Historic Resources Committee

Bob Berkebile, FAIA: "There has to be an enormous, critical reason to build a new building in the next five to 10 years. We ought to find every way possible to create longer use of what we've already built and adaptively reuse the built environment that we own, rather than build a new one, because right now we can't afford the carbon." 

https://commonedge.org/bob-berkebile-that-was-the-brilliance-of-leed-it-included-everyone-in-the-conversation/

Kira,
Thank you for highlighting that discussion and the use of clear language to say new building should more or less be the last option not the first one. If I may add a corollary to say that "no buildings should be demolished". In the worse case they should be deconstructed to save all the reuseable materials for the (hopefully) local community to use in renovations or new builds as needed. It seems also worth noting that nature will likely be a considerable force of destruction of existing buildings leaving no choice but to build new, however perhaps the lesson of where and how to build in the face of climate change will start to sink in. At least one study I know of found that buildings are mainly not demolished because they somehow "wore out", however the external factors of land-use and fitness for changing purposes exerted too much pressure to make adaptive reuse "feasible" however it was defined...

I seem to remember a data point that at any given time about 4% of total US building stock sits empty, so at the very least there is already a large debit to draw on to avoid new building and from this study from the CCIM at the University of Alabama:

"…we estimate that AdRu (adaptive reuse) projects constitute between 1 percent and 2 percent of all commercial real estate space in the U.S. today. That figure will likely increase by two-fold over the next five years, to up to 4 percent, largely thanks to store and mall closings, as well as the impact of e-commerce and artificial intelligence, which will
render many properties obsolete."

https://www.ccim.com/newscenter/commercial-real-estate-insights-report/ccim_cre_insights_report_3q18_web/

They note there is a lack of formal classifications and data to fully understand the types and scale of the US adaptive reuse market – the first steps for conveying this topic…. This data is more fully developed for residential via US Housing Census.

On a slightly humorous note, see this article reference to the "rubble club", the membership criteria is of one outliving one of their constructed designs. Unfortunately perhaps an increasing roll-call...
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/art-and-design/the-rubble-club-an-irish-architect-watches-his-life-s-work-disappear-1.3829540