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.

Dangers of overproduction

Dangers of overproduction 

Association football (soccer) used to be a throwback, lagging behind wider societal and economic developments. Now its at the forefront of change, showing us what the future holds. One can learn a lot from the business of football; in many respects, it is far better organized and more professional than other industries. That's why I follow with interest the merry-go-round of every transfer period: the rumours, the gossip, the moves, the expenditure. It's fascinating to see how mobile football professionals have become and the conditions that trigger mobility, price increases and attraction.
This summer, I was particularly intrigued by the fate of established players: how many high achievers and earners have become surplus to requirements at their clubs, which are desperate to offload them but appear not to be able to do so. In many major clubs, there is at least one big name that has been sidelined with little hope of return or escape.
This used to be the fate of many young, talented players who left the club of their early successes too soon to join another, usually major club, where they encountered higher competition. We used to hear about so-and-so who had been full of promise but nowadays just warms the bench of a big stadium. That many established, successful players have joined them, often despite their astronomical wages, is a new phenomenon.
One reason for that is the overproduction of new talent that has to be sold on. Many lesser clubs rely on this not only for their finances but also for having an ambitious team, hungry for success and personal advancement. Every year we welcome new stars from all continents, players who join the ranks of the highly valued and highly paid. And these new stars are not as naïve and vulnerable as in the past. After all, most have the same agents and managers as the older stars. So, managers can choose on whom to rely and are less dependent on the established players in the club.
This could be construed as a positive development: a cleansing and rationalization of the footballing human resources. On the other hand, however, there is overproduction (and probably not just an epidemic of it), that pushes everything up: transfer prices and volumes, mobility and failure. There are just too many professional footballers at the moment and their number or wages are not expected to drop. If clubs continue to buy and sell at the current rate (and why shouldn't they), we are going to see even more high earners doing very little.
It would be interesting to compare this situation with the housing boom we are currently having in many countries. It appears that there is demand especially for housing and moreover of an increasingly higher quality. So, we are building like mad, driving prices up even for less desirable properties. There's no doubt that we are overproducing because we can. Conditions seem to justify it, just like in football. But what can be the consequences? If the football industry collapses, it will not have the same impact as similar trouble in the housing market.

Architectural productivity

Architectural productivity 

Some time ago a colleague observed that our school had excellent connections with industry. I reacted with puzzlement and he explained: we have excellent connections with architects in practice. I bonneted that we shouldn't consider that -a service- as industry. If there's a building industry, it has more to do with those who finance, construct, operate and use buildings and less with the ones who design them.

With hindsight, I was wrong: architects are the industry because they're the true product of architecture. More than buildings, we produce architects; our factories are the schools of architecture. Even in countries with high unemployment, schools of architecture keep on producing architects, many of whom continue with postgraduate and even doctoral studies. And what happens next? Is there a market for architects holding PhDs on typical architectural subjects? Not outside architectural education: most architects with a doctorate want to become teachers, too, and produce even more architects and doctors. It's an impressive recursive system that manages to make money, despite the absence of a real product.