Below is a reprint of an article posted by Justin Davidson in the New York Magazine, Daily Intelligencer. Please go to the article for further citations and the comments section. I just want to add that a lot of the rhetoric revolves around ideas like: wealthy people just want to keep their neighborhoods nice (who wouldn’t want that?) and high valued, but, we should be FOR higher density in our communities. I support historic preservation for lots of reasons, and I’ve never been wealthy. Historic preservation is about valuing quality materials and design, human scale and unique cultural environments. It’s not about stopping progress or making our own history, but instead about keeping what’s of human value from our past. I’m not for dense cookie-cutter communities made out of glorified cardboard, and I’m not for residents losing control of their communities in order that wealthy, powerful, corporate interests can do whatever they please. I like what one commenter (JamieGlas) wrote:
“It depends.” This kind of nuance seems lost on the CityLab crowd that wants to impress you with Supreme Court decisions and grandiose “rhetorical blowtorches” that break down in almost any case study. There’s only a set of abstract pro-development rules. you kind of get that the authors position is a misguided political one not an architectural or social one. If quality is not a value we preserve, it won’t be a quality we value in future construction either.
The Atlantic’s Anti-Historic-District Argument Is Wrong and Extreme
Over at The Atlantic’s urbanist magazine-in-a-magazine, CityLab, writer Kriston Capps turns a rhetorical blowtorch on the concept of the historic district, particularly in residential neighborhoods. Family homes don’t warrant protection, he argues, because, well, they’re homes, and people should be able to do what they want with them. Whole clusters of homes are even less deserving of protection, he argues, in a multipronged, bipartisan case — none of which I buy.
Port Huron Area History & Preservation 