From Engagement to Empowerment: How Preservation Professionals Can Incorporate Participatory Methods in Disaster Recovery to Better Serve Socially Vulnerable Groups

Recently, the Historic Preservation Field celebrated the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act. At this time, leading preservation entities such as the Advisory Council for Historic Preservation (ACHP) and the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) reflected upon the future of the Historic Preservation field. Two themes, people-centered preservation and integrating preservation into disaster mitigation planning and recovery, emerged. While both themes are essential for advancing the Historic Preservation field toward a dynamic future, they have differing priorities. This mismatch in priorities can prove detrimental to the effectiveness of the Historic Preservation field going forward, particularly as it pertains to vulnerable populations following a disaster. Therefore, the purpose of this policy analysis is to describe how the current Section 106 process, used by professional historic preservationists in post-disaster contexts, does not accommodate opportunities for historic preservation professionals to build the capacity of vulnerable populations to better leverage the Section 106 process. In addition, the purpose of this policy analysis is to discover how historic preservation professionals can expand their roles from regulators to facilitators in the Section 106 process by adopting participatory methods

Baltimore Alley House Study

Final project for HISP 650/URSP 708: Joint Community Planning and Historic Preservation Studio. University of Maryland, College Park (Fall 2017).This report, prepared as part of a joint studio between graduate students in the Master of Community Planning and the Master of Historic Preservation programs at the University of Maryland, College Park, for the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), the Maryland Historical Trust (MHT), and the City of Baltimore Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP), seeks to answer the following questions: (1) What is an alley house? (2) How many alley houses exist in the City of Baltimore, and where are they located? (3) What is the best method for determining the fate of these buildings