Population and Housing

[danbrotherston]

This is U.S. centric, but applies just about anywhere. I know that many here would agree with this point of view. 

Stop Fetishizing Old Homes
"Whatever your aesthetic preferences, new construction is better on nearly every conceivable measure."

This is very anecdotal, but I felt incentivized to purchase my 1940's home BECAUSE it was old and crappy compared to modern builds. Personally speaking, I consider the climate crisis to be the largest issue facing our generation, we need a wartime-like effort to mitigate it, etc.. So when I was looking to buy for myself and my partner, we were naturally drawn to modern condos as they're built to (reasonably, not exceptionally) high insulation standards, thus our personal "carbon footprint" would be its lowest possible.

However, taking a step back, I realized that by moving into one of these drafty houses, I could renovate it to a much higher standard and replace the gas-consuming appliances with electric variants, among other upgrades. (As an aside, the REEP website is a great resource and we don't talk about it enough!)

I realize that this is very idealistic and not a scalable long-term solution compared to ripping out old homes in favour of mid-rise developments. But the house we bought is in a neighbourhood that likely will never experience a zoning change to permit those kinds of builds. And to be perfectly clear, I'm an advocate for allowing mid-rise buildings in my neighbourhood - I'd be very happy to see all of my neighbours turn into 3-storey walkups!

This is nice in theory, but you're right about scalability.

I once had a dream of turning my house into a 3 storey walkup.  I'm glad I didn't invest any effort into it, my "neighbours" almost certainly would have killed the ideas, and my finances, and my spirit. Until we're willing to, as a society, tell those folks to collectively go shove it, we're not going to solve our problems.

I moved into a condo (even an older one) because I felt that the value of density was greater than the value of a more efficient single family home.