When cities redevelop, they choose old, under or unutilized areas of town, knock them down and then rebuild in that area. Adaptive reuse is a similar process, minus the demolition. With adaptive reuse, cities renovate and remodel, offering the green savings of all new virgin building materials.

Detroit is interesting example of where adaptive reuse could be extraordinarily successful. Though now one of the poorest areas in the nation, at the height of domestic automobile manufacturing, Detroit was a rich, forward thinking land of opportunity. Once blinking fronts and fancy facades, factories and warehouses that were filled with goods are now decrepit broken-window displays. But using these once-splendid buildings as a construction feedstock not only allows cheaper, more ecological building, since it is only renovation, it keeps rents down, ultimately encouraging new business. Some small businesses in Detroit have rent so low, their businesses have benefited from putting the overhead elsewhere.

Adaptive reuse is the environmental choice. Recently, we did a story about how no building is better than a green building. Why build a new building when you can renovate one for a fraction of the materials? Plus many older buildings feature metal and lumber of a quality that no longer exists.

So far Detroit’s policies incentivize demolition on the cheap and short-term profits from new developments. This lack of foresight may ultimately stunt Detriot’s rebirth. Detroit needs new businesses to take root, but without fostering adaptive reuse policies, they force new businesses to pay prohibitively high rents for unnecessary new building.