Extending or ending the life of residential buildings in Japan: A social circular economy approach to the problem of short-lived constructions

Wuyts, Wendy; Miatto, Alessio; Sedlitzky, Raphael; Tanikawa, Hiroki

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.05.258

Cited by 67 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Evolution and change in the district in the first phase were sluggish and haphazard. Throughout the first phase the number of industrial buildings, mostly manufacturing and warehouses (Xiong, 2017), kept growing, peaking at 1,889 buildings in 1997. Residential buildings, simple low‐rise workers’ dormitories, were slowly added mostly in the north of the industrial zone, and roads were developed to support the transportation of materials and products.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Urban development and sustainability challenges chronicled by a century of construction material flows and stocks in Tiexi, China

Guo

Fishman

Yao

et al. 2020

J of Industrial Ecology

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Construction materials are considerable forces of global environmental impacts, but their dynamics vis‐à‐vis urban development are poorly documented, in part because their long lifespans require elusive and sometimes nonexistent decade‐long high‐resolution data. This study analyzes the construction material flow and stock trends that shaped and were shaped by the development, decline, and renewal of the Tiexi district of Shenyang, a microcosm of China's urban transformations since the early 20th century. Chronicling building‐by‐building the material flows and stock accumulations involved in the buildup of this area, we shed light on the physical resource context of its socioeconomic history. We find that 42 million tonnes of construction materials were needed to develop the Tiexi district from 1910 to 2018, and 18 million tonnes of material outflows were generated by end‐of‐life building demolition. However, over 55% of inflows and 93% of outflows occurred since 2002 during a complete redevelopment of the district. Only small portions of end‐of‐life materials could have been reused or recycled because of temporal and typological mismatches of supply and demand and technical limitations. Our analysis reveals a dramatic decrease in median building lifetimes to as low as 6 years in the early 21st century. These findings contribute to the discussion of long‐term environmental efficiency and sustainability of societal development through construction and reflect on the challenges of urban renewal processes not only in China but also in other developing and developed countries that lost (or may lose) their traditional economic base and restructure their urban forms. This article met the requirements for a Silver/Silver JIE data openness badge described at http://jie.click/badges.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The initial colonized area was expanded and formally set up as the Tiexi (铁西区 lit. West of the Railway) industrial zone in 1932, with a layout of factories in the North and workers’ accommodations in the South (Xiong, 2017). It became an essential industrial site dominated by Japanese‐owned enterprises.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban development and sustainability challenges chronicled by a century of construction material flows and stocks in Tiexi, China

Guo

Fishman

Yao

et al. 2020

J of Industrial Ecology

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“…The lifespan of residential buildings is approximately 25 years (Tanikawa and Hashimoto 2009), which is much shorter than that of other countries such as the United States, whose residential building lifespan is 61 years on average (Aktas and Bilec 2012). This short lifespan results in an increase in vacant properties due to the neglect of obsolescent housing stock (Wuyts et al 2019). Moreover, Japanese do not fully recognize either the asset or use values that a house involves: parents often do not have any plan for inheritance and children sometimes do not have knowledge of asset utilization, resulting in an increase in vacant properties (Horioka 2014;Izuhara 2016).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attitudes of parents and children toward housing inheritance in a Tokyo suburb

Hino

Mizutani

Asami

et al. 2021

Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering

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In detached housing estates in the suburbs of Tokyo, increasing vacancies in inherited houses have become a problem. This study aimed to assess the risk of vacant house generation and identify risk factors through analyses focusing on parent-child discussions. A questionnaire survey of parents in Koma-Musashidai, Saitama Prefecture, and their children who lived apart regarding their future intentions of inheritance of the parents' houses using cross and logistic regression analyses revealed that 66.5% of the parent-child pairs had had no discussion, 20.5% had different impressions of the results of the discussion, and 7.8% were at high risk of producing vacant houses. Furthermore, the analyses identified the factors associated with parents' intention to bequeath their houses: discussions with their children, old age, high age of the house, lack of proactive measures, anxiety about renting, and stronger community attachment; and the factors associated with children's intention to leave their parents' houses: inadequate discussions with their parents, home ownership, and lack of relationships with neighbors. These results suggest that it could be beneficial to encourage parents and children to participate together in seminars and consult with experts before parents become older to reduce the risk of vacant houses.

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“…Many studies examined the correlation between GHG emissions and material stocks [46,[75][76][77][78][79][80], while others estimated wood-based materials or "carbon stock" [81][82][83], and there was also an interest in analyzing energy use retrospectively [20,[84][85][86] and estimating future energy demand [87][88][89][90][91][92]. In short, this part of the literature is significant because it presents various scenarios that demonstrate the magnitude of environmental harm that can be averted [52,93], especially in the context of renovation activities and retrofits that extend the life of building stock rather than end it [94][95][96]. Furthermore, they provide a road map to meet global climate targets [43,97].…”

Section: Industrial Ecology and Urban Metabolismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mining the Built Environment: Telling the Story of Urban Mining

Fahid

Dombi

2021

Buildings

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Materials are continuously accumulating in the human-built environment since massive amounts of materials are required for building, developing, and maintaining cities. At the end of their life cycles, these materials are considered valuable sources of secondary materials. The increasing construction and demolition waste released from aging stock each year make up the heaviest, most voluminous waste outflow, presenting challenges and opportunities. These material stocks should be utilized and exploited since the reuse and recycling of construction materials would positively impact the natural environment and resource efficiency, leading to sustainable cities within a grander scheme of a circular economy. The exploitation of material stock is known as urban mining. In order to make these materials accessible for future mining, material quantities need to be estimated and extrapolated to regional levels. This demanding task requires a vast knowledge of the existing building stock, which can only be obtained through labor-intensive, time-consuming methodologies or new technologies, such as building information modeling (BIM), geographic information systems (GISs), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning. This review paper gives a general overview of the literature body and tracks the evolution of this research field.

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Extending or ending the life of residential buildings in Japan: A social circular economy approach to the problem of short-lived constructions

Cited by 67 publications

References 56 publications

Urban development and sustainability challenges chronicled by a century of construction material flows and stocks in Tiexi, China

Urban development and sustainability challenges chronicled by a century of construction material flows and stocks in Tiexi, China

Attitudes of parents and children toward housing inheritance in a Tokyo suburb

Mining the Built Environment: Telling the Story of Urban Mining

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