By Staff writer.
In many cities there is a lack of space to live and as a result, in order to modernize, old buildings are demolished and replaced with new buildings. What are the disadvantages of knocking down old buildings? Do the advantages overweigh its disadvantages?
Historical and old buildings can become an eyesore. In due time what was once an alluring structure has since become somewhat of an ugly site and more of a burden. Henceforth, how do we solve this? Demolishing these buildings come with a handful of pros and cons. I am going lay it all out for you to help you decide if tearing down of the old building is your best option.
First and foremost, what makes an old building historic? You should be able to distinguish between old buildings and historic buildings because they are not always apposite. An old building is just an old building. How old? Well, that’s relative to who you are asking. Whereas a historic building is generally considered to be a building or structure that has some kind of historic value by the national register of historic places (NRHP).
Note that a historic building is at least 50 years old and it should be significant to the community, state or country in some way shape of form. The NRHP is the one which determine the buildings that qualify as historic. However, being listed does not necessarily protect a building from being demolished but cities around the country are actively working to minimize the demolitions of homes on the NRHP register.
Demolishing a building involves pulling down the whole structure and building from the scratch while renovation doesn’t involve pulling down the whole structure.
When the building is redeemable, you are demolishing a piece of history. Many people are convinced that destroying a property of historic values is just plain wrong and akin to rubbing a piece of history. After all, once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. Demolishing these buildings means harming the cultural heritage of people. More so, these structures can attract tourists.
In spite of people trying to conserve old buildings, it is not worth saving. In actual fact, people will benefit much more if the old buildings are demolished and replaced by high rise modern buildings sky scrapers, shopping malls etc.
These will not only create more space for people and businesses but also sparing more land for cultivation. In addition, the new structural buildings like shopping malls will create more job opportunities to people boosting the country’s economy. That is to say pulling down old buildings may enhance the overall lifestyle of the community.
We can conclude that this decision can be a tough one to decide and, in most cases, many different aspects will need to be considered prior to any structure taking place.
Nonetheless based on the above discussion we can conclude that the advantages of demolishing old buildings for new modern structures are far more advantageous than keeping the old ones.