Economics, Sustainability & Historic Preservation

Quotes from the following article: http://www.nationaltrust.org/advocacy/case/Rypkema_Speech_on_Sustainability_in_Portland.pdf

"Razing historic buildings results in a triple hit on scarce resources. First, we are throwing away thousands of dollars of embodied energy. Second, we are replacing it with materials vastly more consumptive of energy. What are most historic houses built from? Brick, plaster, concrete and timber -- among the least energy consumptive of materials. What are major components of new buildings? Plastic, steel, vinyl and aluminum – among the most energy consumptive of materials. Third, recurring embodied energy savings increase dramatically as a building life stretches over fifty years. You’re a fool or a fraud if you claim to be an environmentalist and yet you throw away historic buildings, and their components.

The World Bank specifically relates the concept of embodied energy with historic buildings saying, “…the key economic reason for the cultural patrimony case is that a vast body of valuable assets, for which sunk costs have already been paid by prior generations, is available. It is a waste to overlook such assets.”

I said earlier that in the US we haven't generally made the connection between sustainable development and historic preservation, but that there was one notable exception. The exception is Smart Growth. Dick Moe brought the preservation movement – with many of us kicking and screaming – into the forefront of Smart Growth…as well we should be. There is no movement in America today that enjoys more widespread support across political, ideological, and geographical boundaries than does Smart Growth. Democrats support it for environmental reasons, Republicans for fiscal reasons, big city mayors, rural county commissioners, there are Smart Growth supporters everywhere. The Smart Growth movement also has a clear statement of principles, and here it is:

• Create range of housing opportunities and choices
• Create walkable neighborhoods
• Encourage community and stakeholder collaboration
• Foster distinctive, attractive places with a Sense of Place
• Make development decisions predictable, fair, and cost effective
• Mix land uses
• Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty and critical environmental areas
• Provide variety of transportation choices
• Strengthen and direct development toward existing communities
• Take advantage of compact built design.

But you know what? If a community did nothing but protect its historic neighborhoods it will have advanced every Smart Growth principle. Historic preservation IS Smart Growth. A Smart Growth approach that does not include historic preservation high on the agenda is stupid growth, period.

Historic preservation is vital to sustainable development, but not just on the level of environmental responsibility. The second component of the sustainable development equation is economic responsibility. So let me give you some examples in this area. An underappreciated contribution of historic buildings is their role as natural incubators of small businesses. It isn’t the Fortune 500 that are creating the jobs in America. 85% of all net new jobs are created by firms employing less than 20 people. One of the few costs firms of that size can control is occupancy costs – rents. In downtowns and in neighborhood commercial districts a major contribution to the local economy is the relative affordability of older buildings. It is no accident that the creative, imaginative, start-up firm isn’t located in the corporate office “campus” the industrial park or the shopping center – they simply cannot afford those rents. Historic commercial buildings play the natural business incubator role, usually with no subsidy or assistance of any kind.....


The area of preservation’s economic impact that’s been studied most frequently is the effect of local historic districts on property values. It has been looked at by a number of people and institutions using a variety of methodologies in historic districts all over the country. The most interesting result is the consistency of the findings. By far the most common conclusion is that properties within local historic districts appreciate at rates greater than the local market overall and faster than similar non-designated neighborhoods. Of the several dozen of these analyses, the worst-case scenario is that housing in historic districts appreciates at a rate equivalent to the local market as a whole......


So there are some ways that historic preservation contributes to sustainable development through environmental responsibility and through economic responsibility. But I saved the third area – cultural and social responsibility – for last, because in the long run it may well be the most important.

First, housing. In the United States today we are facing a crisis in housing. All kinds of solutions – most of them very expensive – are being proposed. But the most obvious is barely on the radar screen – quit tearing down older and historic housing. Homes built before 1950 disproportionately house people of modest means – the vast majority without any subsidy or public intervention of any kind. So you take these two facts – there is an affordable housing crisis and older housing is providing affordable housing and one would think, “Well, then, there must be a high priority to saving that housing stock.” Alas, not so.

For the last thirty years, every day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year we have lost 577 older and historic houses, over 80 percent of them single-family residences. The vast majority of these houses were consciously torn down, were thrown away as being valueless. For our most historic houses – those built before 1920 – in just the decade of the 1990s, 772,000 housing units were lost from our built national heritage.

Affordable housing is central to social responsibility; older and historic homes will continue to provide affordable housing if we just quit tearing them down. At least as important as housing affordability is the issue of economic integration. America is a very diverse country – racially, ethnically, educationally, economically. But on the neighborhood level our neighborhoods are not diverse at all. The vast majority of neighborhoods are all white or all black, all rich or all poor. But the exception – virtually everywhere I’ve looked in America – is in historic districts. There rich and poor, Asian and Hispanic, college educated and high school drop out, live in immediate proximity, are neighbors in the truest sense of the word. That is economic integration and sustainable cities are going to need it."

The entire article is a great read and resource. The author is a well respected preservation and economic consulting expert.