zlacker

> 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+(OP)
Not so straightforward. Sometimes we throw things away to make room for better things.

>>nerdpo+(OP)
A - The concept of present value isn't a problem, it's more like a fact, derived from the time value of money. It's like saying gravity is a problem.

B - Construction is resource intensive, no doubt about it. Without this technique the costs and resources would go up, double?, more? Many structures we take for granted, like freeway overpasses, would be impossibly expensive.

>>nerdpo+(OP)
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.

>>nerdpo+(OP)
That's a bit like the one horse shay. It's not how long it lasts but what are the costs associated with it lasting any given length of time. Nothing lasts forever but say buildings lasted 500 years - Suddenly 500 years from now all buildings have to be replaced? And what's the cost of this 500 year building? Is it 10 times as much? Or is it 5 times as much?

Saying we shouldn't have buildings that only last 50 years but rather they should last 500 is like saying they shouldn't last 50 years but instead 5. Maybe. Maybe 5 makes sense.

My assumption would be - shocker - it's probably a complicated trade off that's best adjudicated by the people with the most skin in the particular game.

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

If population levels change, up or down, we are going to have to be continually adjusting our usage of space to account for this. Making it easier to modify and/or tear-down-and-rebuild would make things a lot more efficient there. You'd need some policy changes too to fix the problems of, say, homeless people sleeping outside empty office buildings, but getting construction costs down would be a huge part of this.

We shouldn't be so arrogant to assume we are planning the right construction to serve us well for hundreds of years.

>>hacker+05
I understand your reasoning. The problem is that this line is seldom used in the opposite direction.

You want a flimsy shell and to externalise the environmental impact? Sure thing, whatever the market will bear and is legal.

I think it is fair enough for people to put pressure on current practices. Zara and H&M will persist, but their customers should be and, thanks to outside voices, are now aware that social and environmental factors are involved in fast fashion.

Sure, it's arbitrary. But we still have alternatives. All else being equal, less entropy is better than more.

>>renewi+l4
Although the hotels that hardwired RJ45 to each room are still going strong.

>>nerdpo+(OP)
If the buildings last a shorter amount of time, then more construction is needed which provides jobs. /s

>>jandre+lf
Right, they can stick APs in them. The point is that back then no one knew which tech would win and what tradeoff to make. Agility beats everything else except "guessing right".

>>hacker+05
> Suddenly 500 years from now all buildings have to be replaced? And what's the cost of this 500 year building? Is it 10 times as much? Or is it 5 times as much?

What a weird argument. It's obvious for multiple reasons that all buildings won't fail at the same time.

>>renewi+4h
For large institutions in the early 2000s, it was very obvious that Category 5 wiring and Ethernet was a difficult technology to beat. Even back then, most universities were running Ethernet to rooms in all new construction, and retrofitting spaces without it.

That infrastructure is still useful, 20 years on.

It isn't about agility or guessing right, it's about piloting attractive technologies (eg, small-scale DSL which uses existing phonelines, which was oftentimes a reliability nightmare), and keeping an eye to the future.