zlacker

>>hrl+(OP)
I don't know if it is really a problem, more like a tradeoff. Reinforced concrete costs less and enables shapes that are impossible without it, with the downside that the buildings last 50 years instead of 100+ years. The present value of a building that lasts 50 years is not that much different that the same one that lasts 100 years.

With that in mind, it makes perfect sense to make an office building out of reinforced concrete.

>>idoh+S8
> The present value of a building that lasts 50 years is not that much different that the same one that lasts 100 years.

That's a problem in and of itself, IMO. Construction is tremendously resource-intensive. We should not be building "throwaway" buildings.

>>nerdpo+F9
The classic problem is similar to that of that other famous future-proof thing: wifi in hotels. All the fancy hotels that got high-end wifi in the 2000s had shitty Internet for a long time because it was too hard to redo.

Sometimes, building to throw away is the best model. If something is so resource intensive in a way where the externalities are not appropriately mitigated, the right way is to tax the externalities, not to go after specific things.

If these builds were too expensive to build, they wouldn't be built.