![]() As a regulator of social-spatial relationships, the built environment constrains and empowers certain communities and individuals-physically, economically, ecologically, socially, and culturally. In shaping and managing built environments and landscapes, preservation policy affords privileges beyond narrative recognition. This is not simply a problem of representation-that is, whose story gets told. When the aggregate histories associated with heritage places center the narratives of certain publics and underrepresent or marginalize others, preservation policy does not simply overlook and perpetuate exclusion it valorizes it. This recognition codifies the intention (on the part of government and the body politic) that these places should endure as markers of collective memory. Public policies like designation and listing promote heritage places as the most socially valued and “fixed” elements of our spatial context. 2 As the discourse around spatial justice evolves, these debates are extending beyond statuary to similarly examine the sites, landscapes, buildings, and districts that memorialize the past. As cities across the United States review what exactly is being memorialized by their monuments, the public debates around them highlight the ways in which historic elements of the built environment can exacerbate social inequities by privileging some-such as White male figures or Confederate histories-and disprivileging others. Heritage places, as well as the preservation enterprise, often echo these legacies of injustice. Architecture itself can be exclusionary, physically manifesting barriers related to race, gender, economic status, disabilities, religion, and more. 1 The legacy effects of unjust policies like the dispossession of land and culture, forced relocation, racially restrictive covenants, redlining, and urban renewal are embedded in geographies and built forms, contributing to the systemic recurrence of social and spatial exclusion. In this sense, preservation is not simply an end state but also an iterative vehicle for collective agency.Īt the same time, contemporary research is bringing to light how the built environment creates, compounds, and evinces inequality within and between communities. The perpetuation of these heritage places and their associated stories is believed to support social resilience by reinforcing notions of shared values and endurance through time. Through physical and spatial encounters with the past, choices about what and how to preserve reinforce-or challenge-certain narratives, shared identities, and reflections of self. The values and historic narratives associated with heritage places are inherently understood to serve important community-building functions within society. But the idea of heritage is not limited to the formal and spatial dimensions of place. Most municipalities in the United States, and nearly all countries around the world, have enforced laws and adopted policies meant to preserve heritage in situ, seeking to protect particular places-sites, buildings, districts, and landscapes-from physical loss and the market forces of change. Heritage occupies a privileged position in the built environment, spatially and conceptually. This third volume in the Issues in Preservation Policy series examines historic preservation as an enterprise of ideas, methods, institutions, and practices that must reorient toward a new horizon, one in which equity and sustainability become critical guideposts for policy evolution. ![]() Though many heritage projects and practitioners are confronting injustice and climate in innovative ways, systemic change requires looking beyond the formal and material dimensions of place and to the processes and outcomes of preservation policy-operationalized through laws and guidelines, regulatory processes, and institutions-across time and sociogeographic scales, and in relation to the publics they are intended to serve. That privilege, however, is increasingly being unsettled by the legacies of racial, economic, and social injustice in both the built environment and historic preservation policy, and by the compounding climate crisis. Most municipalities in the United States, and nearly all countries around the world, have laws and policies to preserve heritage in situ, seeking to protect places from physical loss and the forces of change. Heritage occupies a privileged position within the built environment. ![]()
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