Heritage and Economics

Almost since the beginning of the heritage conservation movement, there has been a resistance by activists and scholars to discussing heritage in the context of economics. Somehow it was seen as diminishing the importance of cultural heritage to have it tainted with quantification as Euros, Dollars or Yen.

Fortunately, in my mind, that is changing. It isn't that the economic value of heritage resources is the only value, or even the most important one. But considering the economics should be a perspective that is welcomed rather than avoided by those committed to conserve the best of the built environment.

On the European front, leading the way in this regard is the Nordic Network on the Economics of the Built Heritage. The Network is coordinated by the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies at the Technical University of Helsinki.

Over the last few years they have held symposia, established a website with links to heritage economics studies and papers, and have released at least one scholarly publication.

Last week they issued their latest work, Economics and Built Heritage - Toward New European Initiatives.. This is a collection of papers ably edited by Mikko Malkki, Raine Mantysalo and my friend Kaisa Schmidt-Thome.

While the book was released in hard copy at a meeting of European Culture Ministers, it is also available in pdf form on line.

The range of subjects is wide so anyone with the least interest in the built heritage/economics connection should find both intellectual stimulation and perhaps methodological tools.

Much of what has been available, frankly, has been of such an esoteric nature that it's utility was limited. This is not the case with the papers presented here. They do lay the foundations for new European initiatives.

Heritage and Sustainable Development

As I've written before (May 31, 2008) much of the world has a better understanding of what Sustainable Development means than we do in North America. Graphically Sustainable Development looks like this:

Sustainable Development requires environmental responsibility, economic responsibility, and social/cultural responsibility. Further for a community to be viable there needs to be a link between environmental responsibility and economic responsibility. For a community to be livable there needs to be a link between environmental responsibility and social/cultural responsibility. And for a community to be equitable there needs to be a link between economic responsibility and social/cultural responsibility.

But in North America many of the proponents of sustainable development ignore both the economic and social/cultural components, and even have a myopic view of what constitutes environmental responsibility.

This is most apparent in a "checklist" approach to "green building" called LEED. LEED, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a product of the U.S. Green Building Council.

I'm happy that LEED exists. It is an excellent first shot at trying to make buildings and neighborhoods more environmentally responsible. But to say that LEED is necessary but not sufficient for sustainable development is no different than saying dentistry is necessary but not sufficient for health care. But my other two dissents from LEED-mania are: 1) LEED only deals with the environmental component of sustainable development, not at all with the other two components -- economic responsibility and social/cultural responsibility; and 2) even within the environmental responsibility component of sustainable development the contributions of existing buildings is irresponsibly inadequate on multiple levels.

In the US currently there are dozens of examples - some by environmental groups themselves - in which historic buildings are being razed with the excuse being given, "But we are going to be LEED certified."

The US and Canada have much to learn from the rest of the world about the practice of sustainable development. But until we get over the absurdity that simply scoring enough points to rate a LEED gold star is the same as sustainable development, we won't be making much progress.

This issue was the subject of a brief interview with architect and journalist Lloyd Alter of the website Treehugger.com that you might wish to look at.