Preserving the future
A community's quality of life
By Burl Burlingame
depends on a careful balance of past
heritage and present economics
Star-BulletinTHERE are ways to live, and they involve choices. There are vibrant communities clustered around an urban core, in which every place is walkable, in which the economic and educational and cultural landscape is shared. And there are homes as fortresses, and individuals venture out only to work or to shop, and everything is accessed by car or by telephone. Neither of these visions is a reality, but there are aspects of both in everyone's life. Balancing the two is the problem. Keeping these straight is the job of organizations such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has grown from a save-the-old-building group of dilettantes to an organization that advises communities struggling to balance past heritages and present financial realities.
Trust president Richard Moe was in town last week to announce a partnership program with the newly revitalized Historic Hawaii Foundation. As a co-author of "Changing Places: Rebuilding Community in the Age of Sprawl," Moe is an expert on the effects of large chain organizations such as Home Depot, which is negotiating with the city to build an outlet in Pearl City.
Ironically, while we were talking to Moe, the century-old smokestack of the Aiea Sugar Mill was destroyed.
"The pattern," said Moe, speaking of discount chains like Home Depot, "is that it will suck the economic life out of the traditional downtown and surrounding business. We live in a free-market economy, and I'm not arguing against market competition, but at the same time, these facilities can have a huge impact that's other than economic. Communities should think through the consequences of these facilities before they come in."No question but that these stores will give people bargain prices. But what about the other consequences -- economic and social and environmental? This should be a matter of deliberate community choice. It's not inevitable. Communities (on the mainland) are increasingly focused on these issues. They're either saying no to these stores, or they're saying, do it on our terms."
He gave the example of a Wal-Mart in Bennington, Vt., that set up in a smaller size, reusing an older building downtown, and which now has the highest sales per square foot of any store in the Wal-Mart system.
"The nature of retailing keeps changing, and superstores are not the end of the line," Moe said. "The big thing 20 or 30 years ago were shopping malls, and now they're in decline, and what's coming back are upscale retailers in downtown areas. As a result, we have the equivalent of 4,000 abandoned strip malls in America."
ARE today's strip malls tomorrow's cultural heritage?
"Obviously there's architecture of every generation that's representative of that generation, but I don't think strip malls are going to be preserved. Not on my watch!" said Moe.
"We're becoming homogenized as a society. You can blame television and the media, but architecture plays a role too, particularly chain architecture, where you have similar structures housing similar activities in every community in the country.
"Some of that is inevitable, and it's not new. There used to be great structures in the center of American communities called Kress department stores, great, terrific buildings, but the care and skill that went into those buildings is quite a bit different than many of the chains today.
"It's important to have great architecture, It adds a lot to the quality of our culture and the quality of civilization. Whether it's a school, or a courthouse or a library, you make a statement when a building is made out of permanent material and is designed to last 100 or 200 years. It says that education, or the sharing of knowledge, or the administration of justice -- these things matter to us as a people. That's the great thing about old courthouses -- you can tell just by looking at them that something significant occurs within those buildings.
"A vernacular architecture is what makes a community distinct from everywhere else, and the problem with America today is that every community is taking on similar characteristics. Every community should try to be some not just every place. Communities get numbed, they lose their distinction, of what they were and what they are and what they might be. Change is to be expected, but that's all the more reason to preserve what's unique about each community."
O, why?
"It's hard to determine where you're going without knowing where you've been. If you can see them and feel them and walk through historic buildings, it's different than just reading history."It's also important because we have a lot invested in our older communities, whether they're downtown or elsewhere, and we waste that if we allow those buildings to disappear. It's fiscally irresponsible to keep building more and more roads and more and more sewer systems in order to build new communities when we have older communities that can work better. Communities really need downtowns, not just as economic engines to drive the region, but downtowns give those areas their identity, their common cultural, social, athletic, economic, entertainment functions that can't be replicated as effectively if they're located somewhere else.
"There's great character in older buildings. It's true of every era, but we're producing a lot of structures now -- particularly in the outlying areas -- strip malls and such that aren't great structures. They don't mean a lot, and they won't mean a lot to future generations.
"People think a lot of this untrammeled growth that's taking place on the mainland is the result of market forces at work, but it's actually very heavily subsidized on all levels, whether it's through transportation policy, or water or sewer grants, or whatever," said Moe.
"The state of Maryland has taken a very innovative approach this last year, whereby they said, we're only going to spend state funds on new schools, new water, new roads, new sewage in communities that are already existing or those communities already designated for growth. It's called the Smart Growth Initiative. They were saying, in effect, that they were not going to subsidize growth elsewhere."
From what he's seen here, Moe says "a lot of people on the mainland think of Hawaii as Waikiki Beach, it's far more than that, and it's absolutely fascinating. The depth and diversity and the richness of the cultures here make Hawaii unlike any other state of the union. Preserve it while you can! There are forces at work that will say they have a better idea. It's up to every community to stop and reflect on what's important about our heritage. That's what democracy's all about."
