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Incentivizing Durable & Beautiful Structures
500 sats \ 5 comments \ @kr 14 Sep Construction_and_Engineering
It's no secret the homes and buildings being built today are not built to last.
In modern home construction, timber, stone, and metal have largely been replaced by materials that cost less, but sacrifice strength, durability, and beauty.
The problem is that on day one, it's hard to tell that something won't last.
It's only over the course of years, decades, and centuries that you learn a building was built well.
The structure faces tests in the form of extreme weather, constant exposure to the elements, occasional fires, etc..., but the beauty of a building also faces tests over time.
One unique trait about stone, timber, and metal is that they can look better with age, while the plastic siding or asphalt shingles on a new home will never look as good as the day they are installed.
All of this has led me to wonder how a city might incentivize the creation of strong, beautiful buildings that both remain structurally sound and desirable to live in for generations.
One way might be to give tiered tax credits based on the consecutive number of years a building is occupied. For example, if you built a nice, durable home today, your property taxes would continue to decrease with each passing year that you (or someone else) live there, and at a certain point (maybe 100 years of age), your home no longer incurs property taxes.
It's basically a way for the city to say "after 100 years, people clearly still love your home, and we are thankful that you didn't make a bunch of extra waste by replacing the building every couple of decades"
Curious to hear all your thoughts and any other interesting ideas!
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 14 Sep
There is a flavor of this idea that exists already in the form of religious buildings.
In many places, churches don't pay local property taxes.
Now, of course the exemption isn't because of the beauty and durability of a particular church, but it is interesting to note that in many cities, their churches are some of the most beautiful buildings and have often stood for centuries.
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100 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b 14 Sep
I think the problem with incentivizing anything in a centralized way is that, in the short term at least1, it's at best a zero sum game: one person's incentive is another's disincentive. Meaning, I don't think builders would vote for your tax credit plan unless they were somehow incentivized too. I also don't think this is a problem to be solved with incentives anymore than we could solve gun violence with incentivizes to wear bulletproof shirts. I think it's a real-estate-is-a-speculative-investment problem, an already-subsidized-thing problem, a holding-a-crappy-building-is-less-crappy-than-holding-dollars problem, and/or even-cheap-things-are-expensive-when-other-people-have-too-many-dollars-and-we-have-very-few problem.
They're demolishing and will soon rebuild Austin's primary conference center. The building is a couple decades old at most. It wasn't in disrepair and didn't look bad in any serious way. They claim they're replacing it to increase its size, but I think it's also because the design fell out of fashion. And, instead of replacing it with a timeless design, they are replacing it with another fashionable structure.
I've noticed this trend with most of Austin's architecture. I think it's part of what makes Austin feel weird. Most things are designed to be very trendy and are built cheap and fast in an attempt to catch coastal dollars as they blow through our humid desert. We end up with a mishmash of buildings where the only thing they have in common after a decade or so is nonsense.
Here's the new conference center: https://unconventionalatx.com/overview/. I would wager they'll demolish and rebuild it again in 20 years.

Footnotes

  1. in the long term too. also it's probably a negative sum game once you account for the waste and stuff. ↩
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50 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr OP 14 Sep
Do you think a tax credit system like the one above would cause the new Austin conference center team to re-design their new building?
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 14 Sep
Hypothetically1, only if the tax credits were projected to more than recoup the money and time spent building a durable structure. With conference buildings, fashion might matter a lot, so it's possible that tax credits couldn't recoup the costs of falling out of fashion - even if they would recoup the costs in other contexts.

Footnotes

  1. the city owns the conference center afaik, ie the whole thing is paid for with taxes ↩
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 14 Sep
I do think you tax credits system is nice though.
Another way might be to subsidize better materials and education on how to construct more durable buildings.
Another might be to have a non-binary inspection system. afaik it's currently pass/don't pass, but what if we graded homes on durability like we do bonds?
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