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Author	Topic: rubble
setnahkt Member	posted 12-08-2007 08:52 PM Not quite what I expected, but interesting nevertheless. Since the subtitle is “Unearthing the History of Demolition”; I was hoping Rubble would provide technical details on how the Egyptians disassembled the mortuary temple of Khufu to provide the stones for the Pyramid of Amenemhat I, or how the Romans went about destroying Carthage before plowing salt into the ruins. There’s none of that; instead we have capsule biographies of various people in the demolition business, both those who actually undertook the work and those who ordered it done. Thus we read of Baron Haussmann, who supervised the elimination of many of the rabbit-warren streets of Paris and there replacement with broad avenues (which, coincidentally, provided excellent fields of fire for Napoleon III’s artillery, just in case the sans-cullotes got uppity again) and Albert Volk, who undertook the removal of many of the buildings in turn-of-the-century New York. These gentlemen operated the old-fashioned way, with hammer and wrecking bar, and also recycled a lot of the material they removed (in fact, in some cases demolition contractors paid for the privilege of demolishing a building, since the debris had considerable value). Alas, like most other recycling efforts, disassembling a building is labor-intensive and not especially safe; thus the modern method often involves explosives. Here the Loizeaux family of Controlled Demolition Incorporated is (as author Jeff Byles put it) “The Flying Wallendas of Demolition” and film clips of their projects appear so often on television that rivals joke bitterly about “the Loizeaux Channel”. Equally interesting, and rather sad, is the discussion of the politics of demolition. The award for individual demolition poster child has to go to the Pruitt-Igoe Homes in St. Louis, a 1955 $36M subsidized housing project that kept being described as “award-winning”, even though nobody was actually able to come up with an award it had one. In this case, the inhabitants undertook their own demolition project long before the government got around to it, with debris, vermin, and dirt covering everything. This project had two basketball courts for 5000 children and the wading pools quickly filled with debris and were destroyed to make a new street. At this point the Federal government came in to help and amended housing laws to insure that no tenant paid more than 25% of income for rent, which left Pruitt-Igoe without even enough money to cover minimal maintenance. When the end finally came in 1972, the demo contractor was asked how much money would come from salvage; his response was “That seems to have been taken care of before we got here”. Even the aftermath was tragic; although various schemes were suggested to turn the site into a park, it’s currently still fenced-off vacant land, and despite the project’s demise in 1972 HUD was still paying off construction bonds until 1995. If Pruitt0Igoe takes the individual demolition award, the team effort prize has to go to Detroit. Abandoned building were so rampant that entire neighborhoods took up tools and demolished them on their own (for which they were promptly arrested by police who couldn’t be bothered to show up when the same buildings were in use a crack houses). Every successive mayor promised to do something about the problem, and every one found out that there just wasn’t enough money to cover demolition costs and that the city bureaucracy in charge of demolition permits couldn’t issue them fast enough to keep up with the rate of building abandonment. (An example given is a house that was condemned in 1988 but didn’t get a demo permit until 1996 and wasn’t actually torn down until 1998). The most intriguing suggest about what to do is – nothing. Fence off the blighted area and turn it into a “architectural ruin park”. Wildlife and plants would take over, you could charge admission to take guided tours, and the whole thing would become sort of an American Acropolis or a Monument Valley for buildings. Not likely to happen, alas. The book is surprisingly free of politics (for an author who writes for the New York Times. Although nobody gets off particularly easy, there’s no wholesale condemnation of “rampant developers despoiling our history” or “terminally dysfunctional government bureaucracy”; reading between the lines is enough to let the reader draw conclusions. Recommended. IP: Logged
KGB Moderator	posted 12-08-2007 09:11 PM Sounds like a blast. Another addition to my wish list. IP: Logged
setnahkt Member	posted 12-09-2007 12:28 PM There often seems to be kind of an odd synergy in my reading. I had just finished a book on bricks, in which the author commented that ship captains liked using bricks as ballast, because it didn't shift and could be sold at the end of the trip. In Rubble, the author notes that a lot of the demolition debris from the London Blitz was loaded as ballast into westbound convoys, then offloaded in New York as landfill. This will someday make for horrible archeological confusion, as excavators try to figure out why Kent ragstone was used as construction fill under Manhattan highways. IP: Logged
llamas Member	posted 12-10-2007 05:37 AM Set wroet: 'If Pruitt0Igoe takes the individual demolition award, the team effort prize has to go to Detroit. Abandoned building were so rampant that entire neighborhoods took up tools and demolished them on their own (for which they were promptly arrested by police who couldn’t be bothered to show up when the same buildings were in use a crack houses). Every successive mayor promised to do something about the problem, and every one found out that there just wasn’t enough money to cover demolition costs and that the city bureaucracy in charge of demolition permits couldn’t issue them fast enough to keep up with the rate of building abandonment. (An example given is a house that was condemned in 1988 but didn’t get a demo permit until 1996 and wasn’t actually torn down until 1998). The most intriguing suggest about what to do is – nothing. Fence off the blighted area and turn it into a “architectural ruin park”. Wildlife and plants would take over, you could charge admission to take guided tours, and the whole thing would become sort of an American Acropolis or a Monument Valley for buildings. Not likely to happen, alas.' Not sure why this is written in the past tense. A not-often-discussed part of the problem in Detroit is that the demolition of abandoned homes was often stalled for years (as described) by pressure for the work to be contracted to politically-favoured contractors. Detroit bureacracy is famous for its molasses-like slowness. Until the early 1990s for sure, many unionized City employees refused to use computers - this, it was averred, was the work of 'key-punch' operators - a different grade, using the definitions of a labour contract dating back to the 1950s. Of course, when it suits the purposes of some project favoured by the current administration, buildings can be demolished in a trice, using (if necessary) the broad powers of various city departments to swiftly ensure a lack of residents. But that's another story. llater, llamas ------------------ . . . a truly bad and evil man. So bad and evil that he's banned by Kim du Toit. "All things are ready, if our minds be so." King Henry V, Act 4, scene 3 "Let us labour, then, to think well, for such is the foundation of morality" Pascal, "Pensees", sec. VI IP: Logged
KGB Moderator	posted 12-10-2007 09:53 AM Also of interest is why there were abandoned buildings in the first place. The first thought that comes to my mind is rent control, but perhaps the picture is more complex than that. IP: Logged
setnahkt Member	posted 12-10-2007 10:45 AM I'm sure llamas is a lot more familiar with the situation, but my impression from the book is that people just moved out - Detroit "downsized", if you will. The classic rustbelt problem; no jobs, so people moved elsewhere; if they owned their houses they just abandoned them and if they were renting the landlords couldn't find anybody new. Rubble records that Detroit lost 900K people between 1950 and 2000. The organizational problems that llamas records are documented in more detail than I went into. The city is obligated by ordinance to give 50% of all contracts to companies based in Detroit; there just aren't enough. I imagine the addition of asbestos to the mix probably screwed things up, too (although the book doens't mention it in this chapter); the Clean Air Act requires asbestos removal before demolition, which dumps a whole other layer of contracting and performance into the mess. Colorado is in the midst of an asbestos disaster. Sometime back the Lowry Air Force Base did an internal asbestos cleanup, and most of it was disposed of by burial in place (this was legal at the time, in fact, it still theoretically is, although nobody sane would do it). Out of sight, out of mind, until the base was sold for redevelopment. A new condo owner digging around for something - tree planting, maybe - in his back yard came up with an asbestos-covered steam pipe. Suddenly everbody was going to die, and it was all somebody else's fault. The Clean Air Act addressd asbestos in buildings, and asbestos in mines, and certain asbestos products, but it didn't say anything about buried asbestos steam pipes (interestingly, if they had been live steam pipes they would have been covered, because they would have been "facilities"). When Colorado passed its own version of the CAA, there was a clause that said the regulations couldn't be any stricter than the Federal ones; thus the state health department was stuck. However, the public and politcal clamor to "do something" triumphed and the state solved the problem by regulating asbestos in soil not under the CAA but as solid waste, in an entirely different health department division. Needless to say, nobody form solid waste talked to anybody in the air quality section, and the "stakeholders" invited to meeting on the regulations all seemed to be asbestos consulting firms. Thus asbetos in soils regulations have become the "Asbestos Consultants Full Employment Act". Here I am doing some excavation; suddenly the scraper operator comes up with a piece of asbestos. (How does he know it's asbestos? Because he's be obligated to take a training course on it.) All work on the project must stop (the regs say "in the contaminated area" but who knows how big that is until you look?) The scraper has to stay right where it is until it's decontaminated. All the workers in the area have to be deconed; if necessary, by being kept on site and having their clothing replaced. The soil has to be covered with plastic. An asbestos consulting firm has to come in and characterize the extent of contamination (and do all the decon, of course) and then abate it. All of this has to be done with licensed asbestos workers. As those of you with any experience in civil engineering might guess, this can cause just a tiny amount of cost overruns. So what does this have to do with demolition? Well, above I said that asbestos had to be removed from a building before it was demolished. Strictly, only "fiable" asbestos has to be removed; things like asbesots floor tile and asbestos roofing material can remain behind. However, the asbestos in soils regulations don't make that distinction (well, yes they do, but legally only a licensed asbestos inspector can make a judgement as to friability, and the state requires friability to be assessed as the material comes up. Thus a piece of floor tile that was not friable when buried in demolition debris might be friable now). So buildings that were legally demolished now are suspect, and you have to have a licensed asbestos inspector standing by whenever you do any work in an where you know a building was demolished in the past, and when you demolish a building now you have to remove all the asbestos, just so the problem doesn't come up in the future. Ironically, the people this is affecting the most are other state and local governments. I talked with somebody in Denver who said hitting asbestos in soils has doubled the cost of some of their projects. I predict a rebellion in the near future. IP: Logged
llamas Member	posted 12-11-2007 10:32 AM Here is Jeff Byles' story on Detroit - I'm guessing, Set, that this pretty-much mirrors the content of his book? http://www.lostmag.com/issue2/detroit.php llater, llamas ------------------ . . . a truly bad and evil man. So bad and evil that he's banned by Kim du Toit. "All things are ready, if our minds be so." King Henry V, Act 4, scene 3 "Let us labour, then, to think well, for such is the foundation of morality" Pascal, "Pensees", sec. VI IP: Logged
setnahkt Member	posted 12-11-2007 11:20 AM quote: Originally posted by llamas: Here is Jeff Byles' story on Detroit - I'm guessing, Set, that this pretty-much mirrors the content of his book? http://www.lostmag.com/issue2/detroit.php llater, llamas Yep, verbatim from the Detroit chapter. The book expands on it a little. I have to say I like the idea of the abandoned-city-tourist-attraction. You could probably make a ton of money renting it out as a film set. IP: Logged

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