DEMOLITION IS THE WASTEFUL HABIT WE HAVE TO BREAK
On the western edge of the Central Hill housing estate in Lambeth, a temporary hoarding plastered with cheery posters greets visitors approaching the complex (below).
For more than five years, the 450 homes on this estate have been earmarked for demolition and rebuild, in a process commonly referred to as “estate regeneration”. The posters, courtesy of Homes for Lambeth, promise an enticing future of “cleaner, greener” homes on the site, replete with photographs of smiling families, solar panels, e-bikes and bustling high streets.
Without further interrogation, these claims might seem to stack up. In 2019, Lambeth’s Labour council – sole owners of housing delivery group Homes for Lambeth – became the first London authority to officially declare a “climate emergency”, making an ambitious pledge to reach net zero in its operations by 2030.
The problem is, demolishing and rebuilding properties is far from sustainable. Construction, along with the energy required to heat, cool and power buildings, is estimated to account for almost 40 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
“Declaring a climate emergency but approving demolition is completely contradictory,” says Will Hurst, managing editor at Architects’ Journal (AJ). “Knocking down a major estate and replacing it just can’t be sustainable.”
Through its “retrofit first” campaign, AJ has spent several years on a mission to alert policymakers, architects and the public to the shocking wastefulness of demolition and rebuild in the construction industry, a sector responsible for a third of the UK’s waste output.
It’s not just the planet that suffers when homes are bulldozed. Often, estate regeneration pushes out working-class and ethnic minority council tenants, dispersing them to the outskirts of cities and tearing close-knit communities apart.
For decades, this process has continued unabated in cities across the
