zlacker

>>hrl+(OP)
This should be an economics piece, not an environmental piece. The author states that "one of iron’s unalterable properties is that it rusts" yet further on acknowledges the existence of stainless steel.

There's nothing wrong with reinforced concrete, but the incentives to produce long lasting buildings are not there. The cheapest bidder will generally win and their building will last the "design life" of the building, but often not much more. The simplest way to change this is to extend the design life, which would result in stainless steels or another more expensive material being used in this application.

>>brutus+J5
Is it a good thing for society to directly incentivize the construction of longer lasting buildings?

>>miniki+Q5
IMO yes; if the materials cost a lot of time/carbon/resources to produce, then we should make them last!

>>sesuxi+K7
No, time is not an externality: maybe time under construction yields to disruption to neighbours under construction and we can charge for that. Resources are fully internalized. If a building needs x sand and another needs 2x sand, the second will pay twice for sand. Carbon is externalized, but that's a general problem. How do we know that making a lasting building is better/worse than having the building not exist / exist and having people driver farther / closer?

Simple, for externalities, you directly charge for the externality.

All these stop-gap "it costs carbon, so we must make it last 50 years" is like placing massive `if-then-else` statements throughout your codebase and then being surprised when the emergent behaviour of your program somehow results in uglier, more carbon polluting, sicker buildings that are now 100 years old and imposing massive costs on society around them.