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Heritage Restoration
& Adaptive Reuse of Abandoned Buildings
Your community's sustainable revitalization
program can
start with a primary focus on any of the
12 sectors of restorable assets. But one of
the best starting places in older communities is your inventory of
historic sites and structures, as well as your older
(but non-historic) reusable structures. Heritage is
one of those assets that virtually everyone--regardless
of
political, economic, or cultural beliefs--can agree
should be restored.
What's more, these buildings are
already connected to your infrastructure, are often on
brownfields, and are
usually centrally located. These factors alone
make them sensible choices for accommodating your
growth. The alternative is sprawl, which might
provide a short-term economic boost, but it will usually
undercut your quality of life. Renewing and
reusing your urban buildings, on the other hand, helps
you grow economically while enhancing your quality of
life. Which makes more sense to you?
If you've already got a strong
heritage preservation or historic downtown
revitalization organization, it could be an ideal sponsor for
your community's
Real
Revitalization Program.
Is this organization trusted and effective? Does it
wish to take an even larger, longer-term role in the
community's future? If so, sponsoring the Real
Revitalization Program is also the best way to help it create (or
become) a revitalization forum.
A revitalization forum is a
permanent public-private organization that supports an
ongoing revitalization program. [Note:
Readers of
reWealth (McGraw-Hill, 2008) will recognize
this type of organization as what that book technically
referred to as a "renewal engine". It was revealed as
the key factor behind the most dramatic urban
regeneration success stories documented in
reWealth.]
Definition &
overview: There's no formal definition of heritage restoration, as it can focus on a number of
restorable functions and assets, such as public &
private buildings, industries, battlefields,
institutions (such as a college), neighborhoods,
infrastructure (such as historic bridges, roads, &
dams), etc.
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