How to make people care about heritage
Placemaking is key, writes Tobi Nussbaum
As Ottawa played host to the 2017 Ontario Heritage Conference last weekend, I have been reflecting on the key questions of heritage conservation.
How is the public interest served by promoting and protecting heritage buildings? How do we balance the public benefit with the rights of property owners? What constitutes heritage and who gets to define it — the broader community, elected officials, heritage planners and experts?
These are questions I need to ask and re-ask often. I pose them because heritage promotion requires rigour and the constant demonstration of public value in order to gain the broad support that is critical to remain a relevant and successful enterprise. I would suggest that one of the ways to do that is to situate heritage within the concept of placemaking: the idea that individual physical spots in our cities — from a street corner to a small park to a main street — are not just utilitarian but have value in promoting health, happiness and well-being.
The practice of placemaking seeks to connect citizens and neighbourhoods to their public spaces with a strong emphasis on design, social capital and beauty.
The story of heritage as placemaking can be told in three parts.
A GEOGRAPHIC PLACE
It may seem obvious that heritage is tied to geography, but heritage proponents can do more to ensure heritage is explained within its physical context both natural and constructed. What occurred on a site before a building was built on top of it? Does the physical geography of a place help explain why it was built or details of its style?
These questions also enable us weave in older histories — indigenous histories foremost among them — but also rural histories and stories of immigrants and changing populations.
A CULTURAL PLACE
It is important that we connect heritage buildings with their context — not just the architects and builders who designed and constructed them, but the people who occupied them, the events that took place inside them and the history that emerged from them. These are the elements that help us to better understand our collective past, enrich our experience of our cities today and hopefully guide us to a more meaningful future appreciation of our built environment.
A DELIBERATE PLACE
Heritage buildings are often — though not always — associated with higher quality design, craftsmanship and aesthetics.
These are elements many members of the public would like to see infused in all of our spaces and buildings, including new ones.
If every new building had the same commitment to craftsmanship, design and beauty as many of the older buildings we aim to preserve, there might be increased scope for creativity and adaptive use in our approach to heritage protection.
In this important year in our country’s political history, I encourage heritage professionals and supporters to consider how to better explain the benefits of heritage to others, to connect the important public value of heritage to the building of more livable and sustainable cities.