This recognises that the built environment is a huge environmental issue, as the area that requires the most adaptation and the use of massive resources – from the energy that goes into buildings to the materials needed to construct them. Still, there has been a lack of action in the UK.
as the most recent Climate Change Committee Progress Report Statement: “Buildings are the UK’s second largest source of emissions (after surface transport).
“Emissions from buildings have not decreased consistently over the past decade, reflecting the low level of annual home energy efficiency improvements.”
The UK’s second-largest source of emissions has taken little action, which is shocking. Buildings are not just an emissions issue, they are the basic spaces in which the vast majority of people sustain their lives.
ownership
British society is sleepwalking into a world riddled with floods, heat waves and cold snaps, wrapped in poor quality housing that cannot provide basic levels of health and safety. This is a livability crisis related to the environmental collapse crisis and at the heart of the deterioration.
Therefore, the growing focus on building renovation and renovation techniques should be welcomed. This know-how enables people to tackle the evolving climate crisis.
This includes calculating the number of local jobs that could be created by large-scale retrofit activities to raise awareness of the exact flood risks that settlements face.
However, it is impossible to ask important questions about the sustainability of the built environment at the technical level: why are buildings allowed to reach such a poor state? Who benefits from this process? How to prevent further action on the built environment?
Any technical knowledge of adaptation and adaptation of the built environment must be aligned with an understanding of the economic forces driving real estate development and ownership.
rich
While this is a complex picture, it provides a brief summary of the UK housing and built environment.
After a significant period of social housing, the introduction of the “right to buy”, coupled with reduced state investment in public housing, facilitated mass home ownership starting in 1980.
This was further encouraged by government guarantees and liberalization of mortgage lending, leading to a decades-long bubble of property speculation, increased home ownership and the destruction of social housing supply.
This speculative bubble has led to persistent increases in land and house prices across much of the UK, especially in cities.
With social housing dwindling and overpriced, more and more new developments are being bought by already wealthy people as buy-to-let properties, rather than those looking for a first home.
warehouse
As a result, home ownership in the UK peaked around 2003 and the private rental market grew accordingly.
As a result, a large number of people exposed to weather risks and in need of remodeling live in long-term rental housing, especially the urban working class.
Another trend in government intervention in the built environment is the promotion of large-scale infrastructure projects, in partnership with the private sector, as a way to develop public spaces.
This is often done as a way to replenish limited local government coffers with private sector funds, often without considering the long-term impact of these projects on council finances and local communities.
This is taking place against a backdrop of widespread government-backed financial mechanisms surrounding the built environment and the declining power of local governments to build social housing.
influences
The most notable example is London’s Olympic Park, which has seen mass displacement of working-class neighborhoods, flattened social housing and pockets of property developers.
The built environment is increasingly commoditized rather than a place where people live.
The consequence has been a long-term decline in housing stock, as landlords are motivated to provide only minimal renovations while extracting maximum rent.
At the same time, once years of neglect build up, councils are incentivized to flatten these areas in favor of privately financed mega-projects, only to shift housing insecurity elsewhere. This supersedes the development of social housing schemes including retrofits and retrofits.
Combined with the collapse of high streets and declining public budgets for critical infrastructure, many public spaces are given to the private sector to control, influence and gentrify.
landlord
So if we think about a mass insulation movement, it won’t be beneficial unless we recognize that there are a significant number of people living as renters who are forced to pay their energy bills without the authority to actually commission structural work.
So, if incentives continue to assume homeownership, the buildings that need energy intervention the most will not see it.
Worse yet, if landlords are fully integrated into any insulation scheme, they may see themselves profiting from insulation grants or subsidizing them, even though their profiteering from buildings is exactly what causes energy inefficiency.
Environmentalists urgently need to take the idea of adaptation justice seriously – as Chris Saltmarsh writes in ecologist.
Take “renovation”, for example, where landlords renovate their properties, and in some cases, may use public funds to install adaptations or retrofits due to environmental concerns.
financialization
This often entails eviction of tenants before or after work is done when landlords seek to raise rents. Here, the cost of adaptation and retrofitting is not borne by those who profit from the built environment, but by those most vulnerable to the housing system.
Likewise, more and more public institutions are building projects using the Passivhaus principle or at least a higher level of energy efficiency.
However, if the buildings were built by bulldozing existing working-class neighbourhoods, it would only perpetuate the vicious cycle of gentrification that is prevalent in most UK cities.
Does not focus on who benefits from the built environment system and who is exploited by the built environment system, e.g. Green gentrification is a looming concern.
A serious response to weather events such as a storm in February or a heat wave in July must also address the pervasive growth of landlordism, the financialization of buildings, and the way market forces plan the built environment.
this author
Harry Holmes is a London-based climate organizer and writer.
