 60, 80, or 100 years ago.

Oftentimes historic renovations seem to be the result of a nebulous culture of rehabbing, or good old-fashioned individual initiative.  But cities and states can tactically choose to embrace historic preservation as a strategy for revitalizing downtowns.  To start off our series, I’m posting some thoughts from the unofficial godfather of the current historic preservation movement, Donovan Rypkema. The bulletpoints below came from his 2007 presentation, “Sustainability, Smart Growth and Historic Preservation,” at the Historic Districts Council Annual Conference in New York.  (You can read the entire speech here.)

• Sustainable development is crucial for economic competitiveness.
• Sustainable development has more elements than just environmental responsibility.
• “Green buildings” and sustainable development are not synonyms.
• Historic preservation is, in and of itself, sustainable development.
• Development without a historic preservation component is not sustainable.

Rypkema believes that, in historic preservation lies at least a partial answer to a number of challenges.  Socially: these buildings are part of the urban fabric, our culture and what make each of our cities unique.  They also tend to be located in attractive clusters that draw urban populations.  Environmentally: tearing down an historic building to build new, no matter how “green” the new building is, is less sustainable than rehabbing the historic building.  With rehab, less waste is sent to the landfill, fewer new resources are used.  Economically:  50% of the cost of a new building is resources.  Conversely, 30% of rehab costs are spent on resources, and 70% on labor.  Rehabbing equals local job creation.  Additionally, money spent on rehab is likely to be spent within the local community, rather than on parts from a factory hundreds of miles away.

Over the remaining month, we’ll explore historic preservation strategies and how a culture of historic preservation should inform our approach to urban revitalization.

This post is a part of our November series on historic preservation, building rehab, and the triple bottom line.  Next week we’ll feature an interview with historic preservationist, Ecology of Absence blogger, and St. Louis man-about-town, Michael Allen.