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.

Ontario, Canada Heritage Conference

The link between heritage conservation and sustainable development is well understood in many parts of the world. The United Kingdom in particular is at the cutting edge in making the link, but so are many countries in the developing world.

However, this is an area where for the most part North Americans are far behind other countries. In both the US and Canada the so called "green architects" have convinced themselves, politicians, policy makers and much of the media that sustainable development and "green buildings" are one in the same. They are not! While environmental responsibility is an important component of comprehensive sustainable development it is far from the whole story.

But in both countries heritage conservation professionals are beginning to educate themselves so that they can educate others in the important role that historic preservation plays in sustainable development. That was the effort taking place as the annual heritage conservation conference in the Canadian province of Ontario.


Held in the delightful small town of Collingwood (population 17,000) the theme of the conference was Landmarks not Landfill. In the past this conference has published some of their proceedings in a newsletter and on a web site. Hopefully they will do so this year as well.

But the good news is that there were a number of excellent presentations by representatives from the public, private, and non-profit sectors that evidenced a growing understanding of this important link.

This recognition that heritage conservation is a central element of sustainable development may be the most important thing happening in historic preservation in the world today. Heritage professionals and advocates in Ontario are making the most important first step -- learning the connection. Maybe one of these days the US and Canada will catch up to the rest of the world where that connection is obvious.