Placemaking & Design

Influencing Preservation/Conservation Policy & Design through Grassroots, Justice-oriented Efforts

A recent preservation effort in England is well worth the time to understand because it relates so strongly to the future of the field. But, it’s who led these efforts that’s remarkable: it wasn’t preservationists/conservationists, but rather skateboarders. And we could learn a lot from their lesson. You’ll understand what I mean once you watch …

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What Will Historic Preservation Look Like in 50 Years?

A few weeks ago, I attended the 7th National Forum on Preservation Practice hosted by Goucher College, which focused on the next 50 years of practice. One thing I’ve always liked about the National Forum is that it has a mix of both practitioners and academics, which helps to facilitate productive exchanges that otherwise would …

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A Love Affair with Effective Preservation Design?

Recently, I read an article on the decline in the collaboration of environmental psychologists and architects. In “Architecture’s Brief Love Affair with Psychology Is Overdue a Revival” Carlos Galan-Diaz and Dörte Martens describe how the environmental design and behavior movement that started in the 1970s and peaked in the 1980s now seems to be a …

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How Conservation Social Science Can Inform Historic Preservation

One of the things I really love about the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) is the multidisciplinary nature of their conference. It’s one of the few venues where it doesn’t really matter what your discipline is; instead, it’s the particular topics that people address that are most important. At the conference, it’s not unusual to …

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