It couldn't happen here...
Demolition couldn’t just vanish, could it? History suggests that yes, it could.
It is tempting - preferable, even - to view the existential threat from the embodied carbon lobby as little more than an inconvenient bump in the road; a storm in a teacup that will blow over just as quickly as it blew up.
Yet, with each passing week and with each passing industry headline, demolition’s apparent determination to ignore the coming storm is being eroded. And this past week, that storm got real; very real indeed.
Until now, the RetroFirst debate has been limited largely to individual buildings and isolated disputes. But a new report from the London Assembly has called for demolition to be actively discouraged right across the nation’s capital.
That report was commissioned by the London Assembly. But before demolition contractors in Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle and Glasgow are tempted to snigger up their sleeves at the fate facing their London counterparts, they should pause. London might be the spiritual woke home of the Guardian-reading, metropolitan, Liberal elite, but it is also the place where environmental regulatory change often begins. Ultra Low Emission Zones, cycle superhighways and large-scale pedestrianisation were all trialled in the nation’s capital before being rolled out elsewhere. In short, if London sneezes, other British cities will likely catch a cold.
Should the London Assembly plans be accepted and the plans implemented, it would mark a major shift for the built environment. In the very near future, demolition in London might go ahead ONLY if there is sufficient and verifiable evidence that there is not a more sustainable alternative.
Where would that leave those demolition contractors that have relied upon London for the lion’s share of their workload and income? Where would that leave the demolition industry as a whole if those same rules are applied elsewhere?
As I said at the outset, it is tempting and preferable to believe that common sense will prevail and that demolition will endure. Demolition leads to construction; construction leads to progress; and that progress employs upwards of three million people and makes a major contribution to the national economy.
But the situation currently facing demolition is not without precedent.
The UK was once self-sufficient in the production of coal. The UK was also a world-leading producer of steel. Both those sectors were major employers; and both were backed by powerful unions (the miner’s union famously went to war with Margaret Thatcher’s Government). During the course of my lifetime, both of those industry sectors have all but disappeared. And one of the key weapons used to drive them both to the very brink of extinction was a desire to safeguard the environment.
Sounding the death knell for demolition is, of course, premature. But don’t be fooled into thinking it couldn’t happen here. It has happened before, and it could so easily do so again.