Booked on Planning

Managing the Magic of Old Places

• Booked on Planning • Season 5 • Episode 10

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Historic preservation is a field dedicated to safeguarding our cultural heritage, but the stability of jobs within this sector often hinges on government involvement. According to author Jeremy Wells, nearly three-quarters of all jobs in historic preservation are fundamentally designed to meet the needs of local, state, and federal government. This statistic underscores the dependence of the industry on government funding and initiatives and the need for preservation education to reflect this fact in the structure of their programs. "Managing the Magic of Old Places: Crafting Public Policies for People-Centered Historic Preservation," the subject of this episode, covers this topic and ways the preservation field can be more responsive to the communities they serve.

Show Notes:

Ray Planning Solutions
A seasoned planner with experience in land development, zoning admin and community revitalization

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Managing the Magic

[00:00:00] Ray Planning Solutions is led by Jeffrey B. Ray, AICP, a seasoned urban planner with over three decades of experience guiding land development, zoning administration, and community revitalization across both public and private sectors. Established in twenty twenty-five, Ray Planning Solutions LLC provides planning consulting to municipalities, counties, nonprofits, and developers specializing in zoning administration, comprehensive planning, downtown redevelopment, and entitlement strategies. [00:01:00] 

Stephanie Rouse: Welcome back, bookworms. I'm Stephanie Rouse. And I'm Jennifer Hyatt. And we're the hosts of the Book Town Planning Podcast. In today's episode, we talk with author Jeremy Wells on his book, Managing the Magic of Old Places: Crafting Public Policies for People-Centered Historic Preservation. This is the second episode for the month of May, which is National Historic Preservation Month.

 Being a, a preservationist and teaching a historic preservation class, I always try and make month of May really surround historic preservation books, and we've had a couple that were published this year that were great to cover. Yeah, and this one being one of those especially. One of the ideas that I think Jeremy brings forward is the idea of the phenomenology that you'll learn about later in the episode. I just thought that was a really unique way to think about historic preservation.

Jennifer Hiatt: Yeah, there's a few aspects of our conversation where we get into some unique aspects and terminology. numinous was another one that we [00:02:00] talk about early in the episode, which reminded me of the Spirit of the Built Environment book that we did, the first episode this year. A little bit talking about how spaces have ways to evoke feelings, and that it's not always such, a tangible thing with built places, in this context, historic places.

 Yeah. even it really, like, lit up my little history nerd heart to think about, you know, how I feel about history actually had a term that could be all-encompassing in that way. anyway, let's get into our conversation with author Jeremy Wells on his book, Managing the Magic of Old Places: Crafting Public Policies for People-Centered Historic Preservation.

Well, Jeremy, thank you for joining us on Booked on Planning to talk about your book, Managing the Magic of Old Places: Crafting Public Policies for People-Centered Historic Preservation. The magic of old places is best seen through a psychological lens, but as a field, we've really left the social science perspective out of our work.

Why is this [00:03:00] problematic?

Jeremy Wells: Thank you for the invitation to come here and talk about my new book. I really appreciate your interest in it and the opportunity to talk to other people about the work that I've done, because I think it's a message that is important to get out there into the preservation community and the urban original planning community.

 I think it's an interesting way to bridge the two. But let me, let me go back to your question. So, the reason why the social sciences are important to inject into what we do in historic preservation is a, either a, an explicit or an underwritten, assumed assumption that what we do is for the public.

 And so if what we do is supposed to benefit the public, then it seems kind of logical that we should understand the public's perspective. And, and the social... If, if you're talking about the social cultural realm, and it's very broad, you know, everything, you know, from a sociological to an anthropological perspective to I'm really interested in the psychological, but it's how communities value place, how they think place is important, buildings are important, and also the individual [00:04:00] experience.

How are individuals impacted psychologically by the qualities in the older built environment? A- and this is something that's been around for actually quite a while in architecture. We have something called evidence-based design that's been in architecture for, well, since the early 1970s, and that's a very strong environmental psychology perspective on the built environment.

 And so I'm not gonna take credit for, you know, although I seem to be one of the first people to, to put this in the forefront, front and center in historic preservation, it's been there for a long time, in architecture. And that's like when I got involved in the Environmental Design Research Association, that was my logical connection to environmental psychology in the built environment.

And I can tell you it's one of the very few places on this planet where I could be in, in a room full of people and describe the connection between psychology and older places, and man, they got it. They got it. That's unfortunately a bit rare. But it all comes down to, again, what I would call the idea of relevancy.

If what we do is relevant to the public, it is important to understand how the public perceives, interacts with, [00:05:00] behaves in older, the older built environment. Or else we're doing this for ourselves individually, and that's not for the public 

Jennifer Hiatt: and to that end, one of the terms that you use, multiple times throughout the book is the term numinous.

 It was a new one to me, so can you define it and how you use it, and explain how it relates to historic places? 

Jeremy Wells: Numinism is a really fascinating concept. It actually comes from religion. So if you think about the relics, religious relics, like the bones of saints, the belief that some people have is that the bones are more than just their material essence, that there's something embedded in the bones.

If you actually have and you're, like, looking at the bones of a saint in front of you, there's something mystical or embedded in the fabric. We can't measure it, we can't understand it scientifically, but we treat, for instance, the bones of saints, as if they have something intangible. But it's...

It feels real for the people who believe it's there. What's really interesting is if you look at the arguments that have long been [00:06:00] made for historic preservation, and we have this extremely common phrase that an old building, why is it historically important? It's borne witness to history. Let's unpack that.

What does that mean? It means that somehow the historical events that have happened in context with that building have somehow become embedded in the building. Best example I can give you, for this is let's say that we have a brick that came from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. Okay? I have that in my right hand, and in my left hand, I have a brick that came from the exact same brick kiln that made the brick that ended up going in Monticello, but this brick just got thrown into a field and it was forgotten.

Now I hold two bricks in front of you. Which brick is more important? Most people would say, "Well, the brick from Monticello." I was gonna say- Well- ... Monticello. Yeah, right, right? And it's like, well, that doesn't make logical or scientific sense because from a material basis, the material of both are exactly the same.

They were made exactly the same, so you can't make arguments, well, you know, [00:07:00] there's some sort of craftsmanship value you know, historical value in one brick th- versus the other. They're essentially the same. But we put something in the brick that isn't tangible, and it does make one brick a lot more valuable than the other.

That drives so much of what we do in historic preservation and decisions that we make in historic preservation, but we couch it in this other kinds of language, bearing witness to history. Because if we say, "Well, we think there's a spirit in the fabric of the past," no one's gonna take you seriously. If you look at the history of historic preservation, up until about the '30s, like the colonial Williamsburg era- In the United States, people did speak about an essence of fabric the really common phrase you would hear is a hallowed ground or hallowed places. And people would talk about places as, as if they had a spirit, and that was important to preserve.

But when you came to around the Colonial Williamsburg time the architects and the archeologists that were there, they really were interested in making this work a scientific enterprise. [00:08:00] And the architects that were involved in Colonial Williamsburg, they talk about their scientific enterprise and they go to great lengths to say, " We shouldn't be subjective about what we do.

We shouldn't be theatrical about it. There shouldn't be any kind of mysticism in there. We're scientists." And so if you look at preservation doctrine that then became policy, it really, in a professional sense, and just professional standards of practice, didn't wanna recognize noumenism, but it was still there, and we couch it in these terms like bearing witness to history.

But it's there. It's a human phenomenon. there's definitely been studies out there that where people look at fabric in places like this. But that's what noumenism is, and it is an important part of why everybody believes that older places somehow have something extra in them. 

Jennifer Hiatt: As I was reading through your book, I was like, well, I just, like, feel like I inherently know this.

I didn't know that there was a term that, encapsulated everything that I feel as I'm standing in historic buildings. So that was really cool. 

Jeremy Wells: Now you got it, noumenism. 

Stephanie Rouse: So in picking [00:09:00] the Monticello brick, it's kind of showing our bias to a certain degree of how historic preservation has evolved and who were the founders of the historic preservation movement.

In your research, you point out 96% of the contributors to what is now our modern-day preservation policy were white men. How has this contributed to our limited view of what's important to preserve? 

Jeremy Wells: Before I get into that, I, I wanna add one, one last thing on this noumenism, and that is, and I thought you might be going there on that comment.

 and that is when we ask the question about relevancy in historic preservation, if most people, and especially most members of the public, experience older places through this noumenism lens, we don't recognize it in preservation. You certainly cannot nominate a building on a local register based on its noumenistic qualities.

 if 

it's... To recognize that it exists in any shape or form is a way of also recognizing that the way that we value place is inherently intangible, and it's really important to start looking at that. So I thought it'd be important to back up into that. The relevancy [00:10:00] question that you asked, which is really important in terms of, like- Who actually, created preservation doctrine, preservation policy, and who were the professionals that work in the field today?

 Yes, their identity is largely white. And if you look at the people who actually developed preservation doctrine from, like, you know, the middle of the 19th century, going back to John Ruskin through Italian art conservators that created the foundation of what we use in the Secretary of the Interior Standards, up to the actual people who created the National Historic Preservation Act, they're all white men, and they're highly educated in a very unusual way.

When you look at the Italian art conservators at the turn of the 20th century, a lot of them have master's degrees and doctoral degrees. From a socioeconomic strata perspective, these people are very unusual. They do not represent the public. And you can literally, if you ask the question, who actually created, who were directly involved in creating preservation doctrine and preservation policy today in the US, so not only the National Historic Preservation Act, but the rules and the regulations that we use, from the [00:11:00] Secretary of the Interior Standards to how things get nominated on the National Register of, of Historic Places, we're talking about less than 100 people, as you mentioned.

 And it's a very, very, very narrow slice of humanity. And so it begs the question, if we're practicing in historic preservation in essence to essentially make long-dead white men happy, how is it relevant to most of the public in the United States that do not have that identity? And there's also an age aspect as well, because younger people weren't even involved in this.

 most of those people were not even American. And so it's weird to think American public preservation policy is not American. It's European. and, you know, these are really big questions, and hardly anybody asks them, but I think it's really important because we do know in historic preservation that this concept of relevancy is increasingly important, but it's more than just simply representation on the national register or local registers.

It's a systemic approach to how our doctrine and policies are, inherently have a kind of a bias in them, through who they do [00:12:00] not represent and who they have never represented.

Jennifer Hiatt: You explain the idea that knowing that the real history of a place isn't necessary to connect with it and create a place worth preserving. Why not? Like, why do we not have to do that? 

Jeremy Wells: Yeah. Well, it goes back to the, the social sciences. Mm-hmm. So there's so many different ways we can value older places and it- we're, we're very familiar with the objective ways that we can do it.

 We can compile a list of the historical facts that are associated with places. But one of the things that we know, and there's some studies that have been done on this, Laura Jane Smith, put out a book on, visitors' emotional responses to museums, and she came to a very interesting conclusion that what makes people interested in either buildings, older buildings, or older objects, historical objects, is their emotional connection with them.

 And so the story, the objective historical facts that are associated with a place or an object don't appear to directly influence, the public's, everyday people's valuation, sense of importance, sense [00:13:00] of attachment to what that place is. And so someone who knows a lot of history, the objective historical qualities of a place, isn't necessarily gonna become more attached to that place because that type of attachment is by definition an emotional attachment.

And so people can have incredibly high feelings towards value of older places and buildings without actually knowing a whole lot of objective history. there's both pros and cons. I'm not saying and I'm not advocating that we need to turn historic preservation into something that's not associated with, local history.

 It's important. But to say that it's only local history, a- and it goes back to how do we put things on, on registers, right? We have two basic broad criteria. It's historical facts or aesthetics. And there are other dimensions, and they do get ignored, and the biggest one that most people have is their emotional attachment to places.

And again, that's a psychological dimension that just isn't recognized, in any public policy in the US. 

Stephanie Rouse: And [00:14:00] speaking of our public policy, you have a figure that you return to a few times in the book that 70% of paid work relates to more implementing rules and regulations around historic preservation.

How did you arrive at this number, and what does it mean for the profession? 

Jeremy Wells: Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. When I was a student in historic preservation many decades ago I could never find any information on the field. Like, how many people work in the field?

Like, how do you actually take the field and divide it into different elements, different types of practice? What are those types of practices? How many people work in those practices? and then when I became an educator, 'cause I, I was teaching in historic preservation programs, I said, " Wait a second.

We're developing curricula-" To teach students how to become professional historic preservationists, and we don't actually know anything about our field. We don't even know where most people actually work in historic preservation. There's no one that's actually studied this. And I just said, "My God, I am being irresponsible as an educator to not even know essentially what the hell am I doing."

 And so I said, "Well, if no one's gonna answer this question, I'm going to." And so the [00:15:00] easiest way that I could figure this out, because the US government doesn't collect statistics on historic preservation. They do in archeology, and a lot of historic preservationists sort of get sucked up into that, but there's no easy way to disentangle that from like the below ground people.

And so I thought, well, we have the internet and we have the most popular and very comprehensive job site indeed that magically sucks up all of these job postings across the internet. And I did some background research and it was reliably getting every single historic preservation job where I knew they were being posted, like PreserveNet the US government, state governments, it was getting all of them.

And so from a reliability standpoint, Indeed was being very accurate in pulling all the jobs that are related to historic preservation together. And so I said, " Well, what if I were to actually do, not a survey, but a census of looking at every single job posting in the United States that had to do something with historic preservation, do that for a year, and then do a content analysis that [00:16:00] quantifies what that percentage breakdown is?"

 But more importantly, in a lot of ways, is like what does the field of practice look like? What are people doing in the field? And from that, I came up with a very comprehensive list of like what is an historic preservation job. Because again, in higher education in the field, it's like there's no such thing as a professional historic preservationist, right?

 You know, you're a cultural resource manager. You're a preservation planner. You're an historical architect. And so I had to create an, a somewhat list of all of those jobs that were relatively closely relevant. Like, I mean, I had to establish a level of relevancy. This has all been published in Frontiers of Architecture if any of your listeners wanna actually look at this.

 So it's, it's been peer-reviewed. It's actually been published. anyways, the, the end result of this is that what I did is establish the major areas of practice in the field, and they are the biggie, which you've already mentioned, Stephanie, is, things driven by public policy, regulatory-driven, compliance-driven.

 And that's 70%. Almost three-quarters of all the jobs in historic preservation exist [00:17:00] primarily and fundamentally to satisfy the needs of local, state, and federal government. Another way of doing that is if you didn't have those levels of government and they just went away tomorrow, three-quarters of all the jobs in historic preservation would just poof, they would disappear the next level down is architecture and construction, and many people get this wrong.

Many people think that the biggest area of employment in historic preservation is architecture and the construction industry. It's not. It's, like, around 10, 11%. It's much smaller than most people believe. And then down from that you have historic site administration which is like, uh, museums and, people who work at, like, Independence Hall.

 And then down from that, then you also have people working in advocacy organizations. You know, we're getting down to, like, closer to 5% now. State historical trusts, national trusts city preservation advocacy organizations. And then the smallest part is downtown revitalization. Main Street program is such a huge influence on what we do in preservation in the US, and so many jobs are being posted in that, I thought it really relevant to put a percentage on that as well, which is, like, under 5%.

 [00:18:00] but the elephant in the room that preservation educators are not aware of, and many people in the field are not aware of, is how much our work is driven by public policy. And, and this is very sensitive to a lot of people in the field, and educators, because we don't like to be the no people. We don't like to be, as some people have called us, the preservation police.

You know, we wanna be proactive and, look at all the benefits that preservation brings. And it does, it does. But if you just simply ignore that 70% it's not gonna change anything. And if you're an educator, you're really doing your students a disservice by not centering your curriculum on policy, so rules and regulations.

 so now we actually know through empirical data how the field can be broken out and what the percentage breakdown is in employment. and the other thing that I did with this, it, it was just a general estimate based on i- in general across a, a broad section of, of fields, like how much of a percentage of, fields' jobs tend to be up for job announcements in a year, I was able to generally extrapolate, that maybe we have [00:19:00] only about 20,000 people in the country who are working in historic preservation.

 that is not a particularly accurate number, but that's a ballpark estimate. But again, that's something that someone could actually do some research on. And I put this study together, like almost seven or eight years ago now, and there it sits alone. No one else is interested in these questions.

And, and I think they're so fundamental to what we do in the field. You know, let's, let's not go through what we do in, in practice, in education blindly. Let's know what we're doing 

Stephanie Rouse: Yeah, I think you can even just gut check that because . every state has the state historic preservation office, tribal historic preservation offices, all the CLGs are gonna have probably a historic preservation planner, and then all of the staff at the Park Service to run all of these different programs.

And then even if you were to set aside the private sector firms that are working on historic surveys, they're also probably spending a lot of their time on Section 106 reviews because that's such a big piece of any of our community's operations. 

Jeremy Wells: Yeah, and, and Stephanie, actually you [00:20:00] mentioned something really important that I, I probably need to clarify, and that is that 70%, is definitely the private sector that's doing work to support the public sector.

 So, uh, all those CRM professionals who are doing environmental review absolutely are in that category because they're supporting, again, regulatory compliance. Big part of the work in the, in the 

profession.

 

Jennifer Hiatt: You make the point that the people who are originally creating historic preservation policies, as we're talking about, were doing so through the biases of their society in which they were raised and educated, and we do the same thing. so what are the practices that we are doing now, maybe your, previous answer might point to this a little bit, but what do you...

what are those practices that we're doing now that you worry practitioners in the future will look back on and then write a book very similar to yours in, like, 50 years? 

Jeremy Wells: Yeah. I mean, great, question 'cause it really made me think and really fairly quickly the first thing that came to mind is that

 one of the major areas of interest in historic preservation that is a long time in coming is, issues around diversity, inclusion, and equity. [00:21:00] And of course, in the current political environment, it's become harder to both talk about that and work in that, but it's still there and it's still very important.

but one of the things that's fascinating is to look at the trajectory of, where that's been in the field, you know, since it's really risen to prominence, say, in the past 10 years. And, To kind of ground this in, in one area, people-centered preservation, back in, I think it was like 2017 or so, the National Trust put out its, document called, Preservation for the People.

 So they're talking about people-centered preservation, and I was actually working with a group of people there, including Tom Mayes on that particular project to come up with what does that actually mean. was a lot of participation from a lot of preservationists to do that. And a big area they were focusing on, they said, "Well, people-centered preservation has to absolutely include this focus on diversity and inclusion and equity."

 Big part of it. But it also talked a lot about the social science aspects of preservation, about broader community relevancy, but also the emotional attachment people have to places. I still think it's a fantastic document, that sort of has languished. It's like doesn't get talked about much.

 except in one [00:22:00] context. what has happened is that the field, and I would say the National Trust has done this as well, has turned the concept of people-centered preservation into essentially a synonym for diversity and inclusion. And it is broader than that. And I'm not saying that to diminish in any way, shape, or form the issues that are very much important around diversity and inclusion, but it's to also really to focus on the work that we do in preservation today.

I think future generations are gonna look at people-centered preservation and go wait, what about the other aspects of this related to, like, environmental psychology and the social sciences?" And just generally, the more how do we make preservation more democratically relevant and more participatory?

 Yes, people with marginalized identities, big part of that but other people are as well. And so we are now in an environment where making historic preservation more people-centered often conflates down to one simple thing, and that is, well, let's get people who have marginalized identities better represented in, the federal register historic places, state registers, [00:23:00] local registers.

 Okay. End of story. Job is done. You know, there's a lot more to that. Certainly a lot more to that around diversity and inclusion. Well, what about issues around, you know, we need to increase diversity in the practitioners in the field, the educators in the field? what about actually looking at policy and doctrine, which, I touched on a little bit earlier, which is inherently biased because of the people who created it. We need to be looking at this from a systemic approach. And so from a future generation, they're gonna go, " Wow, it's a lot more than representation. It's systemic." And then also it all connects in with... it's a part of people-centered preservation, but people-centered preservation is not a synonym for diversity and inclusion.

Diversity and inclusion is a part of people-centered preservation. I think that's what we're getting wrong today, and that's what future generations are gonna look at, "Eh, they didn't quite understand this." 

Stephanie Rouse: Yeah, one way to get at people-centered preservation would be to change our approach to interacting with individuals and the, people in our communities to be more bottom-up process in planning for preservation versus top-down, which is what we do today.

[00:24:00] Planners, a big chunk of our audience here, are great at this, and preservation planners in the field have done a lot of good work around this. I know a ton of communities, I think Denver is a really great example, they're really leading the way in this kind of work. But how can planners do more to move the needle more broadly in preservation?

 

Jeremy Wells: Yeah, so you know, where I'd start with this is what is historic preservation to planners? you know, this has been discussed a little bit in the literature. I think Eugenie Birch has an article, for those of our academics, you can look at this. But I think the issue here is that in, like, starting in education, many, regional urban planning programs absolutely have historic preservation as part of it, but it's often not much depth.

You know, you're taking a class that talks about land use planning. It'll mention, well, a part of land u- use planning is, like, you know, design review for local historic districts. You might spend a day on it, and then you move on. And I would say conversely, historic preservation students don't get much planning.

And so one of the things that is fascinating to me is that as historic preservation field and educators are [00:25:00] talking about how can we get students more involved in working with communities, community-based participation you know, the colleagues across the aisle in planning, they, they got this down.

They can still improve on it, but they're light years ahead of a lot of where we've been in preservation. And so the academic silos that go into practice is the problem, and this also is evident in practice, and I give you my own personal experience on this. when I was leading the, landmark preservation program for the city of Denver, as most preservation commissions are located in local government, we're often in a planning department.

 but we didn't really work much with planners. And my boss, who reported to the planning director, they were planners, and they looked at us in this little silo of historic preservation, and they didn't know what the heck we did. They basically just said, "Well, just do your job that it says in the ordinance, and we're not gonna bother you."

 that's what historic preservation is in local government, like this, like, black box of, like, just do what it says in the ordinance and no one's gonna complain. Just do, do your work. But that bridging, it's not happening in academia, and it's not happening in city government.

 and that [00:26:00] bridging would address so many of the, community-based participatory research- issues uh, broadening techniques if we were to bridge these silos. So I, I, say both in education and practice, we need to figure out how historic preservation planning should not be separate from urban and regional planning.

 And what would that look like? And, give you another example of this. The, American, Planning Association Journal did a special issue on historic preservation. This was a while ago, I think it was almost 10 years ago now, and it was, like, the first special issue on preservation that had ever been done.

And up until that time, you know, there's, there's maybe, like, one, paper on historic preservation in the APA's journal a year or less. And it hasn't changed a whole lot. And the American Planning Association still has officially on its book a document from 1997 that talks about what local preservation planning is, has not been updated.

 the problems are out there. I'm, you know, I'm not gonna say I know exactly what the solutions are, but certainly something that brings us together, preservationists and planners, into a coalition where we can bridge [00:27:00] across differences would be so fundamentally important, in what we do.

And, and addressing, again, that, the question that you brought up, Stephanie.

 

Jennifer Hiatt: So when planners or anybody is facilitating discussions on heritage preservation, you have a whole section that talks about how we should facilitate, these discussions in the book. So you make the point that facilitators need to ask the question of who am I when preparing for the work, why do you think this is such an important step when we start moving through that?

 

Jeremy Wells: So when you're working with members of the public, intersectionality, what your commonalities and differences are between you and the people that you're trying to work with, or ideally if you want something that's more bottom-up, grassroots how can you be understood and fit into the group, and not as someone, like, above the group or in a different social hierarchy?

 how do you become part of the group and be just become one of the participants? And so you can't do that effectively without understanding your intersectionality with the people that you're working with. the technical term for that is, reflexive, being self-reflexive. And that is,

[00:28:00] what are your biases? Not only, like, you know, traditional, ethnic and racial biases age biases, ability biases educational biases, socioeconomic strata biases. Like, who are you, and who are the people that you're working with? What are those differences? Recognizing that you have these biases and then recognizing that how you present yourself, how you communicate the information that you focus on is coming through that lens.

And you can work in a way to recognize that and try and, and shall we say weed the bias out. But you're not gonna, you're not gonna be able to do that certainly not totally, right? but recognizing that is really the beginning to being a good community facilitator.

You have to start there. It's so important to start there. And we don't get this in, in historic preservation, because, even in, in education, you know, there's not any classes that focus on reflexivity so much and how to recognize this. And it's just so crucial, to working with, communities.

 

Stephanie Rouse: So a new concept to me that you introduce in the book is phenomenology, a way to approach historic preservation. What is it [00:29:00] and how can we help improve the preservation practice by using it?

Jeremy Wells: Sure. Interestingly enough, the most commonplace that phenomenology is used as a research methodology, and it comes from psychology, is in nursing research. And you might ask, "Well, why are researchers in, nursing using this?" They use it to understand people's experience of pain.

And you go, what is it about pain that makes it kinda unique as human phenomenon? And the answer is it's about as subjective as you can possibly get. It is very individualistic and that core emotional quality of it makes the phenomenology a really useful methodology to understand all of the multiple nuances and great degrees of, of qualitative, depth.

 It's an understanding, and that's what phenomenologies are trying to get is the most thorough understanding of human being, of existing in the world, of the human body existing with what's around us, other people, the environment. And emotions are a core part of that. So if you're [00:30:00] interested in how people are emotionally attached to older places, and again, recognizing that is a really fundamentally important reason why the public values historic places, if we wanna understand that, phenomenology is a way.

It's not the only way, but it's an important way- To get at an understanding of people's emotional attachment to older places. And, like, the work that I've done in this, makes it very clear that the depth of emotional attachment people have to places, rootedness in those places and whether one place will substitute for another is very unique to older places versus places that have the same kind of design.

 What that means is you cannot create an old place building it from new. People will not be emotionally attached to it to the same degree or the same type. And it's just like when I came up with this research, I put it out and I said, " Wow, what an interesting tool we could use as advocates for historic preservation to say, you know, you can't replace older places with new places because you're gonna, you're gonna mess with people's emotional attachment."

 [00:31:00] And no one's grabbing onto this, but it's could be such a powerful tool because it, really argues for the fact that historic places are not substitutable. They're unique, right? And, and that's, that's a core argument that's been in historic preservation forever, is that there's something that's unique about older places.

That's why we should s- keep them around. But again, phenomenologies are just really, really useful tools to get at this. and as I write about in my book and I give in, an appendix, this can be done in a way that laypeople can actually use. But I wouldn't use the word phenomenology with, just anybody off from the street because they're gonna go, "What the heck are you talking about?"

but we can use it as a tool in many different contexts. 

 

Jennifer Hiatt: And we've touched on this a few times throughout the conversation, but as I was reading your book, a thought kept occurring to me. what to you would make a perfect historic preservation program? Because, in our college, Stephanie and I graduated from the same college, we have one class, Steph teaches it now, it's a great class.

That's it that touches on historic preservation. A lot of times [00:32:00] some planning programs don't even have historic preservation- Mm-hmm ... as a class, so- how should planning schools be thinking about incorporating this education? 

Jeremy Wells: h Yeah, yeah. So we're, we're talking about, about, uh, degree programs obviously.

Mm-hmm. Probably at the master's level because both in planning and preservation that's actually the case. 

So if you're asking the question like what would be a better- Kind of a historic preservation degree program. and the first thing I would say in response is that i- it should be empirically grounded in what the field is. And so, like the research that I mentioned that again, it's been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

I mean, you can absolutely, if you're a preservation practitioner, or preservation educator, you can use that as evidence in the curriculum that you're developing for your program that is substantiated. because from that we get a much better idea of how the areas of practice in the field are divided up.

But the other thing I didn't mention in the study that I did is that I actually created lists of skills, knowledge, and abilities that each of these areas of employment in preservation, what employers actually want. And this is something that, again, I don't understand. [00:33:00] There's hardly any historic preservation programs out there that develop their curricula around the question: What do employers need?

And I would argue that most of those educators, they don't know, right? 'Cause they haven't done the studies. And what I'm suggesting is we actually have some data out there. And so the first thing is a better improved historic preservation program is what are the knowledge, skills, and abilities that employers are asking for students to have?

Let's inform our curriculum with what that actually is. And so I can tell you that a more, shall I say, sincere focus on the policy environment is pretty important. And and I, I, I go to other people like Thomas F. King, is a cultural resource management practitioner. He's a well-known author, and I think he gives some really good suggestions for how education, the policy side should be improved.

And that is like, let's get students of all the case studies around doing, you know, like section 106 reviews, section 110 reviews local design review. Like, you know, it's one thing to say to your students, you know, "Go to a local design review or historic preservation commission meeting and, write up a paper on it."

Okay, now we're done with that. [00:34:00] No. I'm actually suggesting things like why don't you actually have the students, you know, create a local design review session and actually go through the processes maybe even interview some of the commission members and get a better understanding of what that actually is.

You know, maybe even bring commission members in or staff to the commission to actually critique the work that students are doing. I mean, there's multiple dimensions to this, but it's really getting to the depth of what are the actual end products that in the policy world that preservations are expected to produce.

And most preservation programs won't go into that kind of detail. and that would be really critical. And so, I mean the first thing is just again- making preservation as an education more relevant to the actual work students are doing. And that might mean specialization. So it might mean that your program says, "Well, you know, we can't do every single practice of preservation under the umbrella, so we're gonna specialize in policy."

And some programs have done this. I would say, like, the University of Pennsylvania has absolutely specialized in architectural conservation. And so, you know, architecture and construction side, they do a much better job at that than [00:35:00] most other programs, but they've done something unique in the preservation education world, and that is they've specialized.

And rather than having many historic preservation programs that are generalist programs, maybe we need some specialization to be able to graduate students who are more capable of doing this work. Expanding it out, like, to the next level I would say that historic preservation education absolutely has to do a better job of giving students the ability to do critical self-reflection, but also critical reflection about the field itself.

 Most historic preservation programs don't teach, either a introduction to historic preservation or a class on, like, history and theory of historic preservation. You know, we'll go through all the major players. You know, they'll talk about Ruskin and, and maybe Riegl and, you know, up through, you know, James Class.

you're talking about, you know, the, preservation program development in the US. But we don't actually teach our students very well where our doctrine came from. I would argue that if you were to survey graduates of most historic preservation students around the country who actually created the core precepts of the Secretary of the Interior Standards, where did they [00:36:00] originate?

They couldn't answer the question. And the answer is Italian art conservators, were actually, interestingly enough, using Gestalt psychology to inform what they were doing. So we don't know much about our doctrine. Most students aren't educated by the fact that the Secretary of the Interior Standards is almost a literal copy of the Venice Charter.

 uh, Brown Morton, who was the main author of the Secretary of the Interior Standards, he a- admits this fully, in interviews that have been published. he says, you know, "I didn't know how to do this. They had this conference in '64. I'm just copying what they did, and I'm putting it in a document."

 And that, opens up lovely, lovely conversations that could happen in the class. It's like, so you have one guy selecting a conference that was attended by, 10 Americans you know, maybe, 40 people from other parts of the world that decided what we should be doing in, Secretary of the Interior Standards, and he just pasted it into that document, and then it didn't get a public vetted process.

 There was no public participation involved in actually creating the Secretary of the Interior Standards what Brown Morton did is he basically passed it around to the state preservation offices and said, "Hey, what do you think?" [00:37:00] And they all went back and they said, "That looks good to me." Okay, it's now become a federal regulation.

 No one knows this, right? Well, I mean, I apologize, sometimes I go a little bit into hyperbole. Too few people know this, and too few students understand this. If you're going to be an effective self-reflexive practitioner who is capable of changing the field in any way, shape, or form, if you don't even understand the history of what our core doctrine is and the policies that came from that, you are not gonna be effectual and that's a big problem.

 And then bridging into planning I think when you start talking about that and the need, earlier I was saying about the social sciences, I think if planning programs would look at historic preservation less from the lens of architecture, aesthetics and history, and more of something that is what it is, it's, it's a huge part of public policy that involves a massive number of Americans being involved.

Two million people are directly impacted across the country by historic preservation policy every year that it is absolutely core part of what we do in planning, and it [00:38:00] does need a social science approach. It needs the finesse, the nuance, and the understanding of planners. The potential there, I think, is huge.

Stephanie Rouse: I timed it poorly. The two really great preservation books that we are covering this month, I was reading at, like, the end of the semester, but I still tried to find ways for both of your guys' books to slip in nuggets. And I added in the connection between the Venice Charter and how we arrived at our current standards.

 whether or not they retained it, who knows? But I did tell them. All right. All right. Well, that, that's fantastic. 

Jeremy Wells: But yeah, I think all too easy when, you know, thinking about how preservation could improve as a field and, and education, it's all too easy to get critical about it.

but It's important to really think about this in a different way of the massive potential of what historic preservation could be to make it much more relevant to the public, because we've long struggled, how do we make what we do more relevant to the public? It's such a small slice of the American public, you know, like our members of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and, understand what preservation [00:39:00] is, but yet they're doing stuff that is preservation-oriented.

I, I think what's happening, Andrew Roberts, who's a professor at, University of Virginia writes a lot about this, because of the stasis, the ossification of, of the field of preservation, especially public policy, many members of the public simply have just moved on, and they're doing absolute preservation work outside the sphere of policy, and they're doing it with great success, especially in marginalized communities.

And rather than saying, "Oh gosh, why can't those groups get on board with what is real preservation?" I think the flip side should be, why can't we understand what they're doing and change preservation to look more like what they're doing? Because they're the leaders, they're the future. That's where we should be going.

Jennifer Hiatt: I think that's a good note to end on, but it's Booked on Planning, so always our last question, what are some books you would recommend our listeners check out? 

Jeremy Wells: Yeah. You know, it's a hard question 'cause there's, like, so many books. And, and a lot of what I've been, influenced by is a lot of Europeans, from critical heritage studies.

but actually, I thought about this for a little bit and, I would actually really start with of all [00:40:00] things, maybe not a book. Hopefully, I'm not violating your, your standard of rules here. But what I've been noticing is over the past couple of decades, there's been a number of student theses that are readily available.

You can just Google the title and, and most schools, universities will have these up downloadable for the public. And what I've been noticing is that some of the most insightful and useful research in, diversity and inclusion in historic preservation are being done by these master's students.

 And I think one of the most profound written materials I've ever come across that looked at what historic preservation is from, African American lens, you know, I wanna make, it clear that I think, Kenyatta, McLean's thesis Reclaiming Time and Space She was a master's student at MIT, and is just a really important read because it makes you think, wow, preservation can be very different but yet still be preservation. and it just, really important. back to the realm of critical heritage studies, I think, anybody worth their salt should mention Laurajane Smith's book, Uses of Heritage. if you wanna understand where preservation should be going, [00:41:00] read her book.

 And in a similar sense, she has a later book out called, Emotional Heritage, where she looks at people's emotional attachments and museums, many of them historical museums. Gives you that really social science-based sense of where things could be going. If you wanna understand our doctrine in preservation, where it came from and some of the, challenges it has, Salvador Munoz Vinas has a book out for a while now.

It was published in 2005. It's called Contemporary Theory of Conservation, and he's actually an art conservator, but he bridges out very broadly into conservation of all things. And it's just like, my God, this guy is the most insightful person I ever came across, in, in terms of, theory and conservation.

 And for a, good sense of, like, what is social science, what could it be in historic preservation Rebecca Magin and, James Lesch came out with a book, called People-Centered, Methodologies for Heritage Conservation. I actually have a chapter in there, but anyways, it's an edited book that has a lot of really good case studies about what you can do.

I think it's really excellent. and for kind of a more imaginative [00:42:00] sense of what historic preservation can be, especially from an interpretive perspective, I would say, uh, Russell Staif. in 2014 he came out with a book called Reimagining Heritage Interpretation: Enchanting the Past-Future. And yes, I got some of the ideas in my book from what he was talking about, and he's well-cited in my book.

 And then the last one I would say is Thomas F. King as a cultural resource management practitioner. He's not an academic. He's been in the trenches. He's worked extensively with indigenous peoples, and, I think all of his books are just really good, especially for educating students. But I think, his book, Our Unprotected Heritage: Whitewashing the Destruction of Our Cultural and Natural Resources, should be a must-read for anybody in the field.

 uh, I love the, thesis. That's the first time anyone's broken with the book tradition.

We've had some people give us fiction books, which was unique when those started, but thesis, that's a new one for us. Yeah. 'Cause, 'cause they're not being published as books, so you've gotta look for it any place you can. Yeah. And I think, you know, Kenyatta, McLean went on to create Blackspace and is doing some incredible work, in, in the [00:43:00] practitioner space around, preservation and planning and, and place in public, involvements in African American communities.

Academics can achieve their credibility through their, high level of education and, you know, vast publication record, but there are other people who are, establish their relevancy simply because they're doing fantastic work in communities, 

 

Stephanie Rouse: Well, jeremy, thank you for joining us on Booked On Planning to talk about your book, Managing the Magic of Old Places: Crafting Public Policies for People-Centered Historic Preservation. 

 

Jeremy Wells: Thank you. It's been a pleasure being here, and, again, thank you for your interest in my book.

Yeah.

We hope you enjoyed this conversation with author Jeremy Wells on his book, Managing the Magic of Old Places: Crafting Public Policies for People-Centered Historic Preservation. You can get your own copy through the publisher at the University of Tennessee Press Knoxville by supporting your local bookstore, or the show through our page at bookshop.org/shop/booktownplanning.

 Remember to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and please rate, review, and share the show. Thank you for li- listening, and we'll talk to you next time on Books on [00:44:00] Planning 

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Jennifer Hiatt

Co-host
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Stephanie Rouse, AICP

Co-host