Heidi wrote:


>
> I think *most* people appreciate the sense of security, history,
community and
> beauty that the nation's architectural history provides. I have found an
> overwhelming sense in the public that old buildings are important,
although
> most people can't explain the motivation for their feelings. So if there
is
> the "overwhelming sense" in the general public, why is there a need for
> "preservation"?

snip-

>   - There is almost no sense of architectural literacy in the real world:
no
> ability to decipher a building or a landscape, and see the layers of
culture
> and history that have been overlaid one on top of the other. As a book
has
> little real meaning to a person who can't read, buildings have little
real
> meaning to those who don't understand the landscape.
>
> Just my .02.

All good points, I think, but not the only ones.

Some others:

Unfortunately, most people, regardless of their instincts to see at least
some of the old preserved, perceive of the preservation community as a smug
and self-righteous crowd, not an unusual state of affairs when effective
action requires that a highly informed interest group communicate with and
attempt to give direction to a, maybe, interested, but neither highly
informed nor deeply passionate population. Preservation then becomes
something that "THEY" do to us, rather than for us, and, not uncommonly,
the acceptance of the intention becomes less important than resistance to a
"elitist" pressure group.

I see the same thing happening in many other areas of social action;
environmentalism, transportation planning, arts programs. Maybe the
clearest example is the fascinating paradox that a great majority of women
deny that they are feminists or believe in it, but when asked to register
approval of feminist positions that are not labeled as such, an equal
number do so.

Also, I think, that the majority of people are also victims of a consistent
propaganda barrage from developers and corporations who are trying to
create a climate in which their operations are as little interfered with as
possible. I think that has a great deal to do with the body of assumptions
about preservation, that, rarely, are its benefits worth the costs in
money, time, and loss of individual freedom (the thing that very few of us
have, or can even define in a rational manner, but which we assume to be
the real oxygen of the air we, as Americans, breathe). This has to do with
the whole issue of growth, which is a rarely scrutinized value, that
Corporate America, and its protectors in the halls of political power, has
very successfully made the sacred cow of our culture. I am amazed how often
I encounter arguments that organized programs of preservation, especially
regs, regardless how weak, are a danger to "growth". And I am dismayed  at
how often those arguments are successful, especially at diluting already
thin regulatory structures.

Bruce