Houses, traffic, and progress

Or, an alternate title: Shopping for that discount. Since I now have this old place, I am loathe to update it with current trends in housing fashions. That could be akin to having a post-war box house and turning it into a craftsman. That is not the house's origins, so it can look a bit funky. I am therefore driven to re-use or renew type stores. The ones that get called in to strip a classic home built like a tank so that thin walled condos can be built. Ah, I am showing my opinions. If you are going to call it progress, can you at least construct the new structures as well as the one you tore down?
Back to topic. So going to used house part stores in Seattle, and they charge more than if I bought it new. Which, I don't understand. BUT I found the habitat for humanity store in bremerton, and that has some old, some new, alot of wood and leftover paint and brass fixtures, etc etc for very reasonable prices. I have been back several times. I shall take out the previous owners walmart updates and at least get it back within 30 years of when it was built. I have no issues with updating the things you can't see.... water lines, electrical. plumbing, it is when the whole house is converted into whatever housing trend is suiting middle America at that exact moment that it irks me. You ask : why care? And I am sure I would not if I had not grown up in this area, and seen the drastic changes in housing, landscape and amount of green our city no longer has. That, and the layer of pollution that hangs over our heads. Gee... what do all those trees do? Suck up water so there is less flooding? Suck crap out of the air? What is it that happens when you develop large tracks of farmland way the bum%$# out from the cities where people work? With no infrastructure to handle that amount of traffic? People drive and drive and drive. The asthma level in our city has skyrocketed. No one talks of this, but everyone knows. My doctor told me to move if I wanted my asthmatic daughter to be able to breathe. Good philosophy, and I did, but not everyone has that option.