March 28, 2008

“Cradle to Cradle” and “The Restoration Economy” offer food for thought

Construction Corner

Korky Koroluk

Storm Cunningham and William McDonough were born the same year, 1951. Both published landmark environmental books in the same year, 2002.

And both are optimistic about the world’s future in spite of the spectre of climate change and resource depletion.

McDonough’s book, Cradle to Cradle has provided the green building movement with a philosophical base; Cunningham’s book, The Restoration Economy, has provided the impetus for those concerned with renewal of old buildings or infrastructure, or the reclamation of polluted land. Most of us developed our concept of brownfields redevelopment from reading his book.

Construction Corner

Korky Koroluk

McDonough is an architect, although there are many who consider him to be a philosopher first. He’s also active in the field of industrial design. He has consulted extensively with the Chinese government and has planned a number of green communities for them. And he talks about what he calls “the next industrial revolution,” in which new design and manufacturing processes driven by environmental concerns, will lead the way into a new era of good design, eco-friendliness and abundance.

Cunningham came out of the U.S. Construction Specifications Institute, where he was director of strategic initiatives, and served as liaison with the U.S. Green Building Council.

During that time, he developed the idea of a restoration economy, and now works with a number of universities, including Harvard, where he conducts regular seminars in restorative development. He is also head of the Resolution Fund, a Washington-based firm that helps communities worldwide to kick-start renewal of their economies, their natural resources and their quality of life.

Now he’s got another book that will be published this coming June. It’s called ReWealth!, a volume of insights, examples and tools needed “to create rapid, resilient, regional renewal in cities and natural areas anywhere in the planet.”

It sounds like a good idea, simply because the notion of a restoration economy is so huge. And it’s important to our industry because so much construction is involved.

The sectors of this new economy, says Cunningham, include ecosystem restoration, watershed restoration, fisheries restoration, agricultural land restoration, brownfields remediation and redevelopment, infrastructure renovation, redesign and replacement, heritage restoration and catastrophe recovery.

Some of those sectors involved more construction than others, but all involve some.

Cunningham believes that the work in all sectors taken together is worth trillions of dollars annually, making it “the greatest business frontier of the 21st Century.”

He aimed his first book at a wide audience that included the architecture-engineering-construction sector worldwide. His new book is written for community leaders, investors, government agencies, redevelopers, schools, non-profit organizations and businesses. But in that group (with the AEC types added in) are many, many people he calls restorationists.

Words like reconstruction, modernization, rebuilding, replacement, capital improvement, refurbishment, renewal, rehabilitation, regeneration, greening, and many others are all used from time to time in corporate reports.

But their use, he feels, tends to dilute the central idea.

But, he believes, if all restoration activities united under a single term or two, people will then see “restorationists as a huge, dynamic professional community.”

His new book is a step toward that unity.

ReWealth! will be in bookstores in just over two months.

Korky Koroluk is an Ottawa-based freelance writer. Send comments to editor@dailycommercialnews.com

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