[MassHistPres] moving forward

[Marcia Starkey]

Hello,

The 2008 Annual Report from Historic Deerfield includes an article from the Summer Fellowship Forum entitled "The Future of Historic Preservation". The author, Ronald Lee Fleming, with a long career in preservation and planning, asks How do we cope with the specter of the future, and what determinism does it impose upon us?  The article argues: it will take more imagination in the preservation community, more media attention, perhaps tied to demolition, and more passion at the grassroots level to achieve the changes that need to be made. 

His list of six recommendations includes:
1. We need to know the state of preservation: how many areas have been protected each year, how many districts rescinded, how many have failed to obtain historic district protection. What comprehensive land use/historic resources protection has been applied to larger areas, such as heritage parks. This national data base would drive policy actions.
2. Each state should prepare a tally of the significant buildings and landscapes lost each year. Posters and traveling exhibits might lead, as in Britain, to policy changes.
3. Historic districts enhanced through facade rehabilitations, trees and landscape improvements, removing billboards and burying wires could build more support for LHDs than do sometimes petty restrictions.         
4. Context sensitive design should be applied to all federal and state projects.
5. Greater attention to franchise architecture through a consistent regulatory policy for natural or historic areas.  
6. Combat the too-often reactive stance, build broader alliances with arts and enviromental groups and planners to reach a more holistic approach. A national strategy to focus media attention when great losses occur, using key spokesmen. Harder hitting public interest ads. 


The history museum community, especially those who preserve and interpret historic communities and landscapes, offer wide-angle and in-depth views of society, what has changed and what is the same, and reveal alternatives we may have forgotten. They can and sometimes do, add to local thinking and discussions about future directions.         
    
Marcia Starkey
Greenfield HC

           
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