Word: historicizing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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With the proliferation of postwar suburbs, which sucked millions of families out of the cities, downtowns quickly lost their old pizazz. Then the redevelopment binge of the '50s and '60s came disastrously close to indulging the American antiurban instinct to the point of no return. Political pressure to build new...
But urban renewal had its rearguard critics, and vital downtowns had their influential advocates. The right laws were passed. Cases were won. In 1965 New York City passed the Landmarks Preservation Law, setting up a commission that could restrict any changes to designated historic buildings; a year later, Congress enacted...
What has come to be known as gentrification -- the migration of (mainly white) middle-class homesteaders into poor (mainly black and Hispanic) urban neighborhoods -- is neither the cause nor an effect, exactly, of the historic renovation boom. But the two trends have abetted each other. The original '60s militants of...
Trendiness goes only so far. Money talks. The mania for preservation has been propelled for the past decade by federal tax laws. Developers who rehabilitate historic buildings can get back 20% of their renovation costs in the form of income tax credits, as long as they put the buildings to...
No matter how many splendid old buildings are refurbished, downtown revivification does not necessarily follow. The historic district of Charleston is an antebellum museum of architecture, but despite the surfeit of charm and platoons of tourists, the downtown was dying in the '70s. Developers proposed an un-Charlestonian remedy: a...