Historic Preservation and the Livable City Review

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Everything old is new again. This book tells us why. Not since Jane Jacobs' THE DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES has a book so clearly drawn out the things that make a city livable. Turns out a lot of it has to do with a sense of time and place.

I learned a lot about myself and where I live (Greenwich Village). Though I guess the target audience is also planners, economic development people, preservationists, housing people, etc. - professionals whose job is making a city work and thrive. But this book is a gift for curious and innocent city dwellers like me who half killed themselves restoring old housing stock because it felt more like a place to live than some modern sheetrock box. Now I understand a lot more about why I did it.

The authors are also out to change opinions. The main argument is that heritage (historic) preservation needs to be integrated into the planning and upkeep of cities as an integral part of creating and maintaining livable environments, not treated as an impediment. Turns out it's actually cheaper in many cases to restore existing sturdy housing stock than to bulldoze it for structural crap. (No wonder luxury Park Avenue housing always advertises itself as "pre-war," code for plaster, not quarter-inch sheetrock.)

The book also provides a library's worth of case studies of cities across the country that have seen the light and renovated and saved their architectural heritage. This annotated catalogue (with a treasure trove of photos) is itself reason enough to include the book in any collection of record. It also convincingly argues for cities to include sustainability and heritage preservation in any comprehensive planning, cutting across all the different agencies involved. Given how historic preservation enriches us all, it should be a starting point, not an afterthought.

This book tells us in detail where we've been. I hope it also tells us where we're going.
Thomas Hoover
www.thomashoover.info


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For both the preservation professional and urban planner, this book shows how preservation is a key to the creation of livable cities. The author Eric Allison, the founder and coordinated of the graduate historic preservation program at Pratt Institute in New York City, offers tools and case studies that preservationists and planners can learn from in implementing preservation projects or plans in cities large and small. This book is a must read for anyone working in or interested in these fields and the creation and maintenance of livable cities.

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