How healthy is the historic preservation field today, in 2023?
Is historic preservation relevant to the public and to experts, including scholars? Ever since I entered the field in 1998, my anecdotal experience has been that general interest in the field has been been on the decline, while, at the same time, people who are working in an area directly related to preservation policy (i.e., government laws, regulations, guidelines) or historic preservation advocacy have increased their efforts. I’ve also observed related fields, such as urban and town planning, increasingly embrace what its practitioners refer to as “heritage preservation,” while rejecting orthodox historic preservation. Interestingly, planning’s use of the term, “heritage preservation,” seems to be a shortening of the cumbersome term, “cultural heritage preservation.” In a planning sphere, (cultural) heritage preservation emphasizes how the older built environment benefits people, such as through economic development, sustaining personal and group identity, well-being, and health. It is a concept espoused at the international level by UNESCO, especially through its “Historic Urban Landscape” (HUL) approach, and inherently incorporates aspects of sustainability (both cultural and environmental) and equity—all of which makes sense, given that these areas have become fundamental goals in much of urban planning practice across the globe.
But, is there evidence that “historic preservation” is on the decline, beyond my own experience? This is a question that I set out to answer using readily available data from Google. By using its ngram and Search Trend services, this question can, indeed, be answered in a generalizable manner.
Google has, for more than a decade, endeavored to scan the printed materials in many of the libraries in the US and abroad. This is why you can go to Google Books and find pretty much every book that has ever been published, from several hundred years ago, to the present. In fact, many publishers, such as Routledge, automatically supply their texts to the Google Book service before the public can obtain them. While the publishing industry, at first, was deeply concerned that this process would rob them of revenue, the ability of publishers to control how much of their books’ contents are available to the public seems to have resolved the issue. Because of this “solution,” it is not possible to view most of the content in commercial books—instead, searches result in snippets of texts. In essence, Google Books has become free advertising for publishers: it’s a way of enticing you to buy a book. But—and here’s the critical part—Google’s servers have full and unrestricted access to ALL of the text in ALL of these books. Realizing the amazing corpus at their disposal, Google released its “ngram” service, which allows the public to search for phrases in these books and find out how frequently they occur over defined time periods. Through this tool, it is possible to establish the scholarly popularity of topics, over time.
Similarly, Google has, since 2004, kept a record of all of the internet search phrases people use. Using this tool—Google Trends—it is also possible to establish the popularity of search terms used by the public, at large, over time.
Back to my question—is there evidence that “historic preservation” is on the decline—what do ngram and Search Trends show? To help contextualize this question, I added the phrases “cultural heritage” and the associated concept of “intangible heritage” to “historic preservation.” My thought is that by showing the relative popularity of historic preservation to these two, related concepts, that embrace people first (rather than buildings and fabric first), would be potentially enlightening.
Fig. 1 shows the overall popularity of the phrases “historic preservation,” “cultural heritage,” and “intangible heritage” in all the books Google scanned from 1919 to 2019 (2019 is the last year that Google has made these data available). Interpreting this graph, it is readily apparent that “cultural heritage” is on a steady growth of scholarly interest, far surpassing “historic preservation.” Similarly, while the frequency of “intangible heritage” has been increasing, since 2000, as a topic, it appears to be on the way to surpass historic preservation within the next five to ten years. Overall, “historic preservation” peaked as a scholarly topic from about 1979 to 1990, and has been on a significant decline, ever since.
Similar results can be seen in the frequency of internet search terms for “historic preservation,” “cultural heritage,” and “intangible heritage” for all internet searches from 2004 to March 2023. While the results, here, are not as dramatic as scholarly interest, there is a clear decline in how often people are searching for “historic preservation” in this time period. Of interest is that popular searches for “intangible heritage” already appear to be on the way to exceeding searches for “historic preservation” in the next year, or so. While there was a slight decline in searches for “cultural heritage” between about 2007 and 2020, the frequency of searches for this term has been on the rise for the past few years.
Do these data definitively show that historic preservation is declining in popularity? While it may be a stretch to make such a strong claim, there does seem to be evidence of a decline, both in scholarly and public interest. Historic preservation policy (i.e., laws, regulations, and guidelines) have not changed in the US for nearly half a century; this is largely because, even at the local level, most historic preservation policies are duplicative or derivative of federal historic policy (Avrami, Leo, & Sanchez 2018). 70% of historic preservation practice exists for regulatory compliance (Wells 2018), which means that the majority of historic preservation practice in the US is likely becoming less relevant to scholars and the public. Surely, this cannot be good for the overall health of the field.
Based on what I’m observing, I make the bold prediction that unless historic preservation policy, in the US, begins to understand and embrace the social science constructs of cultural heritage and intangible heritage, the field will eventually fade into irrelevance, and will be replaced by other fields. Already, we see evidence that urban planning, through its embrace of (cultural) heritage preservation, is increasing its relevance to the public and, especially sustainability, by embracing a social science and human- and people-centered perspective.
I have no doubt that people will always want to save old places, but not because of the values encapsulated in its ancient, orthodox doctrines and existing policy, but because old places are beneficial for people. Whether or not the historic preservation field will “get it,” or die, in irrelevance, is up to its leaders, including academic leaders. For now, I’m heartened that urban planning seems to get the person-place relationship with older places that the majority of historic preservation practice doesn’t. The future is bright, but historic preservation, unless it changes, won’t be there with us.
Works cited:
Avrami, E., Leo, C.-N., & Sanchez, A. S. (2018). Confronting exclusion: Redefining the intended outcomes of historic preservation. Change Over Time: International Journal of Conservation and the Built Environment, 8(1), 102–120.
Wells, J. C. (2018). Challenging the assumption about a direct relationship between historic preservation and architecture in the United States. Frontiers of Architectural Research, 7(4), 455–464.
“I’ve also observed related fields, such as urban and town planning, increasingly embrace what its practitioners refer to as “heritage preservation,” while rejecting orthodox historic preservation. Interestingly, planning’s use of the term, “heritage preservation,” seems to be a shortening of the cumbersome term, “cultural heritage preservation.” In a planning sphere, (cultural) heritage preservation emphasizes how the older built environment benefits people, such as through economic development, sustaining personal and group identity, well-being, and health.” I’d be interested in your evidence. Are planning schools or articles addressing heritage preservation? Are local agencies establishing positions or divisions? Perhaps I lack the imagination to know what to look for but I don’t see such a trend. I like your approach in quantifying the trends for HP, but now let’s see some data for the other side of your equation. If HP is truly on the decline, give me more hope, please, that planning is actually picking up the slack.
Elizabeth, you’ve gone straight to the heart of the weakness in my argument. No, I cannot provide evidence that urban planning is wholeheartedly embracing cultural heritage preservation and, by association, radically changing policy and practice. There are small “wins,” in this regard, however. The creation of cultural heritage districts in San Francisco were led by planners (https://sfstandard.com/arts-culture/heres-how-san-franciscos-cultural-districts-work/); Ballarat, Australia successfully implemented UNESCO’s Historic Urban Landscape approach, again, led by planners (https://www.hulballarat.org.au/); and the European Commission has been funding many social science research projects related to the older built environment and policy, in which many planning academics have engaged (https://culture.ec.europa.eu/cultural-heritage/funding-opportunities-for-cultural-heritage). But, it’s not (yet?) pervasive, but these projects are are the increase, while orthodox historic preservation activity is on the decrease.
Thanks for this investigation. While the rise in interest in the concept of “cultural heritage” surely has implications for the practice and support of preservation, and is therefore good to be alerted to, there is an apples-to-oranges aspect to comparing the two phrases as described in your essay. The phrase “cultural heritage” across a vast and generalized corpus such as ngram’s can occur in a number of contexts other than that of preservation, especially of the built environment. To say that “regular attendance at religious services is part of the cultural heritage of self-identified conservative American Christians” is a perfectly reasonable social-science assertion, if supported by data. But it is incommensurable with the narrower concept of historic preservation, which specifically includes an attitude of conservation and normally appears in the context of built environment (and less often, objects). You yourself cite urban planning as the relevant context. Therefore it is virtually inevitable that the phrase “cultural heritage” appears far more often and on a steeper growth path: it occurs in far more contexts irrelevant to those in which “historic preservation” occurs, and occurs in a moment in which “culture” as a proxy for many human products and a range of identity categories, is salient. Note that I am not taking a position as to the correctness of your argument that historic preservation has become less valued, or that the factors which make “cultural heritage” appealing in the current moment aren’t playing a role. I am saying that the formulation of the ngram comparison you make is severely flawed, indeed deceptive, and would not pass muster in a properly peer-reviewed journal, though it produces “data.” It’s like supporting an assertion that marriage is on the decline because an ngram comparison shows that the term “gold” is 20 times more popular in Google Books than “wedding band.”
Randall — thanks for your observations. My intent is to showcase a popularity contest, not form the core of a refereed article, but I appreciate your concern. As you rightly suggest, these are indeed apple and oranges comparisons, which I do not deny: in fact, that’s the point of the blog post. I’m simply stating that apples are more popular than oranges and that oranges are in a serious decline — fewer and fewer people seem to be interested in them. Why do you think this might be the case? That’s what I hope my readers ask and, in their own way, start investigating, whether they are in research or practice.