Google Maps has a new feature, Timelapse, which stitches together satellite images to allow users to scroll back in time to 1984. As someone who is as old as the first images on Timelapse, this is sobering. Many locations around the world have changed beyond recognition: The melting of Greenland, the ‘advance’ into the Amazon, the growth of megacities like Dubai and Beijing, the disappearance of the Aral Sea... The images are equally shocking and unsurprising.
After looking at Timelapse’s ‘greatest hits,’ I decided to check out my local area, which we can loosely define as a 50km radius from the Global Cement office. The first thing that is apparent is that satellite imagery has come a long way in the past 37 years. In the 1984 image, we can’t really see towns properly, meaning that the office, if it were to have been built in 1984, would be nearly impossible to see in any case. Timelapsing forwards, we see a green area 500m north turn brown in 1988 and grey in 1990, indicating the construction of an out-of-town shopping centre.2 To the east, fields around a former hospital site are converted into hundreds of houses in the late 1990s. Meanwhile a long, thin strip of green space to the south west converts into the M25 London Orbital Motorway, now one of the most congested routes in Europe.
Expanding the area of interest, we can see the arrival of the North Terminal at Gatwick Airport (1985-1988), Heathrow’s Terminal 4 - the new home of British Airways (1986), London City Airport (1987), the Lakeside shopping centre (built in an old clay quarry - 1988), the QEII bridge across the Thames Estuary (1991), Canary Wharf (1991), the HS1 high speed rail line to the Channel Tunnel (1994), the Blue Water shopping centre (built in a former Blue Circle cement quarry - 1999), the Millenium Dome (1999), Heathrow’s Terminal 5 - the new home of British Airways (!) (2008) and the Olympic Park (2006 - 2011).
On its own, even these large developments are fairly small. Some are even to be welcomed if they put wasteland to productive use. However, each greenfield development, and many brownfield ones too, necessarily push nature back into a smaller and smaller corner. Animal and plant populations suffer accordingly, damaging biodiversity. Each does fairly little on its own but, like logging in the Amazon, the effects build up with time. And there is nothing particularly special about the locations we’ve looked at. Check out your local area or your nation’s capital. They are likely to tell a similar tale.
As an observer of various building materials sectors, my Timelapse adventure has left me conflicted. The gypsum and insulation sectors’ products are positively ‘green’ compared to glass, concrete and steel. Indeed when recent environmental protests blocked the aforementioned M25, many banners carried the positive message ‘Insulate Britain’ rather than more downbeat ones. But insulation and gypsum are part of the building envelope. They cannot be used in isolation and are thus integral to modern construction. In the future, there will have to be even more difficult conversations about the benefits of any new development. At some point... and we will will have to confront this sooner or later... building materials will only be required for maintenance and renovation.
