All Construction & Building Materials Articles
  • Amazon scraps plans for HQ2 in New York City

    Michelle R. Matisons Civil & Government

    Amazon, which reported $11.2 billion in profits last year while paying no federal taxes, pretty much does what it wants, doesn't it? Well, not quite. In November, when the company announced its expansion plans, known as HQ2, to include Long Island City in Queens, residents, community activists, and those taking on Amazon immediately mobilized opposition. In the end, local character and vehement opposition to corporate welfare won. Amazon announced last week that it was no longer considering New York City as the location for its grand headquarters expansion.

  • Housing America part 3: Housing and race

    Lucy Wallwork Civil & Government

    No discussion of the state of housing in the U.S. can be discussed without addressing the constant thread of race that has been woven through the debate from day one. Housing is only one component in the persistent racial divide in the U.S., but because shelter and wealth have become so intrinsically linked, housing is an area that has an outsized impact on inequalities. Explicit segregation laws have not determined the legal basis for housing allocation for more than 70 years. Today, you are breaking the law if you display explicit racial prejudice in the housing sector. But one look at America’s public housing estates will reveal a starkly divided country. Indeed, the housing divide in over 20 metropolitan areas today is so stark that they have been qualified as "hyper-segregated."

  • Jakarta, Indonesia’s new airport could be built starting in 2021

    Matt Falcus Transportation Technology & Automotive

    Indonesia is one of the nations in the Asia-Pacific region at the center of a growing demand for air travel, which is putting immense pressure on existing airport facilities. With the likes of Bangkok, Beijing and Kuala Lumpur looking at solutions to increase their capacities, Indonesia’s main airport operator, Angkasa Pura II, has revealed plans to build a brand-new airport for Jakarta. Construction could begin in 2021. The announcement naturally raised a few uncertainties over how the project will proceed. A lot of ground needs to be covered before work can commence.

  • Getting ready for and managing an on-site visit by OSHA

    D. Albert Brannen Business Management, Services & Risk Management

    Employers subject to an on-site inspection by OSHA or one of the state agencies that regulate workplace safety and health should take preventive steps to prepare for such an inspection and have a plan for handling it and any follow-up that may be necessary. This article outlines best practices for getting ready for and managing such an inspection.

  • Aging homes will keep remodelers busy

    Michael J. Berens Construction & Building Materials

    It's not just homeowners but also their homes that are aging in place. As the pace of new home construction has slowed, America’s existing housing stock is getting older and older. The majority of these homes are more than 30 years old, and a sizable portion are more than 50 years old. To meet the demands of today's building codes and younger buyers, these homes eventually will need to be updated and renovated, which should provide a steady pipeline of projects for remodelers for some time to come. According to a study conducted by remodeling cost website Fixr.com, a majority of U.S. states had homes with a median age of 35 to 39 years in 2018.

  • Housing America part 2: The tale of St. Louis’ Pruitt-Igoe

    Lucy Wallwork Construction & Building Materials

    The tale of the Pruitt-Igoe public housing estate is perhaps the most widely told tale of public housing in the U.S. It has become part of the country’s urban mythology and serves as a pivotal vignette in the longer history of the evolution of housing policy in the U.S. That story did not have a happy ending. A colossal project that dominated the city of St Louis when it was built in 1954, it stood for less than three decades. Its demolition live on television in 1972 became a pop-culture moment that marked a watershed in what was seen as a failed experiment in public housing. Perhaps that makes it a good place to start.

  • Design demand drops amid economic uncertainty

    Michael J. Berens Interior Design, Furnishings & Fixtures

    Recent indicators show architecture and design firms experienced a slowdown in activity during the latter part of the fourth quarter of 2018. Unstable business conditions due to concern about the pace of economic growth in 2019 and turbulence in the stock market in the months of November and December were the main reasons given for the downward trend. Firms reported clients were postponing, delaying or canceling projects as they awaited clearer signals on which direction the economy might move in the next year or two. New contracts and client inquiries also were down from the previous quarter.

  • US additive manufacturing reaches a slowdown era

    Michelle R. Matisons Manufacturing

    For those utopians starry-eyed about emerging 3-D printing/additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, former President Barack Obama’s enthusiasm was rather encouraging. As a new era has dawned in the White House, what is helping and hindering the growth of 3-D printing today? President Trump’s official position on AM is erratic. One minute he excitedly relates its capabilities for U.S. military might, and the next minute he says it aids illegal gun manufacturing. The White House released an updated Strategy for American Leadership in Advanced Manufacturing report in October 2018. This report does not indicate that there’s any official policy change on additive manufacturing. But this is not the same as funding.

  • Housing America part 1: The decline of public housing

    Lucy Wallwork Construction & Building Materials

    Just as in other parts of the world hit by the shockwaves of the Industrial Revolution, the call for public housing in the U.S. was born in the late 19th century out of an urgent attempt to put an end to the urban misery faced by factory workers. With rising levels of homelessness in the U.S. today another crisis is looming but the response this time around is a more ambiguous one. This first part in a series on housing in America tells the story of how public housing began in the U.S. and how it got where it is today. Future articles will look at other aspects of housing in the U.S. in more detail.

  • Home sales plummet in December

    Michael J. Berens Construction & Building Materials

    A bad year for housing got even worse in December as sales of existing homes plunged to their lowest level in over three years. Annual existing home sales ended the year down nearly 11 percent. Due to the government shutdown, official figures on sales of new homes are not yet available, but some industry sources project those, too, fell in December. Following two months of modest growth, existing home sales (by volume) tumbled 6.4 percent in December, compared to November, hitting their lowest point since September 2015. Although December traditionally is a slow month for home sales, that was nearly twice the size of last year’s month-over-month decline.