Delamination and spalling of a concrete member are both undesirable conditions; not only do they represent a potential struck-by hazard in the scenario where the spalled concrete falls and strikes a person, but they also reduce the cross sectional area of the concrete member and decrease its ability to safely carry imposed loads. An additional consideration is that both delamination and spalling offer increased access of air and water to the reinforcing steel within that member; thus creating a cycle of corrosion and increased access of the corrosive elements exacerbating the process with each subsequent cycle.
Beyond the obvious aesthetic issues, a reduction in the cross sectional area due to spalling and delamination is synonymous with a weakened concrete section. Additionally, delamination and spalling require increased maintenance, subsequent higher maintenance costs, and can result in a decreased service life of the concrete member(s).
I don’t get why the politicians are talking so much about crime lately. Maybe it’s because I don’t own a color television but I’ve not noticed any difference in the crime levels locally. I’ve not been a victim of a crime nor do I know anyone else lately.
It does seem like Downtown Albany is a little rougher now, although some of that has to do with real estate speculation on Lark Street and rebuilding from the disorder in Albany last summer. But I feel like it’s hard to say crime is out of control.
Behind much of the skepticism of the condo system were tensions between private rights in property and community obligations. Between the 1880s and World War I, co-owned buildings in the United States were mostly sponsored directly by future tenants (foreshadowing the recent wave of baugruppen in Berlin). By the 1920s, though, speculative developers came to dominate. To sell apartments, they learned to emphasize lifestyle, including ease of physical maintenance (“no lawn to mow,” read many an ad), while downplaying responsibilities.
But owning an apartment, like any other property, comes with its own burdens—just ones less tangible than a lawn. No matter the system, ownership turns tenants, ready or not, into landlords: Members of a condominium automatically become co-owners of a corporate entity responsible for common elements. As nearly everyone who has ever owned an apartment in a large building knows, however, rare is the condo owner who’s attuned to this duty, and rarer still is the one who attends association meetings, let alone serves on the board of directors.
And yet developers and sales agents recognized this gap early on. While honing their marketing strategies, they began to encourage buildings to hire “professional” management, leaving associations with few direct responsibilities. Governance could still be challenging. In co-ops in New York and D.C., where associations typically screen new buyers (ostensibly for reasons of financial security), battles erupted over whether to allow resales to Jewish people and, later, single women, Black people, and gay men. In more recent decades, residents of condo buildings have feuded over everything from cosmetic upgrades (redecorating lobbies) to the installation of EV charging stations. These disputes hint at why some early critics believed that condos would inevitably result in huge problems, including premature physical decay.
The 2035 target is part of the country's plan to achieve a net-zero emissions economy by 2050, with the federal government already offering a $5000 subsidy for purchases of EVs priced under $55,000, with the province of Quebec adding a maximum of $8000 on top of that federal subsidy. In 2020 the government of Quebec announced an identical plan to phase out the sales of gas and diesel passenger models in the province by 2035, and aims for 22% of new car sales to be zero-emission far sooner, by 2025.
