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Presentation from Donovan Rypkema
MDA Quarterly Meeting; March 2006
So I have a question for you: what is
the most pressing
economic development challenge of 2006? Affordable housing. For a long
time housing affordability was a social service issue – how do we house
the least fortunate among us. Today it has become a central economic
development issue.
And what is the most significant
economic development variable in the year 2006? Quality of
life.
And I would suggest to you that historic
preservation has a vital role to play in both of
those.
Many of you know Dick Moe is the
president of the National Trust. Well Dick is a smart guy, and has been
around Washington for a long time
and since he’s been at the Trust he’s pushed
the Trust to be more active on the policy front. Most of you probably
know that Dick was early on in the Smart Growth movement, in many cases
dragging other preservationists kicking and screaming into the
anti-sprawl movement. Many preservationists, frankly, didn’t initially
understand the connection. But we do now and that’s to Dick’s credit.
So two years ago Dick looked around, saw
that Smart Growth had its own momentum and pondered internally what the
next major Trust policy initiative should be. He’d been hearing this
emerging issue of affordable housing so wanted to understand what link,
if any, there was between housing affordability and older and historic
houses. So we took a look.
Of the many lessons learned, here are some of the most
telling:
·
In the market
place older and historic houses – those built before 1950 –
disproportionately meet the housing needs of those of modest
means
·
The majority of
this older, affordable housing is simply provided by the market, with
no subsidies, incentives, or government intervention of any
kind.
·
If today we had
to replace the pre-1950 housing being occupied by households living at
the poverty level, using the most cost effective Federal program it
would cost the tax payers $335 Billion dollars – that’s like 4
Iraq
wars.
Well if affordable housing – what the ULI calls workforce
housing – is a critical need and if older housing is disproportionately
meeting that need, then there must be a major effort going on to keep
this housing inventory viable, right? Alas, that’s not the case. In the
every day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year for the last thirty years
we’ve lost 577 units of older and historic housing – 80% of which were
single family dwellings. I say “lost”, but it’s not that we misplaced
them. A few were destroyed by tornados and a few hit by lightning, but
the vast majority of them were consciously torn
down.
And for those
with the most historic significance? The 90s are generally seen as a
decade rather enlightened about historic preservation. But during that
ten years removed forever were 772,000 housing units built before 1920,
arguably our most historic.
The result? We are systematically tearing down what is
affordable and building what is not.
But people of modest means need more then just low rent.
They
also need proximity – to schools, shopping, work, and transportation.
Where are those daily needs nearly always nearby? In our older and
historic neighborhoods. Where are those daily needs almost never
nearby? – new subdivisions.
I earlier said that affordable housing was the most
critical
economic development challenge today and that that cliché – quality of
life – was the most significant economic development variable. Now
there are some who think that “quality of life” is simply a function of
urban design. And everybody has their own name for it – New Urbanism,
Traditional Neighborhood Development, Transportation Oriented
Development, and at the National Governors Association they call it New
Community Design. And in their publication – New
Community Design to the
Rescue – they too have established a set of principles, and
they are these:
·
Mixed
use
·
Community
interaction
·
Transportation/walkability
·
Tree lined
streets
·
Open
space
·
Efficient use
of infrastructure
·
Houses close to
the street
·
Diverse
housing
·
High
density
·
Reduced land
consumption
·
Links to
adjacent communities
·
Enhances
surrounding communities
·
Pedestrian
friendly
Great list. But you know what? We don’t need new community
design to rescue us. That list of principles is exactly what our
historic neighborhoods are providing right now. We just need to make
sure they are protected.
Well I agree that good urban design is a
part of “Quality of Life”. But ultimately quality of life will be
determined by five senses: the sense of place, the sense of evolution,
the sense of ownership, the sense of identity and the sense of
community itself.
The Greeks had a phrase – horror vacui – the
intolerability of no-place-at-all. Many places in
America have approached
that horror
vacui. On a trip
to California I picked up a copy
of the Sacramento Bee one morning and read a local columnist – Steve
Weigand – and here’s what he wrote. “And from the Brave New World of
the Internet comes the following new term. “Generica: fast food joints,
strip malls and subdivisions, as in ‘we were so lost in Generica, I
didn’t know what city it
was.’”
Generica isn’t just a
California phenomenon or just
a city or suburban phenomena. Generica is happening everywhere and I
would suggest it is at the heart of the challenge of economic
development, smart growth and place economics. Generica undermines all
five senses – the sense of place, of evolution, of ownership, of
identity and of community.
In his book The Good Society
sociologist Robert
Bellah observes, “Communities, in the sense in which we are using the
term, have a history--in an important sense they are constituted by
their past--and for this reason we can speak of a real community as a
'community of memory', one that does not forget its past.” Generica
diminishes each of the five senses; preservation of the historic built
environment enhances each of the five senses, and constitutes the
physical manifestation of a “community of memory”. Historic
preservation builds both community and place; Generica destroys both
community and place.
Now before I close I want to tell you what I learned at
two conferences in Europe 18 months ago, one in
Barcelona and the other in
Geneva. In
Geneva was the annual Congress of ISoCaRP – the
International Society of City and Regional Planners. I joined that
organization last year. I have never considered myself a planner and
don’t now. But the Spanish word for what we call city planner is urbanista. So that’s
why I joined – I want to be an urbanista. Anyway 200 people from 47
countries and 60 or so presentations. I heard one about the importance
of traditional buildings and building patterns to neighborhood vibrancy
in Lisbon; another about a new organization of historic towns in
Turkey, one about the nearly missed opportunity of using the small,
vernacular historic housing stock in Shanghai as counterpoint
to its obsession with the high-rise glass and chrome typology which is
defining its image as an emerging world city, and reinvestment in
traditional buildings in Iran as part of an overall municipal
strategy.
But perhaps most enlightening was a final session billed
the Mayors’ Summit. Eight mayors from four continents talked
about their strategies for building their cities’ futures. In every
instance a key component of that strategy was restoring the past. And
not, by the way, primarily for heritage tourists, but for the citizens
of their cities.
In Barcelona was the second World Urban Forum sponsored
by UN Habitat. 5000 participants from nearly every country on the
globe. There were five days of plenary sessions, dialogues, networking
meetings, and other events. Now there were certainly sessions devoted
specifically to heritage conservation. Some of these were put on by
UNESCO, others by a combination of the Swedish government, its national
heritage board, and affiliated organizations. A central part of the
foreign policy of
Sweden is assisting developing countries
identify,
protect, and enhance their historic resources. And I learned a lot from
these presentations, but wasn’t so surprised that such sessions were
planned.
Here was the surprise – heritage conservation permeated
horizontally sessions throughout the conference and was being promoted
by those not remotely identified as preservationists, was being
promoted as an important vehicle for other ends. A representative of
the International Labor Organization encouraged the restoration of
heritage buildings for the jobs that would create – a form of labor
intensity without simply padding public payrolls. At a day long session
hosted by the Economic Commission of Europe on Public-Private
Partnerships, investment in heritage buildings was seen as an excellent
laboratory to make such partnerships viable and acceptable in emerging
economies. In a master plan for one of the venues put forward as part
of Spain’s bid for the 2012 Olympics, the new development was scaled to
both extend and to reflect the existing historic city center. There was
considerable discussion about the implications of gentrification in
historic cities around the world, and this year a UNESCO task force is
going to look into the problems and solutions there, but there was also
an emphasis that any response to gentrification needed to be within the
context of those historic buildings, not their
demolition.
I think at this entire conference there was only one
concept promoted more than heritage conservation and that was
sustainable development. Although the iterations of sustainability vary
widely around the globe, and there are numerous approaches, the reuse
of historic buildings was mentioned in session after session as an
integral part of the sustainability movement – historic preservation as
smart growth around the world.
Finally, in
Geneva I met an Australian woman who told me
about
a recently completed study there where they looked on a GIS basis as
where their heritage resources were located and where the creative
class tended to cluster. And lo and behold it was the same places.
Where the creative class chose to be was where there was the
distinction, and evolution, and differentiation of heritage
resources.
I repeat what I said this morning – historic preservation
adds
significance, adds meaning, and importantly adds value. That’s why
historic preservation needs to be a central strategy of every
community. Thank you very much for having me here
today.
© Donovan D. Rypkema,
2005
Place Economics
Reprinted with
Permission.
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