Talk:Historic preservation

Split?
Possibly this article should become three or four new articles: Thoughts? --Kevlar (talk • contribs) 18:21, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Historic preservation in the United States
 * Heritage conservation in Canada
 * ??? in the United Kingdom
 * Heritage conservation / historic preservation (general, global)


 * Agreed! There's a clear rift developing in the content between the general "heritage conservation" and the "architectural conservation" definitions of HP. So far, the article is definitely biased toward the preservation of historic buildings. Also, breaking this out into separate articles for landscapes, architecture, traditional crafts, etc. would definitely help clarify/streamline the article at hand. Not sure what to do about Canada though. HP seems to be used there too, though intermingled with heritage conservation. Can we get a Canadian viewpoint on the issue? Fitzed (talk) 05:02, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, the title nneds to be far better defined, especially since the word "heritage" means MANY different things. Because there are many other forms of heritage there are many other types of heritage conservation. In this article the "heritage" is "cultural heritage", (i.e. not, for example a "heritage" like inherited genetic traits). The two main types of cultual heritage seem to be tangible cultural heritage and intangible cultural heritage. Intangible cultural heritage is defined by UNESCO as things like oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts, etc. So this article is about the conservation of tangible cultural heritage. But there are many types of tangible cultural heritage that can be conserved - for example, every object in a museum is an item of tangible cultural heritage. This article seems to be about the conservation of built heritage, the conservation of architectural objects. Scribblescribblescribble (talk) 18:10, 22 January 2011 (UTC)


 * ✅ The Canada split has been actioned.  SilkTork  *YES! 09:40, 16 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I support the differentiation as being described, for the reasons that follow, but also that a different article (outlined below) be used to anchor it all. As background, my undergraduate major was in "Historic Preservation", while also studying "Heritage Conservation" in Scotland/UK for a summer. Though there are many related aspects at a abstracted level, the movements evolved rather independently and with different models/ideals and mechanisms. Indeed, if one views "historic preservation" as a movement, then there are separate and independent movements in each country or context (though often stemming from similar events in history) (the "movement" model may be one reason why the article is so heavily slanted to the U.S. perspective), while all part of a broader, world cultural heritage movement. I found that the article Cultural heritage seems to be the highest-level unifying concept for it all of what we are trying to discuss here - defining exactly what was complained of above - while at the same time being an underdeveloped article. I think it could easily be adapted into a top-level conceptual article breaking down into the areas described above (e.g. intangibles, tangibles, cultural property, world heritage programs, national movements, museums, etc.)(while preventing a largely redundant article), and that the creation of a singular "conservation/preservation" page might not be necessary (and night impossible to title without at US vs UK English debate). Secondly, I agree about the dual layered definition (the broader and narrower ones), and I think both should be mentioned and differentiated. Thoughts? Morgan Riley (talk) 02:51, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

*addendum: that "Historic Preservation" become a disambiguation for the three concepts embodied by the term: cultural heritage (preservation), architectural conservation (see broad definition per that page), and Historic preservation in the United States - the movement and legal regime, and eventually they will be sorted out by which they mean. Morgan Riley (talk) 15:17, 24 March 2011 (UTC) On second thought, it should simply redirect either to this page, or to Cultural heritage. Thoughts as to which one is the primary? Ideally, it would be the later, but many of the links to this page seem to be the former.... Morgan Riley (talk) 21:24, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Due to the issues of "worldview" and terminology (see above discussion), and that the page is over 80% about the United States, I have proposed moving the page to the title "Historic preservation in the United States", with relevant international portions spun off. "Historic preservation" in would instead redirect to "cultural heritage", though the links to the page will have to be manually inspected to direct property moved. Thoughts? Morgan Riley (talk) 14:25, 24 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm not totally against creating a "Historic preservation in the United States page," but I disagree that "Historic preservation" should simply redirect to Cultural heritage. Historic preservation is not an equitable term to cultural heritage, as it is a narrower focus. It would be like redirecting Square to Quadrilateral. I think the simplest solution is to make Historic preservation a disambiguation page, linking to "Historic preservation in the United States," "Heritage conservation in Canada," "Cultural heritage," etc. That said, historic preservation seems to be limited almost exclusively to the United States as a term and field of study. Yes, other countries preserve sites and architecture and do all the things that historic preservation does, but only the United States appears to use this term to define a certain subtype of cultural heritage preservation and certain field of study. If you look at this list of historic preservation graduate programs, none of the schools outside of the United States use the term "historic preservation" to define their programs and all take slightly different approaches to the subject. While this point may be a tad pedantic, I think the distinction is sufficient enough to justify not splitting off the article. PhantomPlugger (talk) 16:08, 20 May 2011 (UTC)


 * While that may not be perfectly analogous, I readily agree to your point. Indeed, the majority of links here are from American articles. Might it be advisable then to refocus the article to the narrow conception, and add a hatnote clarification to that effect and link? Or create "Historic Preservation (disambiguation)" and have "Historic Preservation" or "Historic Preservation in the United States" be the primary topic (as evinced by the links-to), and hatnote as such? Morgan Riley (talk) 17:45, 20 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Yeah, my vote would be for refocusing it to the narrower context. The existing hatnote is pretty good. What about just modifying that to mention that this article for the United States usage of the term? PhantomPlugger (talk) 19:34, 20 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Action taken accordingly. Morgan Riley (talk) 23:23, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I would like to challenge the notion that historic preservation is mostly a US-centric concept. While I believe the cultural connotation and value derived from the process of historic preservation might be different for between nations, most countries have some established relationship with preservation. Some are simpler and some are more complex. There is no denying the that in this specific entry the US perspective is more dominant, but from that to say that the concept itself is only mainly used by the US... I believe it is too big of a leap. christopher.robin (talk) 15:48, 9 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Quick answer (my internet at home is down). I agree totally with christopher.robin, I would guess most countries probably do have a system of historic preservation.This article could be split, by country, with each nation inc USA having their own page linked to a main world article (I see Canada already has a separate page). While this split could be done now, wikipedia would benefit if more folks added more national examples. Due to my own lack knowledge and research ability, I feel very hesitant to do it myself.  --  BOD --  10:45, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Negative effects of historic preservation
I have noticed that this page did not mention anything about the potential drawbacks that historic preservation can have on a neighbourhood or current residents. I created a new section called "Potential challenges" where I raise some points, but obviously this can be much further extended. What do you guys think? -- User: FoxyCleopatraRevived 13:30, 8 November 2017

"World view" tag
Doesn't the last sentence in the first paragraph specifically note that this article is primarily about the US & Canada? Shoreranger (talk) 17:14, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a Chinese-style excuse for human-rights abuses. Or a Chinese-style excuse for the clear-felling of every historic building in Beijing? This pitiful explanation for the addition of the "globalise" tag to the article is not enough, and in 16 months it has not generated a single comment. For these reasons I am removing the "globalize" tag (a tag which, ironically, with its US spelling, might need a bit of globalisation itself). Scribblescribblescribble (talk) 17:41, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That said, I think the article needs to move in a completely different direction. Changing the title to Heritage Conservation would be a good start. Having such a US-emphasis to the article is unjustified given that the bulk of structures that are subjected to building conservation, or are at risk from the lack of it, are not located there. Scribblescribblescribble (talk) 17:53, 22 January 2011 (UTC)


 * It is appropriate to expand the article to encompass a larger world view. I have restored the world view tag to alert readers & editors that the article needs development in that direction.  SilkTork  *YES! 09:48, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Since this article is still about historic preservation in general and not country specific, I added a section about the Netherlands under "History" to expand the worldview. — Preceding unsigned comment added by FoxyCleopatraRevived (talk • contribs) 04:25, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Edit war brewing?
It appears that there is a near-edit war brewing, over particularly minor terms. I am rather baffled as to why there is so much un-discussed opposition to the addition of two "See also" entries that are clearly related? If the reason is because of some redundancy with pages already linked mentioned in the article or some other grievance, please note so in the edit summary. I feel somewhat odd interrupting it, but there is a talk page where this should be more constructively discussed, rather than random reverts. Otherwise, I don't see how the "See also" section can be this controversial... I hope I haven't opened a "can of worms". Cheers. Morgan Riley (talk) 04:10, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

NYT resource
To Preserve History on the Moon, Visitors Are Asked to Tread Lightly by Kenneth Chang published January 9, 2012

See Category:Missions to the Moon 99.181.131.214 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 02:18, 13 January 2012 (UTC).

Orphaned references in Historic preservation
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Historic preservation's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Guide": From Audubon Ballroom: Discovering Northern Manhattan: Guide to Washington Heights and Inwood, Chamber of Commerce of Washington Heights and Inwood, Inc. From Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 01:34, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070807010424/http://www.aia.org:80/nwsltr_hrc.cfm?pagename=hrc_a_20060317_murtaugh to http://www.aia.org/nwsltr_hrc.cfm?pagename=hrc_a_20060317_murtaugh

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In Germany or Europe
I miss important history of German or continental historic preservation. Is it written somewhere else or just missing? I'm talking about Vienna school or France. Alois Riegl, Max Dvořák, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dominikmatus (talk • contribs) 13:40, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Probably just missing, maybe if you know sources you could fix the anglo-american bias, and greatly improve the article. (Personally I just contributed some early local preservation history I knew about). -- BOD --  14:45, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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I have just modified 5 external links on Historic preservation. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110727055105/http://www.mahdc.org/index.php/library-of-resources to http://www.mahdc.org/index.php/library-of-resources
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20121008020715/http://www.apva.org/AboutUs/ to http://apva.org/aboutus/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20061015030933/http://www.cr.nps.gov/hps/workingonthepast/toolbox1.htm to http://www.cr.nps.gov/hps/workingonthepast/toolbox1.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080511165756/http://www.nal.usda.gov/ric/ricpubs/preserve.html to http://www.nal.usda.gov/ric/ricpubs/preserve.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100410043142/http://www.nwhm.org/Education/biography_apcunningham.html to http://www.nwhm.org/Education/biography_apcunningham.html

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Silenced perspectives
Historic preservation as defined by this entry focuses primarily on the built environment. I wonder whether by virtue of having this definition at the top of the entry we are limiting its potential scope to only include these traditionally perceived sites of importance. Are there any perspectives which would not fit in here, and thus remain unrepresented? — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheGoldenSnitch (talk • contribs) 04:53, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Possibly useful document
https://www.oregon.gov/oprd/OH/Documents/2017NationalHeritageFundingReport.pdf gives an interesting rundown of various typed of preservation incentives in different U.S. states. - Jmabel &#124; Talk 22:56, 15 September 2023 (UTC)