Wednesday, March 28, 2001
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Wednesday, March 28, 2001 |
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Historic preservation is a 'conservative' thing By F. SHEFFIELD
HALE Why support historic preservation? Many people wonder about the relevance of historic preservation in their daily lives. They are skeptical that saving historic buildings has anything to do with their own quality of life, let alone that of the communities in which they live. Yet, it is my view that the ethics and the benefits of historic preservation are critical to Georgia's people and communities. On a practical level, historic preservation is a conservative approach to maximizing a community's resources and reinvigorating and sustaining a community's economy over a period of time. I recently heard preservationists mislabeled as "liberal." To me, there is nothing more self-evidently conservative and prudent than preserving and enhancing existing capital investment. Preservation enhances property values for landowners with existing capital investments by maintaining investments and encouraging reinvestments in developed areas. Preservation of historic architecture also gives a community a distinct identity and thus a competitive advantage. Preservation makes people proud of their communities, and consequently more willing to invest in developing economic activity. In this era of rapid change and mobility there is an increasing desire for a sense of continuity and permanence that historic buildings provide. Communities built on a distinctively human scale retain and attract people who care about the kind of community they are going to leave in the future. The last point speaks to our relationship with our neighbors and successors and can be described by an old-fashioned term we used to hear in grammar school called "citizenship." I believe that the long view the preservation ethic provides reminds us that we are building a community not only for today, but also for tomorrow. The best way to sustain a community's long-term prosperity is to plan for permanence and to recognize that distinctive historic resources are an important asset not to be squandered. Preservation reminds us that the world does not revolve around just us or our generation, but that the contributions of people who lived here before us and those who will follow us are also important. I think the preservation of structures and places also tangibly reminds us that all our histories have meaning that we are not disposable or interchangeable. Many of us live in different communities from where we were reared, but we value and take great pride in the history of the communities in which we currently live. Many of us hope that those who now live in communities from which we came will similarly, and that this collective trust will serve to strengthen all of our communities. The preservation movement is, in a sense, combating groundless egotism and short-lived opportunism, by preserving the best of our collective past for all of our descendants, while immediately enriching all of our lives economically, culturally and aesthetically. Preservationists recognize that change is inevitable, and often desirable, but that decay, disinvestment and ugliness in our cities are not inevitable. Those who support preservation are optimistically moving forward a new vision, not content to save only the stately homes of founding fathers or of a local plutocracy, but intent on also preserving for all of us what is distinctive about each of our downtown Main Streets and communities. [Mr. Hale serves as chairman of The Georgia Trust, the country's largest statewide, nonprofit preservation organization with nearly 10,000 members. He is a partner in the Business Practice Group of Atlanta law firm Kilpatrick Stockton LLP.]
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