Article from A&B issue 05|2023
Impact of the housing sector on the climate
We need apartments and houses to live. The housing sector is an important part of the economy, and it is already difficult to find places in Poland where there is no development within a kilometer radius—as recent political events have shown us. This means a lot of interference with the environment, and our settlements continue to grow, we are using more and more resources. The impact of the housing sector on the environment can be traced back to the 3Rs slogan, which used to be linked only to garbage, then moved on to environmental and climate protection—reduce, reuse, recycle.
reduce
We are not reducing, rather we continue to build more and want more housing, as indicated in a very thorough study by the Committee on National Spatial Planning of the Polish Academy of Sciences. We are allocating more and more land for housing, until recently agricultural land, and we need roads and other utilities to serve these homes. Yes, in many cases new apartments and houses are necessary not only for comfort, but simply for the sake of providing healthy and hygienic living conditions, especially if our apartments sometimes take over the role of office, school and exercise room.
We are trying, at least in the housing stock, to reduce energy and heat consumption. In new buildings and major renovations, solutions are being introduced to draw energy from renewable sources, and we are returning to more natural and renewable materials, which are quite expensive for the time being, but are becoming increasingly popular. The long life of apartments and houses also means a reduction in resource consumption. The flagship example here is perhaps the large-panel buildings, which, when well cared for and insulated, already significantly exceed their projected fifty-year lifespan.
reuse
We are beginning to reclaim brownfield sites for housing, lofts are being made in already unused factories, furniture and other furnishings are being restored, older houses with a soul are being painstakingly renovated, including those that are not formally historic. Locating in the city, on already developed land, also means reducing infrastructure construction expenses, reducing commuting emissions. Financially, it may be profitable for now mainly in larger cities, but we can see the right direction.
However, we are reducing the useful life of some elements of the interior of apartments, we are doing renovations more often and throwing away existing equipment. With the current quality of tools, amazing innovations in construction chemicals, it would be possible to change the appearance of an apartment with small procedures, meanwhile, we are more likely to decide, for example, to chase off ceramic tiles rather than paint them.
recycle
With the reuse of building materials in housing, we still have little experience so far, but there are already good examples: demolition wood can be a part of interior decoration, and wooden formwork used once before in a period of sudden price increases and decreasing availability of materials turns out to be recoverable. We don't quite have the legal framework and possibilities for recycling some materials yet, but these are no longer isolated cases. Stone slabs removed from the facades of demolished buildings are being reused, demolition brick, and cut into decorative tiles for interiors is already a standard market product.
House demolitions are becoming a challenge because of the need to sort waste, and old buildings are simply very often left without any action, as the census data on vacant properties has shown to some extent. It is no longer possible to live in them, but we are not renovating or liquidating old houses. This will be a major challenge for future generations. Making any decision always means a lot of expense, but there is no getting away from it—these buildings will have to be "cleaned up."
and the latest: green up
Anew element is the return and use of greenery throughout the housing sector. Over the years we've been laying down sidewalks, removing plants from facades and roofs, but greenery is coming back. Now we need more of it, if only for the sake of reducing heat in buildings and entire cities, but also for the betterment of residents. Consideration of nature—both in its destructive and beneficial roles—is returning to housing as the preservation of large trees in new housing developments, rain gardens and reservoirs forrainwater, protections against heavy rains, green roofs and climbing plants on facades to reduce heat build-up (especially in cities), but also to reduce echoes in the courtyards of new buildings. We have hedgehog houses and boxes on facades for swifts and bats. Such rapprochement with nature is not always seen by residents as an advantage, but we can have more nature in the residential sector—there is room for it.
It's no longer possible to separate the housing sector from thinking about the climate, and the impact goes both ways: our homes and apartments consume a lot of resources and we need to reduce that, but we also need to adapt the sector to climate change: more violent weather events, extreme temperatures and limited energy and water resources. For now, we are only considering current problems in the housing sector, such as energy costs, but we should already be planning for the longer term, taking into account the coming consequences of climate change and its impact on our places to live.
Hanna Milewska-Wilk
Institute for Urban and Regional Development
Hanna Milewska-Wilk—housing specialist at the Institute for Urban and Regional Development, rental market analyst and advisor at simpl.rent. She cooperates with the Rental Market Foundation. Mediator, property manager, academically working sociologist and philologist with special interest in housing cooperatives.
