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Project title

Town Revitalisation through the Integration of Vacant Buildings into the Circular Economy

Primary Funding Agency

Environmental Protection Agency

Co-Funding Organisation(s)

n/a

Lead Organisation

National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG)

Lead Applicant

Liam Heaphy

Project Abstract

Restoring and revitalising our towns and villages can form a central aim of our carbon neutrality goals for 2050, through the careful restoration of vacant structures in smaller urban centres and the cultural change required to bring back urban living in neglected towns and villages. This project makes a strategic contribution to recent initiatives to bring back town centre living by comparing the carbon costs of new build versus restoration through whole life carbon methodology conceptualised in the EC Level(s) framework and practised by the Building in a Climate Emergency (BIACE) research group at UCD. The project builds on the Town Centre Living Initiative pilot scheme (TLCI, Oct 2018 – Feb 2020) , which evaluated the potential to restore town buildings in six Irish towns through comparing the adaptive reuse of buildings in case study areas within each town versus their equivalent as new builds (DRCD, 2020). They reported that in many cases, the “cost of refurbishing a building would be more than the value of the completed building” (DRCD, 2020, p. 42), which along with insufficient resources to find and implement design solutions, and obtaining planning consent for the same, were identified as barriers. We propose to advance analysis of the costs and barriers to adaptive reuse of buildings by including embodied emissions and life cycle analysis into cost-benefit analysis, while also connecting to strategic initiatives to reinvigorate rural villages and towns. It therefore extends the discussion on end-of-life and upcycling in life-cycle analysis to expand into wholesale reuse of existing buildings, relevant for Ireland with its particularly high rate of vacancy and dereliction in urban centres of all scales. Therefore, to the extent that this underutilised resource can support the larger overall construction volumes required, we can better support broader objectives of carbon reduction, urban revitalisation, and safeguard Ireland’s built environment heritage for future generations. The project is timed to coincide with the Collaborative Town Centre Health Check Programme led by the Heritage Council. This programme has 15 towns actively participating and over 40 further towns with an expressed interest in adhesion. Among other indices of vitality, the programme considers vacant town buildings and how they can be restored to occupancy. This research also complements the work of the Irish Green Building Council, whose methodologies and resources for carbon costing new builds is playing a central role in embedding embodied emissions into methodological frameworks and policy. The project also builds on the PI’s previous research, funded by the IRC, on rural housing and trends of dereliction and vacancy in rural Ireland (2018-2021, https://anbailegaelach.ucd.ie). This project also highlighted the practical difficulties of incentivising people to refurbish and occupy older buildings in both towns and countryside given a long-established trend for greenfield newbuilds in either the open countryside or edge-development. TREBUChEt will provide timely resources in the form of methodologies, educational resources, and practitioner outreach that will liaise with funding schemes underway or in preparation for town and village renewal.

Grant Approved

�194,858.12

Research Hub

Green and Circular Economy

Research Theme

n/a

Start Date

31/03/2023

Initial Projected Completion Date

30/03/2025