Are you content or annoyed with renovation projects?

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If a perfectly usable building is undergoing renovation to "update" its appearance, do you usually welcome this change or does it annoy you?

Pardon the biased wording - I suppose it could be phrased:

If any building, street, structure or whatever.... is undergoing construction or renovation, how do you feel about such a change?

I personally hate such change (I know hate is a very strong word here ), but cannot understand the logic of wasting millions of dollars to rebuild something last updated in, say the 80's or 90's. But in my town, this happens constantly. Roads are blocked, sidewalks are covered in mounds of dirt....

And what usually happens is a brand spankin new building with a shiny, airier and more impersonal look, and less comfortable. (How many times have you seen restaurants renovated only to remove their hominess, to be replaced with weird light fixtures and super-modern, uncomfortable seating arrangements?....)

Anyway, this is a pet peeve of mine - wondering if anyone feels the same way, or do you welcome updates and upgrades to buildings, streets or architecture in general?

This question can also be applied to anything. Come to think of it, every time I'm offered an upgrade to a program on my PC, I keep clicking "no thanks" until the program literally "forces" one to upgrade!

Boy, if you were scouting new places to live, you'd probably pass on Seattle. Those little orange street cones are everywhere. Condos are constantly going up. Super-sized cranes are permanent fixtures in the skyline. Downtown traffic can make you pull your hair out. Parking is so bad that, really, only tourists go to Pike Place Market and other attractions. Now, just imagine this - the city council just approved a plan to build a basketball stadium down by the football and baseball stadiums. Yeah, gridlock city. And, to add to all that, Amazon will be building some office complexes downtown. All of that new building overflows into the exurbs because people have to live somewhere, right? Change is probably the only constant in Seattle.

Oh yes. I despise this. I absolutely despise the sight and noise of construction. And when it's unnecessary, I'm pissed.

I don't understand why there is so much of a need and desire for construction!

Well, let's assume that residental real estate has a lifespan of 30 years, and commercial real estate has a lifespan of 40 years (combined, we'll call it 33.3 years). Let's say that the utilities/roads/communications have a lifespan of 15 years. And let's also assume that there is no risk of hazard or regulations rending old buildings obsolete earlier.

Every year, you'd have 3 percent of your buildings replaced. Every year, you'd replace about 9 percent of your streets. And that's just to keep up with the natural lifespan.

But we live in a changing world. People's tastes change, prefered locations change, amentities move, neighberhoods change in value, so the real estate changes with it. It's slower to change because of the horrific transaction costs, but it changes.

And that's assuming we're not talking about cities that people actually like, where it's demand driven, and they build as fast as they can get cheap land. Assuming a population growth rate of 1 percent, and an average square foot growth of 1 percent, you're looking at 22 percent natural growth a decade, which is a lot of buildings.

Thank you for the explanation

Yeah, I guess I did confirm my DX with that post......

Well I must be different because I like to see new construction. Our community had an open house for a new high school that me and my sisters went to. The old high school was built in 1959 and not changed since. It was dark, drafty, crowded, smelly and chaotic. This new one at least looks and smells better. Our community also has a lot of abandoned decayed buildings that need demolished down to the ground. Maybe there should be a national demolition program - it would create jobs (maybe for us!) and make America a better place.

Video at the link, it would not let me embed:

http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2012/12/ ... t-to-open/

Last edited by BobinPgh on 02 Jan 2013, 11:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It was logical.....

There's several cities that have been begging the state and federal governments for such a program. The thinking in some circles is that it's better to have an empty plot than a vacant building, since empty plots don't have too many law enforcement issues. One could also argue that it's a back-door subsidy to new building, since the builders won't have to pay to get rid of the old building, and they won't have to take the carrying costs while they clean out the site.