Why would you remove concrete and masonry every 20 years? I don't have much experience with wooden houses, so I don't know if it's the case there.
But in brick houses renovation often means fixing what's broken and adding modern technologies such as insulation. Moving or adding walls can easily become quite a large scale project.
I think he means changing the room layout. In Europe, usually all the walls are 'set in stone'. Using a combination of masonry/concrete for the outer shell and timber/drywall for the internal walls would eliminate this problem though.
