Nitrogen and building construction

Nitrogen and building construction 

As usually, the latest crisis in the Netherlands combines the environment and the economy. We're in trouble with nitrogen norms and we have to slow down - literally: maximum highway speeds have to go down to 100 km/h to save agricultural and building activities. Just search the Internet with query terms like "nitrogen, crisis, Netherlands" and you'll get the whole story.
My problem is that I want to be an informed citizen. I understand why agriculture produces nitrogen emissions but what about building construction? What is the relation? It must have to do with either the materials or the way we construct buildings, including transportation. And if some claim that halving the livestock in the country would resolve the nitrogen crisis, wouldn't similar measures solve the problem of building construction, too?
 A quick search returned an article that tries to provide an overview of the problem. It claims that the problem lies with the machinery used in building construction, which emit huge amounts of nitrogen. The article further states that there are no alternatives to these fossil fuel guzzling machines, so we have to live with it. Building construction has to go on because there is a housing shortage in the Netherlands but also because building construction is important for the economy in general.
Easy conclusions like that trouble me. Firstly, I remain uncertain about the causes and effects of the much-advertised housing shortage. There's admittedly demand and certainly widespread activity but where are we building houses and for whom? It seems that the demand is chiefly in the Randstad and the new supply is mostly for the higher end of the market. House prices are going up to worrying levels, so increase in supply doesn't seem to have an effect on that - quite the contrary, I'd argue. Interestingly, due to housing demand, the Randstad appears to be expanding, engulfing neighbouring areas step by step. It'll be ironic if we end up returning to those areas that are currently being abandoned in favour of the Randstad but with Randstad housing prices. Surely some policies could start this return earlier than that, creating opportunities in currently less popular areas in this small, well-connected country.
Let's forget that for the moment and go to the inevitability of current building construction wastefulness and pollution. One could argue that in the same way that car drivers are asked to drive at a higher speed, the building sector could be asked to prioritize projects that require fewer nitrogen-emitting machines. It's probable, for example, that low-rise construction is less demanding in this respect than the high-rise developments favoured in many places. One could also use materials less demanding of heavy machinery for their production, transport and assembly. There are probably many such "soft" managerial solutions if one wants to reduce the nitrogen impact of building construction.
Above all, however, I fail to see why the building sector shouldn't modernize its production processes. In many respects, we're building in an outdated way that consumes too much and doesn't deliver superior products. Any comparison between buildings constructed in the last 100 years can demonstrate this stagnation. It's puzzling why we aspire to buildings that are environmentally neutral in use (in terms of energy consumption, CO2 emissions etc.) but we don't do the same with building construction. There's something wrong here and we're making it worse by summarily accepting current practices as inevitable or unchangeable.
So, let's keep asking ourselves what's hidden behind each question or statement, let's try to find the real problems that are behind them and see how these relate to each other. Quite often they require bold decisions and demanding strategies but the rewards can be much bigger and infinitely more secure.