At 07:37 PM 5/12/98 +0000, Ken Follett wrote, eloquently, on:
>Historic Preservation & Economics
>
>The problem with economic arguments in favor of historic preservation is
>not that they are wrong, there is ample evidence that historic
>preservation when creatively implemented pays, but that our initial
>response to “economics” is money, such as a dollar.

While I agree completely with all that Ken had to say on this issue, the
primary problem with justifying HP solely, or even predominately, on its
economic basis is that when the day comes that preservation ceases to be
"economically justified" or profitable under the current assumptions used
to determine such things, there remains no acceptable basis to preserve.
Such was, sadly, the dramatic lesson of the post-1986 decline in Certified
Rehabilitation, where we (through government incentive) had taught a huge
pool of development interest that "preservation pays"....when those
incentives were modified, preservation no longer did and scores of
perfectly rehab-able structures were lost.

Others have written more eloquently than I on the ultimate failure of
preservation to convince the broad stream of the American public on the
underlying "rightness" of what is that we in the field are attempting to
promote.  We use $$$ and the law, when possible, to bribe or bludgeon folks
into doing what we know to be proper because we have yet to successfully
articulate and convince others that it is so.

Ken's suggestion of changing the way we assess true value reminds me of a
class in steady-state economics I had a long time ago.  Folks were
complaining about the rising cost of gasoline and the arbitrariness of the
Oil Embargo.  The statement  that $1.50 per gallon was completely
unsupportable was met with the professor bringing in a box of organic
matter (I think they were ferns) and suggesting that if we thought $1.50
was too much for oil, perhaps we'd like to go out and make some our own
from these  raw materials.

Sorry to have rambled... :(



George Kramer, M.S.
Historic Preservation Consultant
Ashland, Oregon