On a train going past some new heavy rail infrastructure, I had the thought… Concrete should only be used for infrastructure.

These are the random thoughts that always trip me up and send me down the sustainability rabbit hole. Here is the short version of the next 10 minutes conversation a had with myself.

Concrete should only be used for infrastructure and timber frame/mass timber for building.

But we haven’t built out the timber industry to sustain that and we need concrete from piling, basement to transfer slab on medium to high rise buildings.

Ok so green steel (steel produced by hydrogen made from renewables) to offset the lack of timber.

But green steel is in its infancy and is only projected to be 10% of the market.

Ok, timber steel and concrete till we build out our industries, hang on why do we need basements?

For car parking.

Why do we need cars in the city?

Because our infrastructure is insufficient and MaaS (mobility as a service) is still in its infancy.

Ok, so we need to work on transitioning our archaic industrial revolution city monstrosities into Industrial Rev 4 walkable smart green cities.

That will need innovation in urban planning and government legislation to build out or archaic planning systems.

Ok, so we need to start voting in people who have a clear vision of what a sustainable circular economy looks like and has the support from voters, private sector, and association bodies to start the transition,

So how do we get them on board?

We need to create pilots and prototype systems that prove they are sustainable and economically viable to roll out across our cities.

But we need investment to get them up and running.

Ok so we need investment to create the prototypes to prove viability to change the market and get legislative support to help build out the industries but we need legislative support to help set up frameworks to entice investment to build prototypes to help drive new markets…

“Next stop, Central” and as the doors open and I step back onto the black tarmac of the platform I think to myself “is this the best material we could use here? it creates a savage heat island effect” at which point I quickly stop myself and remind myself that I still have 2 meetings left in the day and only one brain cell left to navigate them.