Heritage/historic preservation in DC

1. Donovan Rypkema, probably the best writer and speaker around on historic preservation issues, has a new blog, Heritage Strategies.

2. In it, one of his entries links to the group Global Urban Development, and their online magazine. The current issue is about "urban heritage strategies" and includes an article, "Cultural Heritage Tourism in Washington, DC: A Community-Based Model for Neighborhood Economic Development," by Kathy Smith, founder of the organization that is now called CulturalTourismDC.

Kathy Smith is one of the city's greats in terms of promoting local history and from her I truly learned the concept of "destination readiness." Still I don't fully agree with the article as I think the reality is that right now, the heritage trails are more about "community building" than they are about "local" or neighborhood economic development.

And I think DC has an almost unique problem compared to most other heritage tourism destinations. Most people nationally and globally define the "local" history of DC as being about the federal-national experience story, about the place of Washington as the National Capital of the United States. As a result, this creates a very difficult need for "market development" in terms of redefining the local story, the prevalent narrative, around local history rather than the national-federal story.

This is key, because most people who visit Washington are time-limited, and other than consuming the tourist entertainment experience of Georgetown or Alexandria, and to consume more of the local story they will need to extend the duration of their visit, which given the cost of travel, is less likely.

Furthermore, a neighborhood heritage trail, competing against the U.S. Capitol, the White House, the Monuments (Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, Vietnam, WWII, FDR), the National Mall, the Smithsonian Museums, and then the tourist night-time and weekend destinations of Alexandria, VA and Georgetown DC, has a tough job being interesting and relevant, especially because so much of the information on the heritage trail signs is about what once existed, but is no longer present, and therefore less interesting than places you can see, touch, and experience.

As you can imagine, I have written about this in the past, in these blog entries (among others):

-- Who ♥ DC? -- More about DC tourism
-- Cultural resources planning in DC: In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
-- Central Library Planning efforts and the City Museum, how about some learning from Augusta, Maine ... and Baltimore?
-- Tourism Marketing and DC
-- You (Don't) really like me--DC and its suburbs
-- More About DC Tourism Marketing

3. Speaking of great writing by Don Rypkema, there is his paper, "Planning the Future, Using the Past (Historic Preservation)," commissioned as a "vision" paper for the Comprehensive Plan revision process (2005-2006).

4. And I always refer people to his papers "Affordable Housing and Historic Preservation" and "The Economics of Historic Preservation" (which has variants with different titles).