Diverse Narratives
The preservation enterprise plays a crucial role in shaping the physical contours of collective memory and public space. By curating the built environment, preservation has the power to represent diverse societal values and narratives – or to marginalize them. Increasingly, the field is being challenged to embrace social inclusion, examining how multiple publics are represented – or excluded – in heritage decision-making, geographies, and governance structures.
Preservation Approaches
Historically, preservation has been characterized as a reactive endeavor – a response to change, deterioration, and impending loss. Its role in spatializing history has been framed as one of stewardship, with the past holding authority over the present. However, a growing body of scholarship asserts that heritage is socially constructed, with multiple publics ascribing value to places over time. There is greater recognition that the built environment can reinforce or challenge dominant narratives, and that preservationists must grapple with whose stories are represented – or erased – in the landscape.
Beyond whose histories are told, there is increasing awareness of how diverse communities participate in preservation decision-making. Expert-driven norms and dominant worldviews may not align with the ways multiple publics value and experience particular places and memories. The field is now exploring platforms and practices that allow for discursive deliberation and shared agency among stakeholders.
Interpretive Challenges
Preservation’s normative emphasis on architectural value and material integrity can perpetuate injustice, excluding the histories and lived experiences of marginalized communities. Spaces representing their narratives have often been underinvested in, undervalued, and systematically destroyed. Addressing this requires confronting preservation’s own role in the politics of authenticity and the legacies of exclusion embedded in the built environment.
For example, in New York City, less than 4% of lots are regulated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, with a disproportionate concentration in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods. Residents of historic districts tend to be more advantaged, suggesting that some narratives and publics are privileged in the designation process. The lack of minority histories on heritage lists has spurred advocacy efforts like the National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.
Collaborative Strategies
Forging a more inclusive preservation practice demands acknowledging the field’s past and present role in perpetuating injustice. It requires embracing the affirmative potential of heritage to promote reconciliation and restorative justice. Crucially, this involves ceding normative power, empowering marginalized communities as co-creators, and building alliances across diverse stakeholders.
Emerging models emphasize deep community engagement, shared decision-making, and the diversification of who ascribes value to older places. Organizations like the National Trust and the National Park Service are supporting the agency of underrepresented groups, leveraging their efforts to national platforms. At the local level, preservationists are navigating the complexities of navigating power dynamics, navigating biases, and building trust with marginalized communities.
Spatial Histories
The built environment serves as a conduit for inequality, with the persistence of certain structures and the effects of decisions over time perpetuating patterns of segregation and injustice. Redlining, urban renewal, and other discriminatory policies have had disproportionate impacts on vulnerable communities that continue to resonate today. Preserving this spatial legacy is crucial for understanding present-day inequities.
Mapping Community
Marginalized groups have often been denied the freedom to occupy space freely or equally. Spaces representing their narratives have been undervalued, underinvested in, and systematically destroyed. Reclaiming these geographies and staking spatial claims is a vital part of the preservation struggle.
Emerging digital platforms, from crowdsourced maps to interactive timelines, are enabling the reconstruction of incomplete or obscured histories. Projects like the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project and the East at Main Street map are using geographic data to interpret places through the lens of marginalized experiences and countermemories.
Oral Histories
Beyond the material landscape, the persistent relationship between people and place, even in the absence of historic buildings, speaks to the power of spatial encounters for memory, recognition, and the decentering of dominant narratives. Oral histories, storytelling, and commemorative events become crucial means of documenting marginalized geographies and reproducing cultural knowledge.
Andrea Roberts’ work with the Texas Freedom Colonies Atlas, for example, illustrates how dominant white constructions of place and public history obscure past and present Black agency in place-keeping and preservation. Her collaboration with freedom colony descendants to record origin stories challenges the archival void of Black histories and the tendency to valorize nostalgic origin myths.
Visual Archives
Visuals and digital archives can also serve as vital platforms for staking spatial claims and reconstructing hidden histories. Projects like the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project and the East at Main Street map use interactive maps to interpret places through the lens of marginalized experiences and countermemories. Andrea Roberts’ Texas Freedom Colonies Atlas leverages spatial data to document and preserve the geographies of Black settlements that have been obscured by dominant narratives.
Cultural Identities
Preservation’s normative emphasis on architectural value and material integrity can perpetuate injustice, excluding the histories and lived experiences of marginalized communities. Spaces representing their narratives have often been underinvested in, undervalued, and systematically destroyed. Addressing this requires confronting preservation’s own role in the politics of authenticity and the legacies of exclusion embedded in the built environment.
Intersectional Perspectives
Preservation must grapple with how its norms and standards, which privilege architectural value and material integrity, can perpetuate injustice. The importance of the historic built environment in shaping sociospatial relationships precludes a simple reinterpretation of the past to acknowledge more narratives. Promoting inclusion means embracing the affirmative role heritage and its preservation can play in reconciliation and restorative justice.
Marginalized Experiences
For communities with primarily social, cultural, or other non-architectural significance, preservationists lack robust strategies. The emphasis on material integrity and architectural aesthetics often excludes the histories and lived experiences of marginalized groups who lacked the resources or freedom to invest in permanent, high-design structures. Preservation’s normative frameworks must evolve to recognize alternative forms of heritage-making and spatial claims.
Transnational Connections
Preservation must also grapple with the transnational and diasporic dimensions of cultural identity. As communities have been dispersed and displaced, their spatial and material legacies may be fragmented across borders. Preserving these layered narratives requires bridging local, national, and global scales, and embracing digital platforms that enable new modes of archiving, interpretation, and community-building.
Ethical Considerations
Preservation’s role in spatializing history and curating collective memory comes with an “awesome responsibility.” The field must confront its own past and present role in perpetuating exclusion, and adopt a posture of humility, sensitivity, and intentionality in engaging marginalized communities as co-creators.
Participatory Practices
Forging a more inclusive preservation practice demands acknowledging the field’s past and present role in perpetuating injustice. It requires embracing the affirmative potential of heritage to promote reconciliation and restorative justice. Crucially, this involves ceding normative power, empowering marginalized communities as co-creators, and building alliances across diverse stakeholders.
Indigenous Knowledge
Preservation must also reckon with its colonial legacies, embracing Indigenous epistemologies and recognizing alternative modes of heritage-keeping that challenge Western frameworks of materiality and authenticity. Decolonial approaches emphasize the role of oral histories, ceremonies, and other intangible cultural practices in preserving collective memories and spatial imaginaries.
Decolonial Frameworks
Decolonial frameworks call on preservationists to critically examine their own positionality and the power structures embedded in the field. This demands a shift from paternalistic “salvage” efforts to collaborative models of co-stewardship, where marginalized communities assert sovereignty over their own histories and geographies. It requires dismantling the institutional hierarchies and Eurocentric norms that have historically excluded Indigenous and racialized narratives.
Digitization and Access
The proliferation of digital tools and platforms is transforming the preservation landscape, offering new modes of archiving, interpretation, and community engagement. However, these technologies also raise questions of access, representation, and the politics of knowledge production.
Online Platforms
Digital archives, interactive maps, and crowdsourced databases are enabling the reconstruction of fragmented histories and the spatial visualization of marginalized narratives. Projects like the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project and the East at Main Street map use geographic data to interpret places through the lens of LGBTQ and Asian American experiences.
Metadata Standards
The development of inclusive metadata standards is crucial for ensuring that diverse cultural identities and spatial histories are accurately and respectfully represented in digital collections. Preservationists must work closely with communities to develop taxonomies that reflect their own epistemologies and modes of knowledge-keeping.
Digital Storytelling
Beyond mere digitization, preservation must explore the creative potential of digital platforms for multivocal storytelling and community-driven interpretations. Interactive timelines, augmented reality experiences, and participatory mapping initiatives can empower marginalized groups to assert agency over the narratives and geographies that shape collective memory.
Interdisciplinary Dialogues
Preserving diverse human geographies demands an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on methodologies from fields like geography, anthropology, and the public humanities. Forging these dialogues can foster new ways of understanding the spatial politics of heritage and expanding the preservation toolkit.
Geographical Methodologies
Geographical perspectives offer vital insights into the sociospatial dynamics of heritage, illuminating how the built environment both reflects and perpetuates uneven power relations. Spatial analysis, ethnographic fieldwork, and critical cartography can reveal the exclusionary logics embedded in preservation practice and urban development.
Archival Theory
Archival theory, with its emphasis on provenance, description, and community-based approaches to collection development, provides a crucial counterpoint to preservation’s traditional focus on material fabric. Archivists’ expertise in documenting marginalized histories and amplifying silenced voices can inform more inclusive modes of heritage-keeping.
Public Humanities
The public humanities, with their commitment to community engagement, social justice, and the democratization of knowledge, offer vital frameworks for reorienting preservation towards more equitable and participatory models. Collaborations with public historians, cultural studies scholars, and community-based organizations can foster new ways of spatializing and interpreting the past.
Community Engagement
Meaningful community engagement is essential for a more inclusive preservation practice. This demands a shift from paternalistic “outreach” efforts to models of shared agency and co-creation, where marginalized groups assert sovereignty over their own histories and geographies.
Co-Curation Initiatives
Preservation must move beyond top-down, expert-driven approaches to interpretation and designation. Co-curation initiatives that empower marginalized communities as equal partners in the stewardship of heritage resources are crucial for ensuring that diverse narratives are represented and that the benefits of preservation are equitably distributed.
Outreach Programs
Outreach programs that build long-term relationships with underrepresented groups, rather than sporadic engagement, are essential for fostering trust and shared ownership. Preservationists must be willing to cede normative power, learn from community knowledge, and adapt their practices to align with the priorities and epistemologies of marginalized stakeholders.
Inclusive Representation
Diversifying the preservation profession itself is a vital step towards more equitable and representative practice. Targeted recruitment, mentorship programs, and the establishment of dedicated funding streams can help ensure that the field’s decision-makers, researchers, and advocates reflect the full spectrum of cultural identities within society.
Temporal Dimensions
Preserving diverse human geographies requires grappling with the layered histories and emerging trajectories that shape the built environment. This demands a nuanced understanding of how the past continues to inform the present, and how contemporary interventions can either reinforce or challenge existing power structures.
Historical Continuities
The historic built environment serves as a material record of past investments, decisions, and power dynamics. Preservationists must be attuned to how these legacies of wealth, privilege, and exclusion continue to manifest in the present-day landscape, shaping the distribution of resources and the visibility of marginalized narratives.
Intergenerational Legacies
Preservation must also recognize the intergenerational dimensions of cultural identity and spatial belonging. As communities have been dispersed and displaced, their material and immaterial legacies may transcend geographic boundaries, requiring preservationists to bridge local, national, and global scales in their work.
Emerging Trajectories
At the same time, preservation must be attentive to the dynamic and contested nature of cultural identity, acknowledging that the meanings ascribed to places are continually evolving. Collaborative, community-driven approaches to heritage-keeping can help ensure that preservation remains responsive to the emerging needs and aspirations of marginalized groups.
By embracing the full complexity of human geographies, preservation has the potential to play a vital role in promoting more equitable and inclusive cities. This requires a fundamental shift in the field’s norms, policies, and practices – one that centers the voices, experiences, and spatial claims of marginalized communities as equal partners in the stewardship of the built environment.
