Sustainable Apartment Buildings and the Recession by sylvain henry

Recession survivors worldwide are now searching for two critical keywords on the Internet: sustainability and stability. Generally speaking, sustainability is now a popular concept. People talk of sustainable development, sustainable production, sustainable profits, sustainable employment, sustainable relationships, and sustainable architecture. In this post I would like to discuss how sustainable apartment buildings can help us overcome the great recession of 2009 and bring us all a bit more stability.

Sustainable apartment buildings are a very new trend, one that is beneficial to tenants, property owners, the environment and society as a while. Imagine the benefits of living in the same building you work in. The commute time would be a simple elevator ride. This would result in less road traffic, pollution and fewer accidents. For personal convenience alone, you would like stay a tenant here for as long as you can. There would be tremendous economic, ecological, and social benefits to living here. Rent would become investment, not an expense.

Does such sustainable architecture exist? Yes. If your daughter moved into such a building, it might be her best move ever. Why then don't we have many such buildings? There are many answers to this question but I would like to promote the idea of a gradual transformation of existing buildings towards this objective so that sustainable apartment buildings become commonplace.

The first and most important step of this gradual transformation is to create a sustainable community, where the members of that community benefit from their proximity to many other members. The second step is to attract or create sustainable employment (employment that pays the bills, covers health care, and allows for some job advancement). I will be discussing sustainable buildings and sustainable employment Sunday, July 12, 2009, at the very scenic Nepean Point open-sky auditorium behind the National Gallery of Canada. All are welcome to attend and bring their video cameras.

sylvain henry, Sustainable Community Organizer
sylvain.henry @ ymail.com (613) 552-1090
"Help us create sustainable communities today"