The concept of cultural landscapes is in preservation "the best thing since sliced bread". Used creatively, it can propel heritage into a major component of territorial planning decisions. Since its inception in the 1960s, the concept has inserted itself timidly from the conservation of parks, farms and small sections of cities and countryside to a bolder conception addressed to defining networks across whole regions and even countries. The name "landscape" is devious: this is not merely a historic view of the profession and craft of landscape architecture, and it is not either a professional enclosure for the practitioners of that specialty. Cultural landscape study, well understood, cuts across road engineering, architecture of buildings, agriculture, ecology, the social sciences and broader concerns about sustainability and climate change!
Cultural landscapes should be seen as an exercise in establishing relations and reference points. On rural areas, the traces of old foot and bridle paths, the remains of houses, the echo of landmarks at crossings, the location of sources of water, food and materials for shelter - in short, all those seemingly insignificant details - can open up a bounty of information on life in the past and the people's response to the environment. It debunks myths of so called common sense that pass as pseudo-scholarship especially in the built environment professions.
Our environment is the fruit borne by the presence of successive generations of habitants, bearing the scars of change and continuity, ruptures and evolutions. All our environment should be treated as a palimpsest. In the Middle Ages, it was usual to erase and reuse paper because of its scarcity. The sheets, with their scars and marks of previous writers, were knows as palimpsests from the Greek words palein (again) and psen (to scrape), e.g., "scraped again".
And our built environment has been subject in the last century not to a superficial scraping, but rather a drastic plastic surgery looking for modernistic youth. Bulldozers, earthmovers, armaments and induced "natural" disasters remove much of the testimony of past ages. Vernacular architecture scholar Dr. Henry Glassie - in his classic study of Middle Virginia houses - said that the artifact, properly and painstakingly interpreted, is the most truthful and eloquent historical document available.
By dislocating artifacts of the past, we are consciously deleting our history to become "Brave New Men (and Women)" in the Huxleian sense. So, while we can still do so, we must preserve the more carefully treaded palimpsest of historical artifacts in the human and natural landscape and close the door on radical organotomies like the ones witnessed on our countryside and inner cities.
Our landscape as evolved still riddles us with clues of past rumors. By encompassing wide territories we can keep reference points, lines of continuity and surfaces of past artifactual writings. Cultural landscape assessments must be introduced in regional planning studies and in the evaluation of massive "development" schemes. We can't and shouldn't consent to more disrespect to the deeds of our ancestors... let's preserve creatively their testimony in the cultural landscape of our world!
Monday, October 08, 2007
Sunday, October 07, 2007
American Bureaucrats' Obsession With Perfection: The Ridiculous 100% Consent Rule for World Heritage
Hundreds of cities and districts with multiple ownership have been listed in the last 35 years in the Unesco World Heritage List. But there's one great absence - none other than the third largest and third most populous country in the world, the one with unsurpassed military and economic strength (no matter how much those in power are trying to run it down) - the United States of America!! Give thanks to the most asinine ruling for historic district preservation in the world: unanimous, perfect 100% consent for obtaining World Heritage designation.
America has had an obsession with property rights where land is not perceived as a common good of the earth, but as a private, disposable property. On a country where an aberration like Oregon's Proposition 37 can actually dismantle one of the few working land-use systems in the country (it is so horrendous that actually voters in the state are trying to roll it back partially!) it still is incredible that so much roadblocks are in the way of placing America's heritage where it should rightfully belong. Most other countries use simple majority consent or even establish historic designation on the merits of the places they want to protect. And this is so even in relatively "democratic" European nations.
Meanwhile, cities that were very significant for the Atlantic trade such as New Orleans, Charleston, Savannah and parts of New England and Mid-Atlantic towns and cities can not be inscribed as of world significance. So it happens with the Caribbean cities of St. Thomas, VI and San Juan, PR which were major players in the continuous power play of the Caribbean as the hinge between the Americas. Since the state party that controls designation there is also the USA, there is but no chance with them either.
The only American "town" that is designated in WH is the "Pueblo" of Taos, NM and this is due to the common tribal ownership of the town which is no longer inhabited, it is now used as a ceremonial place - Taosians now live in modern houses elsewhere in the reservation. The tribe assigned the houses to the occupants but there is no sense of deed-based fee simple ownership as in the case of modern Westernized towns and cities elsewhere in the nation.
To each side of the border there are whole historic towns. Mexico has about a dozen - and Canadians have two: Lunenburg in Nova Scotia and Québec City. Obviously if Canada, which has a legal system similar to the USA's, can do it, so can the Americans...
I always thought that returning to Unesco was an excellent decision on President Bush's part, but I think now: why is there not a mindset in Congress and the White House to repeal the silly unanimous consent rule for World Heritage designations?
America has had an obsession with property rights where land is not perceived as a common good of the earth, but as a private, disposable property. On a country where an aberration like Oregon's Proposition 37 can actually dismantle one of the few working land-use systems in the country (it is so horrendous that actually voters in the state are trying to roll it back partially!) it still is incredible that so much roadblocks are in the way of placing America's heritage where it should rightfully belong. Most other countries use simple majority consent or even establish historic designation on the merits of the places they want to protect. And this is so even in relatively "democratic" European nations.
Meanwhile, cities that were very significant for the Atlantic trade such as New Orleans, Charleston, Savannah and parts of New England and Mid-Atlantic towns and cities can not be inscribed as of world significance. So it happens with the Caribbean cities of St. Thomas, VI and San Juan, PR which were major players in the continuous power play of the Caribbean as the hinge between the Americas. Since the state party that controls designation there is also the USA, there is but no chance with them either.
The only American "town" that is designated in WH is the "Pueblo" of Taos, NM and this is due to the common tribal ownership of the town which is no longer inhabited, it is now used as a ceremonial place - Taosians now live in modern houses elsewhere in the reservation. The tribe assigned the houses to the occupants but there is no sense of deed-based fee simple ownership as in the case of modern Westernized towns and cities elsewhere in the nation.
To each side of the border there are whole historic towns. Mexico has about a dozen - and Canadians have two: Lunenburg in Nova Scotia and Québec City. Obviously if Canada, which has a legal system similar to the USA's, can do it, so can the Americans...
I always thought that returning to Unesco was an excellent decision on President Bush's part, but I think now: why is there not a mindset in Congress and the White House to repeal the silly unanimous consent rule for World Heritage designations?
A New Start for H&S
I had allowed to lay fallow this field for a couple of years. This blog is now being reborn with a more diverse audience in mind, oriented more towards the problems of the construction of memory from an international standpoint. I had found that as it was, it was a hopelessly limited concern with the situation in one given place in the world; an English-language blog on this theme, particularly with pressing problems worldwide, needs a different focus from the other blog I keep. Now it is my intention to begin discussing the eternally frustrating problem of preserving the past in a throwaway society like ours. I will introduce a cross-cultural perspective on this problem.
I know I don't stand much to gain because I plan to use "serious" content in a blogosphere filled with funny "YouTubes", bikinis, games and riddles, trivia, small talk, multimedias and other assorted distractions. I only hope that trekkers going through the sands of the Blogahara in search of intelligent oases don't find themselves disappointed when they go past my place.
The older posts will remain on the main page for awhile, later they will be archived. For now I greet all passionate preservationists to the new H&S!
I know I don't stand much to gain because I plan to use "serious" content in a blogosphere filled with funny "YouTubes", bikinis, games and riddles, trivia, small talk, multimedias and other assorted distractions. I only hope that trekkers going through the sands of the Blogahara in search of intelligent oases don't find themselves disappointed when they go past my place.
The older posts will remain on the main page for awhile, later they will be archived. For now I greet all passionate preservationists to the new H&S!
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