An urgent appeal to rethink the heritage enterprise
A critical reassessment of historic preservation policies in the United States, Second-Order Preservation brings needed attention to the hierarchical underpinnings and effects of established preservation frameworks. Questioning the criteria by which value is ascribed to historic buildings and neighborhoods, Erica Avrami works to elucidate and transform how-and which-claims to place become codified in and reinforced through public policy.
As she eschews dominant case-study approaches that center the individual object of preservation, such as a discrete building or site, Avrami develops the concept of second-order preservation as a means of integrating broader considerations around social justice, equitable land-use planning, and environmental sustainability. Ranging from municipal to state to national and international levels of governance, her critique of the origins and evolution of heritage policy reveals how this conventional emphasis on the object has contributed to policy tensions and systemic exclusion.
Stressing the need to reform current preservation practices to serve more diverse publics, Avrami encourages a turn to an approach that substantively considers contexts and implications of preservation in the scheme of climate and justice. Second-Order Preservation maintains the interrelation between theory and practice, serving as both a critical reflection and a provocation aimed at advancing a more just set of urban policy agendas.
About the Author :
Erica Avrami is the James Marston Fitch Associate Professor of Historic Preservation at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. She is editor of Preservation, Sustainability, and Equity; Preservation and Social Inclusion; and Preservation and the New Data Landscape.
Review :
"In this essential book, Erica Avrami blows the whistle on preservation’s limits and its complicity with societal injustices. She outlines a vision for the field to take on a more transformative role in planning for the future of cities and makes a compelling case for rethinking the focus of preservation from the mere protection of objects to a more expansive approach that responds to climate and social justice imperatives."-Jennifer Minner, director, Just Places Lab, Cornell University
"Interrogating preservation’s broad outcomes, Erica Avrami pays meticulous attention to the ways heritage enterprise may disadvantage marginalized groups in defining and controlling their own heritage places. Her deep knowledge of preservation practice enables her to go beyond critiquing its problems to proposing systemic solutions."-Michael Holleran, University of Texas at Austin
