Second Order Preservation

A new perspective on preservation is the topic of our conversation with Erica Avrami on her groundbreaking book "Second Order Preservation." This episode challenges everything you thought you knew about historic preservation, pushing beyond the binary "listed or not listed" mentality that has dominated the field for decades.

What happens when we shift from seeing preservation as merely saving buildings to understanding it as a powerful tool for social justice and climate action? Avrami reveals how our current policies often privilege certain histories while inadvertently erasing others. She questions whether our designation systems truly serve the broader public and introduces a framework that considers who benefits—and who is burdened—by preservation decisions.

The conversation extends beyond theory to practical paths forward, examining how we might reform preservation policies to better serve communities. Rather than abandoning preservation altogether, Avrami calls for a more intentional approach that evaluates the long-term impacts of our decisions and considers preservation as the freedom to transfer heritage across generations.

Show Notes:

• Further Reading: 
  • Preserving the Vanishing City by Stephanie Ryberg-Webster
  • Reconstructing the Garrick: Adler & Sullivan’s Lost Masterpiece by Tim Samuelson, Eric Nordstrom, Chris Ware, and John Vinci
• To help support the show, pick up a copy of the book through our Amazon Affiliates page at https://amzn.to/3FZ92en or even better, get a copy through your local bookstore!
• To view the show transcripts, click on the episode at https://bookedonplanning.buzzsprout.com 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Historic Preservation
• 1:16 What is Second Order Preservation?
• 6:41 Preservation Policy Evolution
• 10:54 Moving Beyond Building-Centric Approaches
• 17:20 Heritage, Authenticity and Survivorship Bias
• 29:38 Benefits and Burdens of Preservation
• 35:01 Restorative Justice in Preservation
• 43:10 Policy Reform and Changing the Rules
• 48:31 Conclusion and Book Recommendations

Transcript

Stephanie Rouse: 0:00

RDG Planning and Design is a nationally recognized multidisciplinary firm offering professional services in architecture, landscape architecture, interior design, lighting design, strategic planning, urban and comprehensive planning and design, graphic design, engineering and integrated and public art. Diverse in knowledge and experience, they are united in their pursuit to create meaning together with their clients and in their communities, and by their drive to live responsibly and do it well. Decades of dedication to success have taken them around the world and today their commitment to communication and technology allows them to engage clients anywhere, from their offices in Colorado, iowa, missouri, nebraska and Wisconsin. You're listening to the Booked on Planning podcast, a project of the Nebraska chapter of the American Planning Association. In each episode, we dive into how cities function by talking with authors on housing, transportation and everything in between.

Stephanie Rouse: 1:00

Join us as we get Booked on Planning. Welcome back, bookworms, to another episode of Booked on Planning. In this episode we talk with author Erika Avrami on her book Second Order Preservation, social Justice and Climate Action Through Heritage Policy. I first heard Erica talk about these concepts last summer when she spoke as the keynote for the National Alliance of Preservation Commission's forum conference. I immediately added her book to our list for this year's reading.

Jennifer Hiatt: 1:37

And second order preservation really makes you take a hard look at the policies surrounding preservation and why we do the things we do. I thought Erica's point that we don't really consider who is burdened well enough was very eye-opening. I, at least, really only used to start thinking about the benefits of historic preservation, but I never thought about who was burdened on the other side of that preservation.

Stephanie Rouse: 2:00

Yeah, having worked in the field of preservation for so many years, it felt like we were always just fighting for relevance, let alone having time to consider our larger societal impacts. But the book offered a really thought-provoking divergence from the embedded approach in preservation that you preserve the building first and then all the other benefits are going to follow.

Jennifer Hiatt: 2:19

So let's get into our conversation with author Erika Avrami on second-order preservation social justice and climate action through heritage policy.

Stephanie Rouse: 2:30

Erica, thank you for joining us on Booked on Planning to talk about your book. Second Order Preservation, Social Justice and Climate Action Through Heritage Policy. Second order thinking was a new concept to me, First order being a focus on objects, second order thinking more broadly about impacts. Can you talk about how second order applies to the field of preservation?

Erica Avrami: 2:51

Absolutely. It's really shorthand for thinking about the implications of decisions and in the context of historic preservation, we have often looked at this act of saving something as primary and all the other benefits as coming as a result of that primary act. So we have a building. We don't want it to be lost or torn down, we save that building through designation and then all of the economic, environmental and social benefits can ensue as a result of that protection. What second order preservation tries to get us thinking about is some of those longer term intentions. All of our laws around preservation here in the United States talk about things like economic stability, economic vitality, incentivizing tourism, ensuring civic welfare, environmental benefits in some cases, and so we don't necessarily take those metrics into consideration when we're making the decisions about what to save or what not to save. And what Second Order helps to promote, I hope, is consideration of those implications and how to really better incorporate those longer term intentions into decision making.

Stephanie Rouse: 4:13

Yeah, so many of our designation criteria are on the architecture, the social history, whether there's archaeological influences, and they don't really get beyond that. Maybe our ordinances say the goals of our preservation are to do all of these other things, but we never designate any buildings for those specific goals. We really limit it to what is this building architecturally doing for the preservation field?

Erica Avrami: 4:36

Absolutely, and so thinking about the implications of those decisions is what takes us to that broader set of intentions.

Jennifer Hiatt: 4:44

And can you walk us through how we got the historic preservation policies we have in place now, those first order thinking policies, and why do you think those policies have seen so little change over the years?

Erica Avrami: 4:56

So I want to be fair to the field and emphasize the fact that we do have a diverse toolbox. There's regulation, there's transfer property rights, there are different types of tax incentives, different kinds of ownership structures, and so we do have a diverse toolbox. But so many of those tools are contingent upon this idea of being on a list or being designated. And that concept, though it's been around in governments, particularly European governments, for a few hundred years, it really has shaped the way we think about the work of preservation under the rubric of government significantly in the modern era, and so everything that we do is really about is it on the list or is it not on the list? And I think that concept, that very binary concept of is it worthy of being listed, not worthy of being listed, has really shaped policy today and involved at the time of a lot of our kind of modern legislation 1960s, for example, when the National Historic Preservation Act came into play, the New York City Landmarks Law came into play.

Erica Avrami: 6:13

There really were a number of different interests involved, but a lot of those interests represented architecture, architectural history, and so it was the idea of curating the built environment. Even James Marston Fitch, who taught historic preservation at Columbia, who I hold, a professorship that's in his name. He published a seminal text on the curatorial management of the built environment and that idea that somehow architecture was like objects, that we were looking at through an aesthetic lens, also a social history lens. I think that really influenced this thinking of the materiality, the aesthetics and the way in which architecture is really a designed object that has a function but isn't considered as much as a socially dynamic space. And I think you know the policies then that kind of idea. Are you on the list? Are you not on the list? The before and after photographs, all of those kind of emphasize the material, the aesthetic, et cetera.

Stephanie Rouse: 7:21

Yeah, I think the only incentive that we've had, to my knowledge, that goes beyond is it on the list or not on the list and we've lost it since then was the federal tax credit for old buildings, not necessarily designated buildings. It wasn't quite as much as if you were actually on the list, but it was one incentive that helped with preserving an older building, not a listed building.

Erica Avrami: 7:41

Absolutely.

Erica Avrami: 7:42

You raise an excellent point and the loss of that 10% tax credit for older buildings.

Erica Avrami: 7:48

What many people don't realize is that that emerged during the oil crisis. The tax incentives for what we call today historic tax credits actually started as rehabilitation tax credits, and they were rationalized in Congress in debates about these laws. On issues of embodied energy, there was an oil embargo. Gasoline was very high, and there was more and more research about both the operational energy required to use buildings as well as the embodied energy required to construct new buildings, and so the reuse of existing buildings, particularly in city centers, was seen as a way to conserve energy, and so the federal government endorsed these rehabilitation tax credits with a tiered system, starting at 10%, just as you said, for older buildings, and then going up to 25% if the building was on the National Register, and so that really had a different orientation to it. But over time, the tax credits have evolved and preservationists have really focused on preserving the ones specifically for historic buildings, and the loss of the 10% tax credit, I think, is something that we really need to reconsider, particularly in the context of a climate crisis.

Stephanie Rouse: 9:14

Yeah, and I thought it was interesting in that section of the book where you're talking about all of this, how the foundation for the embodied energy argument for historic preservation was a little bit not super thorough or the study that it was based on wasn't all that well-researched, and we've just taken that and run with it. And still today, I mean we talk about the greenest building is the one that's standing and we harken back to that image of the building as a gas can. That was done during that time. But it really comes down to not necessarily just an old building is a better building, but are you upgrading that older building and making it more efficient and tightening up the envelope? Because just having an old building isn't the most efficient after all.

Erica Avrami: 9:54

Right Research that is emerging now, when we look at this from the perspective of carbon not simply energy, but carbon that's being emitted we see more and more studies that demonstrate that deep retrofit of existing buildings and historic buildings actually are what make them better performers from a carbon perspective, not simply saving old buildings. And that means significant change for historic buildings in some cases, and that's going to be challenging. A because energy codes exempt most historic buildings, at least buildings that are on or eligible for the National Register. And the new decarbonization laws that are coming online, or the greenhouse gas laws some of them do exempt historic buildings, some of them don't laws Some of them do exempt historic building and some of them don't, and so that arena of legislation is still emerging and it's kind of coming up through municipalities and states. So it's something I'm trying to track and look at to understand its implications.

Jennifer Hiatt: 10:59

Yeah, last year we actually interviewed the authors of the book the Power of Existing Buildings and it was such a great insight in how we can still very much honor and respect the history of significant buildings, older buildings, while bringing them up to code and making them more efficient buildings in the end of the day. It was a very good read.

Stephanie Rouse: 11:20

So our focus on place-based and individual building designation rarely takes into consideration the impacts that we'd see beyond just saving that one building. So what does deconstructing an approach like this look like?

Erica Avrami: 11:34

You know I raise some thoughts in the book. I don't have solutions yet. We're working on those and in some ways I think solutions have to be flexible. And in some ways I think solutions have to be flexible we need to be considering differences of place and what some of those kind of guidances are. But I do think being much more intentional about what preservation is supposed to achieve is important in that pursuit. If we're really interested in ensuring distributive justice meaning the decision to preserve something has benefited people without overly burdening other people then we need to be devoting resources to going back and studying places after they've been designated for a while and really looking at what are the long-term effects of this process, whether it's economic, environmental, social. I also think we need to be more intentional about what designation is supposed to achieve for a community or for a society.

Erica Avrami: 12:37

Again, the building is saved. But some people may be advocating for saving that building because they see its economic potential for tourism development. Others may be seeing the protection of that building simply as a place that they can continue to walk by and its preservation protects a street wall or a certain view shed, and they want to see that survive in perpetuity, and so people have different expectations of how preservation is supposed to perform and how those buildings or that heritage is supposed to perform, and I'd love to see more debates about that at the time something is listed or designated and that we come back and revisit those intentions to see if indeed they were achieved or not achieved. You know, one way of doing that is temporary designations. What if, generationally, we had to review a designation every 20, 30 years?

Erica Avrami: 13:34

Other countries, for example, have graded listings. The UK has grade one, grade two, grade three listings, meaning certain grades. You can do a lot more work on it without as much scrutiny around. Is it exactly the same type of window or are you using appropriate materials versus other buildings where more care should be taken around, what changes are made and how it can affect the heritage values, original form, original materials, etc. So I do think that there are a number of options out there. It involves really having more public conversations at the time of that designation is being considered about how we want heritage to perform for people.

Jennifer Hiatt: 14:26

And you make the point in the book that we've landed on a fear and victim model. Basically, we're very afraid of losing a historic building, we're afraid of losing the historic character when you don't put in those exact same windows and what you call the enterprise approach to preservation. So how should we think about moving away from that fear and victim model?

Erica Avrami: 14:44

as you started talking about talking to people moving on, One of the things that emerges in the heritage literature is this idea that heritage is not a renewable resource. So that underpins this idea that if we lose it, we will never get it back. I argue that heritage is absolutely a renewable resource.

Erica Avrami: 15:05

We keep creating heritage every day we have. You know, our heritage lists are long. There are more than a thousand World Heritage Sites. There's the National Register when you think about actual individual properties has more than a million on it.

Erica Avrami: 15:18

So it's not that heritage is not a renewable resource, that heritage is not a renewable resource. And so I think we need to unpack that a little bit and recognize that this fear of loss isn't always about it can't be replaced or there aren't other options. And I think this ties pretty directly to notions of authenticity, this idea that if we lose it, it will no longer be authentic, or if we change it too it, it will no longer be authentic, or if we change it too much, it will no longer be authentic. And I think that authenticity is a really thorny concept that we rely on and that it has many more dimensions that we're failing to recognize through our designation criteria, and that, ultimately, the opposite of authentic is not inauthentic, but rather just indefinite. Right, you know this idea that authentic is somewhat singular. It's what we see or what we think is original, for example, but it's okay.

Erica Avrami: 16:17

So much of our heritage is not, you know, has so many aspects of it that are not original that we need to, I think, be a little more open and accepting of buildings adapting over time for environmental, social and economic reasons. That's why they've survived, that's why these older buildings are still here. It's because they have been adaptable over time. And if we don't think about preservation as ensuring that capacity to transfer across generations and instead focus on no, we just need to keep it exactly how it is, then we're going to be in trouble, right? We need to focus on that intergenerational transfer and that intergenerational transfer of the freedom to identify heritage, to create heritage, to adapt heritage, and not so much about this notion that these are objects that we have to steward from one generation to the next.

Jennifer Hiatt: 17:20

On the heritage and authenticity. One of the examples you use in the book is the reconstruction of the quarters that the soldiers were living in in the winter that awful winter of the Revolutionary War versus the slave houses at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello One. We were like, yes, we still need to see this representation. We know that we have good documentation that it would probably kind of look like this, so we recreate it. And then the slave houses were like they don't exist anymore. We don't have enough information. It was so fascinating to think through anybody's thought process of why one is acceptable and should be seen and why the other was not. It was just crazy. That's what kind of led me to the question.

Erica Avrami: 17:59

Yeah, no, it's.

Erica Avrami: 18:00

That example truly derives from my childhood because I grew up right near Jockey Hollow and the Marstown Historical Park, which is the oldest historical park in the United States.

Erica Avrami: 18:12

Our parks up until that point were really focused on nature as heritage. And so the site of that encampment during the Revolutionary War, like those soldiers huts, we went to them all the time, you know, as kids, as teenagers, like friends, smoked their first cigarette in those huts and you know all sorts of things would happen in those huts and so they were part of this landscape that I was so familiar with. And it wasn't until I got much older and I was looking at histories of reconstruction and then following the debates at Monticello about whether or not it was okay or, quote unquote, authentic to reconstruct the quarters of enslaved peoples on an 18th century plantation right. I mean what is less authentic? Not having that spatial encounter with the enslavement of peoples or having a structure that is in some ways representative but maybe not exactly how it was originally, and we're okay with that in all of these national parks, with these soldier hut reconstructions.

Stephanie Rouse: 19:18

So it is a fascinating comparison, absolutely, and I'm so glad it resonated with you fascinating comparison, absolutely, and I'm so glad it resonated with you and you point out that when we're trying to diversify the stories that we're telling, the heritage that we're representing, that just adding more diverse sites to the National Register or our local landmark registers isn't fixing the issue in the field of preservation. What other steps should we be taking to move beyond this first order approach that we've been stuck in?

Erica Avrami: 19:45

Yeah, I don't in any way mean to say that so many of the efforts that are happening to diversify historic registers and to enhance the diversity of designated properties, I think there's so much amazing work that's happening from the local level to the national level to do that and I think it is necessary amazing work that's happening from the local level to the national level to do that and I think it is necessary. But that is an additive approach. We are doing more, adding more to the rosters. It doesn't necessarily change the systemic issues, which are what are the rules of the game? What are the criteria? How are the Secretary of the Interior standards functioning in ways that work for or against broader representation of stories in our landscape?

Erica Avrami: 20:30

It's not getting at the distributive justice question either, meaning how does this designation of an historic district impact? Some community members advantage them or disadvantage them If you're in that National Register District and you don't have to comply with energy codes. Others do if they're outside that National Register District. Fema responds differently for owners of properties that are on the National Register than those that are not, and so that kind of distributive justice question and those procedural justice questions are really embedded in the work of government, the rules, the standards, the designation criteria, the regulatory processes All of those things are ways that we take decisions that need to be rethought and reformed, essentially in order to ensure that we're not always trying to just add more, but rather we're changing the fundamental issues that are underpinning why we have so much more representation of white, male wealthy histories in our landscape, as opposed to those histories that represent women, people of color, lgbtq communities, et cetera.

Stephanie Rouse: 21:52

I think this is happening more at the local level. There's some larger cities I think Denver is a good example where their designation criteria has grown significantly. I think they have like seven, eight, nine criteria that goes beyond just the building as an object kind of designation criteria, where they're trying to expand properties that could be designated and recognizing other histories. Federal level, I think, is way behind on this and it just takes so much work to move anything. I mean it took us forever to get the Secretary of Interior standards updated, so I think it needs to start there, but how quickly.

Erica Avrami: 22:25

Yes, and I take your point. There are, though, the idea of historic context themes and trying to develop, for example, national historic landmarks that are more representative of the American public. There's good work that has been done. There really is good work that has been done, but when we look at how you change policy on the ground, particularly in the context of more significant regulation right the National Register there's limited regulatory effect by being on the National Register. If I owned a building, I could get it listed on the National Register and then tear it down the next day, as long as I wasn't using federal monies for that demolition. If it's locally designated no then it incurs more regulatory process, and that's in part because so much of our regulation land use, zoning, property taxes all that happens for the most part on that municipal level. That's where the regulation is in many ways most stringent for preservation, at that local level where commissions are reviewing additions or changes to historic buildings, petitions for demolition and the designation process.

Jennifer Hiatt: 23:40

Stephanie actually brought our first thematic district to the city of Lincoln, as opposed to just an area like our Haymarket. The thematic idea was local grocery stores. Lincoln used to be well known for all these little corner grocery stores, and so is this where we got the idea, stephanie, to do thematic. How did you come to that?

Stephanie Rouse: 24:29

no-transcript. Get all of the corner stores scattered throughout all these older neighborhoods, designate them under a discontiguous district and then that opens them up for the special permit to be able to do other uses besides just a single family home in some of these one or two story commercial buildings.

Erica Avrami: 24:53

That's great. Oh, that's fascinating. And I mean and that's an example where this isn't simply about there is a famous architect who designed that building, or there's a particular event that happened at that place, or it's representative of a particular style You're really looking at the social spatial dynamics of those places and the ways in which they have served communities. And even if they're not serving communities today, what you're doing is trying to enable their longevity and adaptation and that's the transfer across generations issue right. And the way in which creative tools around planning and preservation intersect and allow communities and governments to advance.

Erica Avrami: 25:38

This kind of work is fantastic and I absolutely applaud it. And while I may talk a little a lot about some of the antiquated issues in our preservation toolbox, I still think that there are so many creative ways in which, particularly at the local level, municipalities are finding interesting ways of charting preservation pathways. There are things like legacy businesses function differently in different municipalities and different municipalities are looking at intangible heritage in different ways. So I think there is a lot of creativity and I have a lot of hope that our municipal level will continue to demonstrate that really forward-thinking policy landscape and keeping in the theme of Lincoln's history.

Jennifer Hiatt: 26:29

I guess Stephanie and I were actually also just talking about trying to put together a red light district walking tour or something. But it's very difficult to do something like that because a lot of the buildings are no longer there. But this is what seemed to me an example of survivorship bias Like that. History still exists in Lincoln, whether the building is there to put a sign on that says this is part of our red light district. So how does survivorship bias impact how we identify and lift up certain heritages or diminish and sweep away others?

Erica Avrami: 26:59

That's a great example, thank you. And that idea of survivorship bias in the book is really about the way in which, traditionally, preservationists have done surveys. Right, you walk a neighborhood, you do a windscreen survey in a car to sort of identify what survives in the landscape, and all too often political forces, building codes, forms of discrimination, have influenced how and why some buildings survive and others don't, or why some neighborhoods survive and others don't. Everything from redlining to the fact that many histories as you said, that red light district, many LGBTQ histories, the history of emancipation, right Underground railroad histories, for example so many of those places and activities had to be furtive, they had to be secretive because of the potential illegality or violence or societal pushback against those activities could have incurred if they were more public, and so, as a consequence, there are not a lot of records, right, we create this idea that, well, preservation needs to be built on documentation and we need good archives.

Erica Avrami: 28:19

And do we have any drawings? Do we have any photographs? Do we have anything written describing this place and those places very specifically? Did not, you know, try to stay under the radar? And so when we create these standards and preservation and say you must be able to show this evidence or rationalize this based on this kind of documentation. And that documentation doesn't exist, then those stories are disadvantaged in the canon of history as it's represented in the built environment. They will be more vulnerable to demolition, they will not be as represented on heritage rosters and I think that that's really problematic because it just centers certain histories above others. And in order to tell that fuller story, we need to be thinking about the implications of all of these rules and all of these standards in order to be more inclusive.

Jennifer Hiatt: 29:19

The example in your book that made me think of mine was the house I believe maybe in New York City that was potentially an underground railroad safe place, but it couldn't get listed, partly for two reasons.

Jennifer Hiatt: 29:36

One, there wasn't enough evidence overall to show it was an underground railroad stop. That was the point that it wouldn't stand out as an underground railroad. And then some of the architectural features had been removed, and it was at that point that I did kind of want to throw your book. I'm not gonna lie, I was just so mad. Why would we? Why that doesn't make any sense to me, right.

Erica Avrami: 29:55

But part of it is that everyone's trying to play by those rules of the game, right, that everyone's trying to do their due diligence in terms of adhering to designation criteria, periods of significance, understanding designation criteria effectively, and I want to respect that. But at the same time, this kind of work is trying to lay bare as so many other people's projects and research is trying to lay bare that the system, the rules of the game, and how we enforce them and how we interpret them, is not serving the general public. And if we want to better serve, if we're thinking about preservation as a form of public policy, if we want to better serve that broader public, then we need to be very self-reflective and look at some of those effects.

Stephanie Rouse: 30:47

Well, I think one of the issues with why we're so set on following the rules, having all these standards being pretty strict about what we designate and what we don't designate, is we've been fighting for relevance as a field that historic preservation matters, and there's all these campaigns and we kind of latch onto this idea of we have economic benefits or the greenest building benefits. But you point out that the burdens of historic preservation are sorely under-researched.

Erica Avrami: 31:13

So can you talk about some of the burdens that we tend to overlook, that having this kind of very strict approach and listed or not listed has yeah, I mean, I think we've actually touched upon a number of them right, that burden to produce evidence, even if information and stories have been passed down across generations. Is there enough original material? Is it representative of the period of significance? That's a burden on certain publics who have been disadvantaged, who didn't have the access to capital, for example, to maintain a property because of redlining and urban renewal, etc. And so that, in effect, disadvantages them right in the preservation process, whereas those who have the documentation have all that original material, had access to capital in order to maintain a place. Over time, they are advantaged in the process.

Erica Avrami: 32:11

I mentioned earlier the work of FEMA right in post-disaster situations. We're looking at a new era of significant change in the built environment due to the increase in frequency and severity of weather events flooding, fire, drought, so many things and particularly, for example, flooding, whether it's coastal flooding, inland flooding. We're seeing this increase and that means we need to be considering okay, how are we either retrofitting for floods in place? How are we thinking about relocation, whether forced or voluntary relocation? Are we just going to keep building in the same spots over and over again, using federal monies to help support disaster recovery, or are we going to consider other ways federal monies to help support disaster recovery or are we going to consider other ways?

Erica Avrami: 33:07

And when we consider other ways, let's say, I want to put a berm around my house, elevate my house and put a berm around my house that may protect me from flooding.

Erica Avrami: 33:14

It will make my neighbors more vulnerable to flooding because the water still goes somewhere. And the same thing for, for example, coastal communities that have the resources to build a seawall Great, but the community next door, the water will go somewhere. And so, you know, the way we think about these things is really compounded by the climate crisis, and so we see efforts afoot to try and preserve or prioritize historic districts or historic sites in the process of flood adaptation or climate adaptation, for example, and I think we need to be considering what those implications are for not just those property owners and those properties themselves, but also for others. And that's sort of what I mean about the benefits and the burdens. Are we giving more assistance to a community because it's historic and therefore we want to ensure that it is elevated, but how has that now burdened an adjacent community that isn't elevated and is now more vulnerable to flooding?

Jennifer Hiatt: 34:22

In the book you also talk about Ahmad Fakih Al-Mandi's destruction of cultural property in Timbuktu in 2012. It's a very famous case that was. We used a very punitive punishment system, as he well the group that he represented technically created a bunch of destruction, but we are actually starting to see resurgence of these types of attacks currently, as well as we see more, well as we see more war coming into the world again. So how could we begin to think about utilizing restorative justice practices instead of punitive justice practices as we think about historic preservation and what that type of destruction means?

Erica Avrami: 35:01

That's such an interesting case, in part because that case helped to develop the International Criminal Court's policy on cultural heritage, and what we see in the legal arena is more and more consideration of cultural heritage as a human right, which is important right. It's important to recognize that this is a critical and undeniable dimension of the human experience. Again, though, like I kind of push on this question of it's about the freedom to transfer that heritage across generations, not necessarily to save a particular object, and I think the restorative justice question really forces us to consider what that means. In that case there were, you know, some restorative justice efforts, even though it was very punitive, as you said. And there's mixed results as a consequence of that process in terms of what communities felt they got out of it right and what they didn't. And what was super interesting was, while that process was happening, while the charges were being developed and prepared for trial, the places were actually reconstructed through a community engaged process, which kind of goes back to that question of is heritage renewable, right, like it can be reconstructed. And so part of what I argue is there are these restorative acts, and restorative not simply in the preservation form of restoration is an act of restorative justice. The recreation of those places so that people can spatially encounter those conditions In the same way we did that for the soldiers' huts, is important. It's a form of restorative justice for those who have not been represented in the history we encounter in the built environment.

Erica Avrami: 37:01

Yet reconstruction is sort of the last option in preservation decision making right. Reconstruction is sort of seen as oh well, if you again, if you have enough documentation, if you you know, if you can demonstrate how it was before, we can do this, and if you're really meticulous about how you do it and try and do it as authentically as possible. And I think so much of the restorative justice endeavor is about enabling people to claim space in ways that allow a transfer of heritage that may not be about a particular object anymore, in part because the object may be lost or have been transformed so dramatically or completely obliterated by a new office building for example. And so how we claim space in different ways around that loss and recognize that history, still recognizing its ties to geography and to place, I think are important in the restorative justice dimensions of our work. And again it goes back to that question of the rules. We need to rethink some of those rules. We need to think about reconstruction very differently if our intention is restorative justice.

Stephanie Rouse: 38:18

Yeah, because even if you do reconstruct and are able to come up with a solution, you still can't designate it anymore, because it's almost impossible to get a reconstructed building listed, so you'll never be able to put it on a list and you'll never access all the extra benefits of being on that list.

Erica Avrami: 38:37

Right. And we encounter a very similar issue with moving buildings that you know, even a building that's in a flood zone or in a fire zone and there's an interest in relocating it again, if it's on the national register, it will go off the national register. You would have to reapply and make a new case for it to be on the register. So yeah, I mean those. Again, it's the rules of the game and we need to kind of think about some of those rules. In the book I use this very simplistic analogy of playing soccer and how, as kids, you might have played soccer in the street, in somebody's backyard, not had a net, et cetera. But as you kind of go up in the hierarchy of competitive sports, there are more rules and there are more standards that you have to abide by. And the same goes for preservation standards that you have to abide by, and the same goes for preservation Societies. People preserve all the time. But if we want to do that within the construct of public policy, you know, under the rubric of government, and in ways that allow for us to access the resources the taxpayer resources for lack of a better way of saying that then we have to abide by certain rules way of saying that then we have to abide by certain rules and those rules need to be standardized so that it's equitable, right. Everyone wants to know what are the rules so that they can access it, so that they can play the game. And that's where we bump up against attention that the more we standardize those rules, the more we risk exclusion and not recognizing the very diverse arena of heritage that we are seeking to preserve and the social spatial relationships associated with them. It's really about thinking how those rules can be made more flexible, how they can be reformed, and I give a quick example of all the different ways in which the rules of soccer have changed over decades, you know, and we should be able to change our rules. It happens in public policy all the time where we make changes, but as preservationists, there's just going back to that question of fear that you raised earlier, jennifer, that I don't know if I fully responded to, but that sense of loss. Right, it's not just about the buildings, it's about our status quo, and that there's this fear that if we change the rules or try to change the rules, the whole house will come tumbling down. And how do we make changes about designation criteria or standards of reconstruction or restoration or rehabilitation without potentially having these uncertain ripple effects. And I think part of what the book argues for in this concept of second order preservation is we can't always anticipate all of those ripple effects, but we can anticipate some of them. You know, there are different scenarios that we can play out and consider and we can also think about this incrementally.

Erica Avrami: 41:24

And I don't think anyone anticipated, for example, when they sought in the 1970s an exemption from energy performance codes, all these arguments about how modern buildings were like the worst performers, and that's the reason why only historic buildings should be exempt. And now all of those mid-century modern buildings are being designated. So you know again, it doesn't take a lot to bring a little more forethought into our policy making. That example always makes me chuckle. Did we just never think that a modern building might be designated? Did we just think that the only historic buildings that would ever be on a list are, you know, quaint little homes and palatial mansions and churches and things like that? Maybe, but I think there's enough intellectual curiosity within our field to be able to anticipate some of these things and seek avenues of policy reform that really would be beneficial in the long term. So, to follow that up, who should be leading the policy reform and changing the rules? I think you know, honestly, it needs to be a coalition right. It needs to be involving government, it needs to involve universities. I mean, we have now what we didn't have in the 1960s, when we saw a lot of this legislation coming on board. We had one historic preservation program at Columbia. Now we have a number of historic preservation programs. We have more research that's emerging. We have the capacity to do more policy research have a significant role to play in trying to undertake some of that work and get it to happen.

Erica Avrami: 43:10

I think governments need to be more accountable to this idea that all we do is keep designating and regulating the things that are designated and not evaluating the effects or implications of the things that we have already designated on people as well as places. I think that's a dimension of government accountability that needs to be reckoned with. Places I think that's a dimension of government accountability that needs to be reckoned with. And I do think that the third sector, the not-for-profit and philanthropic world, has a role to play in that as well. They tend to have more flexibility, which is great, but at the same time, when we're looking at systemic issues right how to change the rules of the game what we're really talking about is public policy, those policy tools that government and government institutions are creating and enforcing. And not-for-profit organizations and philanthropic organizations can be creative, they can do experimental work at various sites, they can help fund research, they can really kind of spur some of that, but they're not the ones doing the regulating, if that makes sense. So I do think that public policy doesn't change without government being part of it, and so that's why I do think it's going to take a coalition and different kinds of entities have different strengths.

Erica Avrami: 44:23

You mentioned some of these advocacy positions that have been taken by not-for-profit organizations over the years about the greenest building and economic benefits of historic preservation. Often those are coming out of not-for-profit organizations that are trying to perpetuate the status quo and trying to raise money and trying to defend our current position, and it isn't always looking at it from a cost benefit analysis. Those kinds of organizations can't always afford to be critical and talk about the dimensions of a case study or of a policy that are not functioning well, because it might actually make preservation not look as good and therefore influence their fundraising capacity. So I think we need to be honest and open about what not-for-profits can do when it comes to policy reform. While there are some foundations and philanthropic organizations that are getting behind this notion and, I hope, hopefully more we need to also recognize the limitations of some of our key partners. They need to still be partners, but they may not be able to lead the charge on policy reform.

Jennifer Hiatt: 45:32

I will admit even after reading the book. But until this conversation, stephanie is the historic preservation planner. I am not. I do have a history degree, I love history, but I am not a preservationist overall. So it seems to me from an outsider's perspective that it was going to be the nonprofits that would step in and maybe lead the next bit of charge for change and policy adherence. But I feel like you have changed my mind in this last bit of conversation there.

Erica Avrami: 46:00

I think they have an important role to play and certainly organizations like the National Trust and other you know more local organizations have done really important work. I mean the National Trust. They've been continuing to look at that question of preservation and existing buildings and carbon, for example, and they were supportive of the care tool, the development of the care tool, for example. So it's not to say that they can't do really good work, but I feel like we need to recognize that there's the need for coalition exists, because everyone's coming with different strengths and constraints and that understanding those differences and being clear about those differences and not sort of saying, well, you're the premier preservation organization, you should be leading this charge. I don't think that that gets us to the place we need to be.

Jennifer Hiatt: 46:48

As a person who works in government and believes in government, I'm really glad to hear that government will still have a solid role to play in preservation for years to come.

Erica Avrami: 46:56

That is my hope. I believe in public institutions I really do and I believe that that can be done in ways that doesn't simply bloat or turn government institutions into bigger entities. I do think that, again, being creative about our policy tools and how we empower communities in different ways to serve as partners and co-producers of heritage is critical to that.

Stephanie Rouse: 47:25

And always our last question, as this is booked on planning in addition to your book, which we recommend everyone get a copy of, what books would you recommend our readers check out?

Erica Avrami: 47:32

So a book that I recently read that was written by a colleague preservation planner is Stephanie Ryberg Webster's Preserving the Vanishing City, where she talks about the very complicated history of Cleveland and the efforts of preservation and how that intersects with politics and race and all sorts of things. So I think that that's a really important way of understanding locality and the very different factors that come into play in questions of preservation. And then my book and I even make an apology, sort of towards the end of the book, that I treat aesthetics somewhat harshly in the context of the volume because I'm really looking at that social spatial relationship, not at the object. But one of the books that has brought me great joy in the last year is the book on the Garrick by John Vinci, reconstructing the Garrick, which was a Louis Kahn building that was demolished in Chicago, and the very creative and interesting ways in which activists came together to try and document and salvage parts of that building. And I think that it's so demonstrative of the very creative ways in which preservation can manifest.

Stephanie Rouse: 48:44

Two great books to add to, for sure, my list. I'm a big, big reader anyways, but I'm always looking for other preservation books too. Erica, thank you so much for joining us to talk about your book. Second Order Preservation, social Justice and Climate Action Through Heritage Policy.

Erica Avrami: 48:59

Thank you both for having me. It's been an honor and a pleasure policy.

Jennifer Hiatt: 49:05

Thank you both for having me. It's been an honor and a pleasure. We hope you enjoyed this conversation with author Erica Avrami on her book Second Order Preservation, Social Justice and Climate Action Through Heritage Policy. You can get your own copy through the publisher at the University of Minnesota Press or click the link in the show notes to take you directly to our affiliate page. Remember to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and please rate, review and share the show. Thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time on Booked on Planning. Thank you.