Preserving Urban Landscapes as Public History : Evolution, Interpretation, and Preservation

Ref.: 53
Domaine thématique: 01 Intégrité physique des paysages urbains historiques
Date de réception: 18/10/2008

AUTEURS (*Auteur principal)

NA, Li * (États-Unis d'Amérique) - University of Massachusetts Amherst

RÉSUMÉ

Are officially interpreted and designated memorials, historic districts, themed parks, and ethnic neighborhood dotted urban terrain truly save communities' history? Does historic preservation always protect what is significant about the past as it claims? Whose history and whose memory gets preserved or lost? How personal and community memories are connected with or disconnected from the built environment? How to network places with authentic history that reconnect the memory on an urban scale?

This research attempts to answer those questions in Asian context. It questions the fundamental assumption behind the "themed" urban landscape, i.e. officially interpreted and designed memorials, historic sites, parks, districts and neighborhood. I argue that places with collective memory demonstrate the authentic spirit, and they cannot be artificially themed. Urban landscape preservation, by its nature surpasses immediate concerns. It is not to save everything, which inhibits new development, but rather to carefully make choices about what needs to be preserved and what may be changed. Collective memory plays an important role in understanding and interpreting a city's past, and it is also challenged when competing groups celebrate contrasting values. This study situates the contested and negotiated interaction between history and memory in Singapore, to examine how cultural landscapes of various scales, such as cultural objects and vernacular architecture, reflect community memory.

Nevertheless, the bigger issue lies in what makes a place with authentic history and memory, therefore worth preserving. Criterion of authenticity vary in different cultures and continue to shift within one culture through history, so this investigation does not mean to establish a laundry list of what are counted as authentic. Instead, the vernacular physical structures/sites, which have framed the lives of many people and outlast many lifetimes, invite multiple voices for interpretation. Connecting those sites with unique stories of local communities establishes an authentic context for preservation.

Fundamentally, urban landscapes should be interpreted and preserved as community-based public history by incorporating multiple voices of local communities. A shared authority in historic preservation provides potentials for designing and implementing an inclusive and democratic planning process.

BIBLIOGRAPHIE

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