Uploaded on 2017-05-09 by Cristina MartÃn-Sonseca Ponz
"Construction used to be a localized activity, but with the advancement of construction processes and construction materials almost every building contains components of a globalized economy." You can clearly appreciate how construction stopped being a localized activity in old cities like Vienna, for instance. It is really easy to find older buildings, remaining from times preceding the 18th and 19th centuries. Such buildings were mostly made of different types of stone, depending on if the usage was merely structural or it was also supposed to be decorative. It is rare but there were still some buildings made of brick. Roofs of the main monumental buildings are made of copper, which gives the characteristic green color when it rusts. The rest of the roofs were usually made from clay tiles. All these products were obtained locally, in mines and quarries around the city, most of which have already been fully exploited. This was obviously not sustainable when the cities started to grow and develop rapidly. The technological advancements solve the problem and made possible that they could grow even more. They started creating towers such as this one, with reinforced concrete core structures, glass facades and enormous quantities of metal. In this image, we can observe an 18 floor tower whose facade is made from basically glass and stainless steel. Austria produces some steel but definitely not enough to sustain the construction of multiple towers like this. Furthermore, most of the world's steel production is located in China. Something similar happens with the glass part, there is glass production in Europe but the demand is much greater. Therefore, the materials must be imported, which results in vast amounts of energy used in transportation. However, it is sometimes even cheaper than local products due to the great amounts of resources existing at the extraction points, and also due to an inexpensive labor. This creates a dilemma between what is more economically beneficial and what is more environmentally sustainable. Sustainability should be the main priority when we think about the future of our planet, but this is sadly not how our capitalist society works. Even when the materials can be obtained locally there is a lot of prefabrication nowadays, which helps speed up the construction process and allows that a wider range of materials can be used, coming from further away and they can even reach more remote areas. And not only the construction materials but the machinery used to construct the buildings and the interior equipment tend to be powered with fuels that are not obtained locally. This situation cannot be maintained for much longer. There are certain resources, whose usage is widely spread, that might get consumed in the following decades. It is imminent that we find a solution: look for alternative construction materials, improve re-usage and recycling methods, find alternative fuels and so on. But more importantly, we must make sure the solution is implemented; a lot of governments do not even support these causes.