Last fall, the City of Ottawa, like many other cities, declared a #ClimateEmergency. We’ve also declared a #HousingEmergency. We need to restore, conserve, adapt and renovate our existing buildings, including abandoned and derelict ones, to provide more housing. It can take years to get a project through planning approval and construction, so any action we take on either front must be measured, careful and, at the same time, driven by a sense of urgency.

The most sustainable building is the one that already exists:

• the concrete used to build it is already manufactured;
• the steel extracted from the earth is already processed; and,
• the trees are already harvested.

Crushing the building and throwing it into the landfill, even if we recycle what we can, only to replace it with more of the same, has a huge environmental footprint. Worse, we tear down something that is part of our community, representing the cultural values of the community both in its original design and construction, and as the community that has grown around it.

Underlying this discussion is a failure to realize that heritage conservation is all about sustainability. And this isn’t just for those buildings that we think of as “heritage”; The overall cultural context of buildings that form the collective backdrop to our cities is as important as the ones that we honor with a plaque or designate as “official heritage.”

Renovating a building is expensive. It might have tenants that need to be accommodated or moved. The renovations might affect the neighbours and new uses might need lengthy planning approval to add, or adapt, to the building. Keeping the building might seem like a lot of work.

How can we, as a society, help incentivize reuse?

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