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Caylen Payne UST 578 Kathleen Crowther 11/14/14
Historic Preservation and Sustainability With all the talk of climate change and global warming in the news these days’ people are often left to wonder what they can do as individuals to help ease the situation. As planning professionals we too are confronted with this issue in our daily practice and lives. In many was historic preservation can be seen as an important tool along with land-use planning in moving towards a more sustainable city and combating the effects of global warming. To quote the often used slogan of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, “the greenest building is the one already built”. Albeit seemingly simple, this idea can be expanded upon considering that existing building reuse also incorporates the existing infrastructure. Additionally, many times the money saved from not building new infrastructure can be used to upgrade existing street amenities including rain gardens, bio-swales, and pervious pavement. Finally, if we look to the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design or LEED program, we are reminded of the myriad of ways a historic structure can be updated to incorporate the latest in sustainable building practices that enhance not only the building, but usually the surrounding landscaping and streetscape as well. In the end we are left with some important questions on how sustainability is incorporated into historic preservation as well as the key debate between the economic efficacies of historic reuse vs. new “green” building and how to find key resources a planning professional can use in their fight against climate change. What exactly does sustainability mean from a planning perspective? Many times this word gets thrown around and turned into a buzzword without really knowing the implications. Perhaps the most widely used definition of sustainability comes from the influential and historic publication of the United Nation’s Bruntland Commision in 1987, Our Common Future; which defines sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This is also one of the go-to resources that every planner and preservationist should have in their knowledge base as it
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serves as a primer for many of the more nuanced “green” and sustainable ideas that have made their way into our lexicon. Expanding upon Our Common Future, one of the key concepts to understand is the idea of embodied energy; simply put, the resources and energy that goes into the construction of a building. This is one thing historic buildings have going for them, they’re already built! Another factor that historic buildings have over their contemporary counterparts, is their building lifecycle. In most cases many older structures were “overbuilt” according to today’s technology, meaning that their materials and construction methods provide for a building with higher integrity and standards that, with rehabilitation, usually outlast their modern counterparts (Allison & Peters, 2011). Another way of understanding sustainability as it applies to historic preservation is to look at the overall built environment and how it pertains to ideas such as the Livable Cities and Smart Growth movement. Beginning with the Bruntland Report in 1987 we began to understand sustainability as not a static concept that exists in the quantification and evaluation of purely scientific building and planning principals, rather it is an organic idea that extends into our lives through our interaction with the natural and built environment. In this way we can understand sustainability as the function of a healthy landscape including our built and “un-seen” infrastructure (Donofrio, 2012). This includes the way we interact with each other in our daily lives; the movements between places. Therefore a walkable community filled with important cultural institutions, greenspace, civic buildings etc… can be achieved through the re-use of historic buildings; having usually been built in a denser urban fabric that unwittingly promotes “smart growth” by inhibiting urban sprawl. Even when a historic building is not part of a dense walkable urban fabric, the execution of its reuse as a cultural and civic icon can evoke important conversations about how we use our environment and resources and serve as a reminder for us to remember our heritage as we plan for the future. This idea can serve as an impetus to reconciliation between historic preservation and green building as these two “movements” are often unwittingly pitted against each other when it comes to the political ecology and policy decisions that must be made in our planning and preservation practices.1 Many times we may seek new construction as a form of spurring development in an area without first looking at the 1 One may turn to the idea of political ecology to understand that policy decisions we think only affect our economy or society, in truth have wider ranging environmental consequences that have not been incorporated fully into our mainstream planning profession, including the acquisition and procurement of building materials, labor and transportation.
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long term environmental and cultural implications. This process is usually not holistic enough to incorporate the existing cultural and historic resources a community may already have, seeing as though it is often difficult to quantify these in economic terms, however this is where the dichotomy should end and where we should form a new “sustainable” understanding between the two. The major debate within the topic of historic preservation and sustainability seems to be the juxtaposition of new construction to that of historic reuse. To that end there are two ways to understand this division. The first I have already touched upon, that is the effect the reuse of historic buildings has on preserving a dense, walkable urban fabric which can promote cultural and social goals aligned with the Smart Growth and Livable Cities movement.2 The second argument revolves around the more scientific evaluation of the energy consumption; upstream, the energy consumed during construction, and downstream, the energy consumed during the building’s lifespan. Many people would assume that new “green” buildings will always be more energy efficient than historic buildings and while this may be true in a side by side static comparison, it fails to incorporate the embodied energy of pre-existing buildings. As mentioned before, the embodied energy of a building consists of all the factors that went into its construction, including material procurement, transportation, labor, etc… This embodied energy typically accounts for around 26 percent of the total energy consumed within a building’s lifespan with the remaining amount spent on its operations (Allison & Peters, 2011). This building operations expenditure is further highlighted in terms of sustainability when one realizes that roughly 30 – 50 percent of annual U.S. carbon dioxide emissions come from buildings (Todorovic, 2012). To drive home the point according to Donovan Rypkema in his chapter of Practicing Sustainability, a building’s construction accounts for 15 to 30 times their annual energy use. He goes on to say “…because of the embodied energy in the structure, a 100year-old building could use 25% more energy each year and still have less lifetime energy consumption than a building that only lasts 40 years. And a whole lot of buildings being built today won’t last 40 years.” 2 It is important to note that several prominent researchers in the field including James Marston Fitch and Gregory Donforio have alluded to a deepening debate between gentrification and “preservation as function”. Their research alludes to an alarming trend that witnesses the social fabric and function of certain downtown areas changing in a way that excludes their traditional blue-collar heritage in exchange for “historic tourism” dollars. This concept should certainly be addressed in any holistic planning approach incorporating historic preservation.
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Another factor in the comparison between new construction and historic reuse comes from the economic sector. While prevailing thought may lead one to think that new construction would create a larger economic footprint than historic reuse the exact opposite is true. While the numbers are not overwhelming, recent studies by researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University have proven that historic reuse has the slight edge over new construction when using an economic input-output model (Allison & Peters, 2011). Another thing to consider is the waste associated with new building construction which the EPA estimates accounts for a third of all physical waste generated in this country. Rypkema expounds on this idea in his economic assessment of historic preservation estimating; “If no demolition is required, a major commercial rehabilitation will probably cost from 12 percent less to 9 percent more than the cost of comparable new construction with the typical building cost saving being about 4 percent… On the other hand if new construction requires incurring the costs of razing an existing building, the cost savings from rehabilitation should range from 3 to 16 percent.” The link between the historic preservation and green movement is perhaps best illustrated in the success and failures inherent in the current LEED rating system. While LEED is and will continue to be the dominate energy efficiency rating system in the U.S. it still lacks a cohesive inclusion and comprehensive understanding of the intricacies involved in historic preservation. Remember that we have already established that the majority of historic buildings have a handup on their contemporaries for several reasons. Besides their embodied energy many historic buildings were built in a way to account for their local environment in the sense of their placement in regards to prevailing weather patterns. This includes their site location, cardinal direction, and the use of natural cooling and ventilation methods, (remember modern HVAC really didn’t come into use until the late 50’s.) The problem with LEED is that it really doesn’t account for this embodied energy. LEED only awards two points if a building’s materials come from within 500 miles of the building, what about the other 50%? LEED does the same thing when it comes to using the buildings existing interior and exterior shell with a similar 50% margin that does not incorporate the whole of a buildings reuse and embodied energy. As authors Allison and Peters have pointed out in their case study of the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn New York, the developer was awarded LEED points for recycling 75% of a historic demolished
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structure on its site plan, highlighting the need for a revamp and more inclusive approach to the LEED point system. Of course, the news isn’t always bad, there are numerous case studies involving LEED and historic structures including Hardman Farm in Georgia, a 140 year old farmhouse which was updated to LEED-Gold standards. Houston’s Julia Ideson Library, The Christman Building in Lansing Michigan, just to name a few which have all achieved LEED certification while embracing historic preservation. Ultimately practitioners must marry the argument between sustainability and historic preservation by adopting a more comprehensive approach to understanding not only the scientific underpinnings of reuse but also the social and cultural implications. LEED needs to be totally overhauled to account for the myriad of ways that historic buildings are sustainable and accept that new construction does not always trump adaptive reuse. So the question remains, where does one find all these resources and information? As with most things I would urge preservationists to start with the Bruntland Report and then move on to many of the ACHP reports akin to its 2012 “Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan”. A good understanding of the LEED system will always come in handy as well. In addition one most always understand their local guidelines, both private and public. In the case of Cleveland, obvious choices are the Cleveland Landmark Commission, Cleveland Restoration Society, as well as Cleveland’s adoption of the Enterprise Green Communities Criteria for rehabilitated homes under the NSP. These can help frame the argument on a local and then federal policy level laying the groundwork for a more sustainability driven approach based upon best practices as illustrated in prominent peer reviewed literature. Seminal works in the literature include Booz, Allen and Hamilton’s 1979 report on embodied energy, as well as anything by Donovan Rypkema, Gregory Donforio, and Patrice Frey. Perhaps the most important resource when crafting a prosustainability argument for historic preservation comes in terms of framing it in an economic light, therefore Randal Mason’s Economics and Historic Preservation: A Guide and Review of the Literature becomes essential reading. These works comprise of and illustrate the key concepts outlined in this paper and reveal the need to heal the current dichotomy between historic preservation and sustainability movements as well as highlighting the need to reevaluate the current LEED points system in the context of historic preservation. While policy and practice sometimes plays “catch-up” to theory, given our current understanding of climate change, it can’t come soon enough.
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Works Cited Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. (2012). Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan 2012. Washington DC: ACHP. Allison, E., & Peters, L. (2011). Historic Preservation and the Livable City. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Bacon, R. (2013). Historic Preservation Pays Dividends. Planning, 3-3. Carl Elefante, Q. E. (2005). Historic Preservation and Sustainable Development: Lots to Learn, Lots to Teach. APT Bulletin, 36(4), 53-53. Donofrio, G. (2012, Fall). Preservation by Adaptation. Change Over Time, 2(2), 106-131. John H Cluver, B. R. (2012). Saving Energy in Historic Buildings: Balancing Efficiency and Value. Planning for Higher Education, 40(2), 13-24. Mason, R. (2005). Economics and Historic Preservation: A Guide and Review of the Literature. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution. Rabbri, K. (2013). Energy Incidence of Historic Building: Leaving no stone unturned. Journal of Cultural Heritage, 14(s), 25-27. Rypkema, D. (2013). Historic Preservation: The Sustainable Development. In O. G. Madhavan, Practicing Sustainability (pp. 233-238). New York: Springer Science Business Media. Teal, D. (2012). Preserving the Entrepreneurial Spirit. Environmental Design & Construction, 16-23. The Stained Glass Association of America. (2013). A Window to Sustainability. Stained Glass: Quarterly of the Stained Glass Association of America, sourcebook. Todorovic, M. S. (2012). In Search of a Holistic, Sustainable and Replicable Model for Complete Energy Refurbishment in Historic Buildings. Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage, 27-53. World Commimission on Environment and Development. (1987). Our Common Future. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.