National Council on Public History

Elizabeth Vasile, Independent Consultant/Scholar, Genius Loci

Proposal Type: Panel

Abstract: Redevelopment of public space is part of the life of all cities and towns. This is especially true for high value urban cores, where the incentives to renewal and re-use are strongest. Where areas are declared blighted or decayed, or occupied by marginal populations, redevelopment often takes the form of wholesale removal of the previous occupants and a reclassification of uses. In the most extreme cases, entire communities have been displaced, with no material traces of their historic presence in the places left behind, and sometimes a corresponding loss of community memory and integrity. Urban redevelopment practice has at best a checkered past where attention to community history is concerned.

The proposed topic seeks to explore the potential and actual role of public history in the redevelopment of urban public space, particularly where displacement of marginal populations is at issue, drawing upon examples from cities across the U.S. What tools and means are available to public historians today, to help improve upon this record? What are best practices in the field? How does public history productively intersect with urban planning and historic preservation? In what fashion have public historians most effectively engaged marginal and threatened communities?

One case study will draw upon the experience of San Francisco where, as in other U.S. cities, past redevelopment projects have rarely given more than token attention to the interpretation and preservation of the history of affected populations. Today, driven by a technology sector driven economic boom, the city is undergoing a major transformation across the decayed midtown segment of its main thoroughfare, Market Street, which historically has divided the light industrial working class district to the south, from the zones of luxury commerce and finance to the north. This historic and spatial edge is now being contested and blurred, as developers, retailers, and tech companies eager to renew the area, threaten to displace homeless and low-income populations, the small businesses and non-profit social agencies that serve them, and a host of light-industrial workshops and their employees. Focusing on the question of “who gets to live here?” projects like this one become local arenas for engaging the larger national debate on inequality and the collective re-visioning it calls for. By helping to tell the story of “who got to live here?”, public history informs the imagining of possible futures while preserving the past where it took place.

Seeking: I am a historical geographer and urbanist, and have studied contested space, dissent, and marginalized communities in the context of broader regional historical transformations. I am not an urban planner or preservation professional. This topic would benefit from input from public historians who have worked professionally in those practice areas/projects. I am looking for panelists who could provide specific examples of methods or project design from urban redevelopment. I am also open to comments to help elaborate or focus the proposal as a whole, and to suggestions for alternative formats that might work better.

The edge I see here is both disciplinary, between public history and planning/redevelopment/preservation, and cultural/methodological, specifically in working with marginalized and displaced populations. Input is invited accordingly.

I am an old geographer, but new to the field of public history as such, and am a new member of NCPH (as of winter 2014).

Related Topics: Civic Engagement, Memory, Place

If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to share contact information for other people the proposer should reach out to, please get in contact directly: Elizabeth Vasile, liz[at]genius-loci-research.com

If you have general ideas or feedback to share please feel free to use the comments feature below.

Discussion