Beyond Preservation: Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities

4. History that Matters: Integrating Research and Neighborhood Planning

4  History that Matters Integrating Research and Neighborhood Planning I nner-city neighborhoods eager to reinvent themselves as historic districts readily grasp the advantages of public landscape interpretation. The promise of public archaeology and history can be especially compelling in communities (like Old North St. Louis) that require strong preservation initiatives to stave off physical annihilation. Old North St. Louis preservationists instinctively identified history as an indispensable ally in their campaign to cultivate widespread respect and interest in the neighborhood ’s residual housing stock. Public history and archaeology emerged as ideal mechanisms for engaging local residents in that process. Even neighborhoods far from the brink of material extinction comprehend the benefits of raising consciousness about the built landscape’s significance. The prospect of favorable media publicity, a stronger sense of belonging among residents , and higher levels of investment in underutilized properties make local-history initiatives an easy sell in neighborhoods that possess a plentiful stock of salvageable old buildings. All too often, the full potential of history to reinvigorate older neighborhoods remains unrealized because of interpretive schemes that do not speak directly to the challenges contemporary residents face and to the kind of places they want to create. By incorporating grassroots public history into preservation initiatives, communities gain an opportunity to refine their collective vision and exert greater control over redevelopment activities. This chapter will explore some of the ways that the interpretation of historic landscapes can help communities chart constructive paths by serving as an 96 CHAPTER 4 adjunct to the planning process. Through a series of case studies in St. Louis, it presents several models for aligning historical and archaeological research with locally defined community goals. Of course, research and analysis alone will not stabilize or revitalize inner-city neighborhoods; historical knowledge can contribute directly to community development only when possessed by those who make or influence decisions. Fortunately, the past twenty years have energized democratic engagement at the local level, expanding the range of organizations and people with the capacity to create strong and vibrant communities. If public history itself is to matter, its practitioners must learn to collaborate with these agents of community change. Historical Research and Community Planning The formal integration of public history with official urban planning mechanisms is one way to ensure that historical research informs policy. Historians have occasionally chided professional planners for failing to take long-term trends into account when assigning future land uses to particular neighborhoods and urban districts.1 Over twenty years ago, Shelley Bookspan expressed the hope that local governments would rectify such errors by employing public historians to assist in the writing of master plans. “These historians,” she wrote, “will read U.S. Geological Survey maps, fire insurance maps, archaeological reports, and the sites themselves in order to determine who has used the land, how, and for what purposes.”2 Presumably, this exercise would allow planners to identify trends and formulate their prescriptions for future development accordingly. Although few city governments appear to have adopted Bookspan’s suggestion, it remains an intriguing idea. Nonetheless, the best opportunities for fusing public history and planning reside within the scope of neighborhood action. At the neighborhood level, planning is more likely to germinate from the grass roots. Indeed, it is from the elemental cells of the urban anatomy that the most successful innovations in democratic planning and redevelopment have materialized in recent years. Cities that have taken the greatest strides in restoring vitality to their residential cores are those that have empowered citizens by decentralizing decision making. With citywide planning agencies losing much of their political muscle in the waning decades of the twentieth century, power has devolved to thousands of neighborhood-based nonprofit organizations that have translated the aspirations and needs of ordinary citizens into action, not so much through the mechanisms of government but through volunteerism and the strategic recruitment of private investment. HISTORY THAT MATTERS 97 In the last twenty years, the community-development corporation (CDC) has emerged as the archetypal organizational vehicle for executing neighborhood planning agendas. While some CDCs can trace their roots to the 1960s, most came into being after 1980. Their efflorescence at this juncture grew out of a general frustration with top-down renewal schemes and the federal government’s concomitant retrenchment from direct intervention in urban affairs. In many respects, CDCs mimicked the functions of more traditional neighborhood...