THE RESILIENCY OF COMMUNITY: SITUATING AGENCY TO PRESERVE A PLACE-ATTACHED CULTURE AND HERITAGE IN AN IMPERMANENT FUTURE

Abstract

Climate change is an urgent, human-made global phenomenon that has resulted in significant, long-term changes in weather patterns in the early 21st century (1). Consequently, communities that are historically, culturally, or through other means attached to coastal or island locations are beginning to feel and see the effects of climate change as it alters the places they deem important. These communities will be confronted with finding ways forward for preserving a place-attached culture and heritage that is in danger of losing the place it is attached to. The time for preservationists to situate agency within these communities by altering our preservation practices is now.

This study recognizes that current historic preservation practices focus more on the conservation or preservation of land and existing buildings through mitigation rather than accepting the fact that climate change and sea level rise will one day overtake where we live because land is impermanent in some places. Hence, this treatise proposes that preservationists need to explore the idea that the historic preservation practice toolkit needs to expand. I argue that it should include community-based preservation frameworks that extend beyond site-specific places. This inclusion will prevent a future in which it would be too little, too late for a community that is either expecting partial or full loss of land. For that reason, this treatise demonstrates the need for more approaches and provides an important component of moving our field towards a future where the impermanence of land will not mean a community’s culture and heritage will cease to be.

This study employs the concepts of place attachment theory, futures mapping, and the community-based approach as the foundations for how we re-think how we plan for and preserve culture and heritage in a proactive manner. These three concepts are the basis for community- based preservation —which situates agency in threatened communities to make decisions on their futures rather than outsiders or experts — and are imperative to shifting the preservationists’ toolkit. [Likewise,] the community aspect of this study is examined through the voices of the Chesapeake Bay watermen. This group serves as a case study for ways to understand others’ narratives of what is happening and what is threatened and analyze past and present attachments thorough out the Bay area.

Lastly, this study provides several community-based frameworks rather than concrete recommendations for preservationists and communities to consider. Preservationists are accountable to situate agency within communities that are affected by climate change, so these recommendations are frameworks that can be adapted by communities in order to plan for their futures. For this reason, the proposed frameworks are theoretical because I, nor any preservationist, should claim authority to tell communities how to preserve themselves and plan for the future. Therefore, the greatest lesson that this study has for the communities that are threatened by climate change and sea level rise is that formal and informal or less organized community groups can use one, all, or a combination of these suggested frameworks to work towards preserving their culture and heritage.

(1). United States Environmental Protection Agency, “Causes of Climate Change” (August 19, 2022), https://www.epa.gov/climatechange-science/causes-climate-change.