When a house is demolished, more than the home is lost

The recent demolition of homes and evictions carried out by National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) in Kampala’s Lubigi wetland has ignited debate over the fairness and legality of these actions. While protecting environmentally sensitive wetlands is a legitimate objective, critics argue that NEMA pursued this goal in a highly selective and potentially unjust manner, raising concerns about the rights of ordinary citizens.

 NEMA’s Executive Director Akankwasa Barirega, while acknowledging the challenges posed by displacing people, added that it was necessary to enforce the law to maintain order, noting that affected individuals had been notified as early as 2016 and 2021 to facilitate peaceful relocation.

He noted that the demolitions will affect everyone who is within the wetland, which is about more than 300 households. While preservationists have long decried the loss of historic fabric and cultural capital through teardowns, the environmental costs of demolition are increasingly coming to the fore.

A waste of energy

The negative environmental consequences of teardowns are manifest. According to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), demolition and construction now account for 25 percent of the solid waste that ends up in US landfills each year. Further, when a building comes down and its materials are hauled off to the dump, all the energy embedded in them is also lost. This consists of all that was expended in the original production and transportation of the materials, as well as the manpower used to assemble the building.

As CMAP explains, “Examining embodied energy helps to get at the true costs of teardowns and links it to issues of air pollution and climate change (from the transport of materials and labour), natural resource depletion (forests, metals, gravel) and the environmental consequences of extracting materials.”

Often, a more environmentally friendly, quaint home is “replaced by a very expensive, much larger house, which is frequently left vacant.” Meanwhile, in the most desirable cities, in their tony suburbs, and in popular resorts, investors park their assets in “McMansions” that are sporadically occupied.

Additionally, bigger houses necessarily encroach upon open space. Not only does expansion entail the uprooting of mature plantings, which benefits air quality, but it also eliminates trees that can provide shade and minimize the energy required to cool buildings in warmer months.

Erasing more than buildings

In city neighbourhoods, opponents of demolition will often cite the loss of historic character. Advocates for development, on the other hand, frequently argue that demolition rids cities of decrepit, obsolete houses, paving the way for multi-unit developments. In this sense, cities can become more efficient with their limited space, avoiding suburban sprawl while alleviating the long, traffic-snarled commutes of those who travel to the city.

In many cities, however, new construction on the sites of torn-down houses is aimed at attracting relatively affluent young or middle-aged professionals, the demographic that appreciates urban amenities such as shops, restaurants and museums.

Time was that a “walking world” that is, an environment in which services and amenities are available within walking distance of one’s home, was possible for all city-dwellers, regardless of class. Today, in many urban areas, housing in the dense central core is the purview of the rich, and the less affluent are pushed to the outskirts. As a result, formerly diverse neighbourhoods become economically monolithic. Longtime residents scatter as home values, and taxes, are driven up by new construction.

Withering cultural capital

Teardowns also have negative cultural implications. All houses tell a story; they are evidence of how earlier generations thought about domestic life and designed spaces to reflect their daily needs.