Heritage Preservation

Human-Centered Built Environment Heritage Preservation addresses the question of how a human-centred conservation approach can and should change practice. For the most part, there are few answers to this question because professionals in the heritage conservation field do not use social science research methodologies to manage cultural landscapes, assess historical significance and inform the treatment of building and landscape fabric. With few exceptions, only academic theorists have explored these topics while failing to offer specific, usable guidance on how the social sciences can actually be used by heritage professionals. In exploring the nature of a human-centred heritage conservation practice, we explicitly seek a middle ground between the academy and practice, theory and application, fabric and meanings, conventional and civil experts, and orthodox and heterodox ideas behind practice and research. We do this by positioning this book in a transdisciplinary space between these dichotomies as a way to give voice (and respect) to multiple perspectives without losing sight of our goal that heritage conservation practice should, fundamentally, benefit all people. We believe that this approach is essential for creating an emancipated built heritage conservation practice that must successfully engage very different ontological and epistemological perspectives.

Urban planners, government officials, and preservation activists are increasingly at odds as every day more and more heritage buildings are threatened with destruction to make way for urban development and revitalization. Stakeholders in these often emotionally and politically charged debates have arrived at what is potentially a solution that can satisfy all parties in the equation. Heritage covenants are a complex legal instrument involving the sale or donation of a heritage interest to a not-for-profit organization or government agency. In an unprecedented initiative, the Calgary Civic Trust, in the year 2000, brought together experts and leaders in heritage covenants from Canada, Great Britain, and the United States to discuss the future of this unique preservation instrument. This book is a result of the proceedings and focuses specifically on this sophisticated aspect of heritage preservation.

The act of identifying, protecting, restoring, and reusing buildings, districts, and built landscapes of historic and cultural significance is, at its best, a reflective and consequential process of urban and socio-economic reform. It has the potential to reconcile conflicting memories, meanings, and cultural tensions, bridging and expanding the perceived boundaries of multiple disciplines towards bigger aspirations of city-making and social justice. How and where do such aspirations overlap and differ across nations and societies across the world? In places with different histories, governance structures, regulatory stringency, and populist dispositions, who are the specific players, and what are the actual processes that bring about bigger and deeper change beyond just the conservation of an architectural or urban entity of perceived value? This collection of scholarly articles by theorists, academics, and practitioners explores the global complexity, guises, and potential of heritage conservation. Going from Tokyo to Cairo, Shenzhen to Rome, and Delhi to Moscow, this volume examines a vast range of topics – indigenous habitats, urban cores, vernacular infrastructure, colonial towns, squatters, burial sites, war zones, and modern landmarks. It surfaces numerous inherent issues – water stress, deforestation, social oppression, poverty, religion, immigration, and polity, expanding the definitions of heritage conservation as both a professional discipline and socio-cultural catalyst. This book argues that the intellectual and praxis limits of heritage conservation – as the agency of reading, defining, and intervening with built heritage – can be expansive, aimed at bigger positive change beyond a specific subject or object; plural, enmeshed with multiple fields and specializations; and empathetic, born from the actual socio-political realities of a place.

The ostensible purpose of a library is to preserve the printed word. But for fifty years our country’s libraries–including the Library of Congress–have been doing just the opposite, destroying hundreds of thousands of historic newspapers and replacing them with microfilm copies that are difficult to read, lack all the color and quality of the original paper and illustrations, and deteriorate with age. With meticulous detective work and Baker’s well-known explanatory power, Double Fold reveals a secret history of microfilm lobbyists, former CIA agents, and warehouses where priceless archives are destroyed with a machine called a guillotine. Baker argues passionately for preservation, even cashing in his own retirement account to save one important archive–all twenty tons of it. Written the brilliant narrative style that Nicholson Baker fans have come to expect, Double Fold is a persuasive and often devastating book that may turn out to be The Jungle of the American library system.

Cultural relationships with nature, ecology, biodiversity, energy, and resource systems -- History and theory of heritage preservation -- History and theory of sustainable design -- Architecture and building design -- Integrating biodiversity into the built environment rehabilitation practice -- Fixing the shortcomings within community design, planning and policy -- Going with the flow: strategies for adapting buildings and structures for rising sea levels -- Vehicles as a microcosm of approaching built environment rehabilitation -- Conclusions on lessons from the past for the future

Surveying the past, present and future of historic preservation in America, this text features 15 essays by some of the most eminent voices in the field, essays which highlight the principle ideas and events that have shaped and continue to shape the movement.

In their growing awareness of the need to keep alive Canada's heritage, individuals, community groups, and small historical societies have long felt the need for a basic guide to the preservation of buildings, particularly buildings which, though they may not warrant provincial or federal protection, are nevertheless important to the history and values of their communities. Using the knowledge gained from many years of experience in various government departments and her familiarity with several successful building conversation projects, Ann Falkner has written this practical handbook for those concerned about preserving heritage structures. She covers clearly and in detail the various problems to be faced and actions to be taken, and analyses the assistance available through legislation at all three levels of government. Without Our Past? deals with inventories and how they are conducted, and, through a series of concrete examples, with the evaluation and selection of worthwhile buildings. It explains acquisition procedures for all types of properties, municipal powers under provincial planning acts, and control through specific zoning. It offers suggestions on how to re-use an outdated structure and how to create a compatible environment around a building, and it points out the value of publicity and local interest in gaining general support and cooperation. In a separate chapter expenses and finances are covered, including fund raising and the increasing monetary benefits of conservation.