Design
Ushering in an Era of Concrete Destruction
Cities spend big money to retrofit and modernize landscapes built with the world’s most popular construction material—even as others go right on pouring it.
Somebody remind me to invest in concrete stock. More than two billion tons are produced each year—or 7.5 billion cubic meters, more than one cubic meter for every person on earth—a rate expected to double by 2050. The global ready-mix concrete industry is expected to exceed $100 billion by 2015.
China alone has poured more concrete in the last three years than the U.S. in the last hundred—enough, according to one Wired writer who expertly calculates such things, to pave the paradise of Hawaii into one big parking lot.