Preserving Historic Urban Districts: Issues of Culture Change, Stress, and Culture‐supportiveness

Abstract

This paper discusses the nature of culture change and stress, its resultant issues related to preservation programs, and the methods of dealing with such issues. It formulates a conceptual framework for culture-supportive preservation and then reviews a range of contemporary preservation practices and policies in order to identify successful ways of making historic preservation a stress-responsive and culture-supportive development activity. Six basic strategies are identified: having appropriate attitudes, greater community participation, identifying core/peripheral aspects of culture & built-form, incremental development, and cultivating financial and institutional support.