Preservation Politics is a provocative look at the changing prospects for historic districts, and how local preservation commissions, volunteers, and staff can prevent and reverse decline by thinking and acting politically on behalf of the communities they serve.

This book traces the policy history of urban conservation and its relationship to the town planning process and both are set in their political context. Part One deals with the origins of conservation and its cultural background. Part Two deals with the post-war legislation and the increasing scope of conservation. Part Three deals with churches and their separate control system, and Part Four brings the story up to the present time. New issues such as sustainable conservation and the latest government policy are addressed in the conclusion. This book will aid current practice and help to inform future directions.

The importance of media preservation has in recent years achieved much broader public recognition. From the vaults of Hollywood and the halls of Congress to the cash-strapped museums of developing nations, people are working to safeguard film from physical harm. But the forces at work aren't just physical. The endeavor is also inherently political. What gets saved and why? What remains ignored? Who makes these decisions, and what criteria do they use? Saving Cinema narrates the development of the preservation movement and lays bare the factors that have influenced its direction. Archivists do more than preserve movie history; they actively produce and codify cinematic heritage. At the same time, digital technologies have produced an entirely new reality, one that resists the material, artifact-driven approach that is the gold standard of preservation in the Western world. As it has become increasingly easy to capture and access moving images, increasing evidence of something many archivists have known for years has emerged: industrial and training films, amateur travel diaries, and even family videos are critical public resources. It has also raised question about the role of the profession. Is access equivalent to preservation, and, if it is, how should archivists alter their activities? The time is ripe for a reconsideration of the politics and practices of preservation. Saving Cinema is the book to guide that conversation.

A detailed study of early historical preservation efforts between the 1780s and the 1850s In Historic Real Estate, Whitney Martinko shows how Americans in the fledgling United States pointed to evidence of the past in the world around them and debated whether, and how, to preserve historic structures as permanent features of the new nation's landscape. From Indigenous mounds in the Ohio Valley to Independence Hall in Philadelphia; from Benjamin Franklin's childhood home in Boston to St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina; from Dutch colonial manors of the Hudson Valley to Henry Clay's Kentucky estate, early advocates of preservation strove not only to place boundaries on competitive real estate markets but also to determine what should not be for sale, how consumers should behave, and how certain types of labor should be valued. Before historic preservation existed as we know it today, many Americans articulated eclectic and sometimes contradictory definitions of architectural preservation to work out practical strategies for defining the relationship between public good and private profit. In arguing for the preservation of houses of worship and Indigenous earthworks, for example, some invoked the "public interest" of their stewards to strengthen corporate control of these collective spaces. Meanwhile, businessmen and political partisans adopted preservation of commercial sites to create opportunities for, and limits on, individual profit in a growing marketplace of goods. And owners of old houses and ancestral estates developed methods of preservation to reconcile competing demands for the seclusion of, and access to, American homes to shape the ways that capitalism affected family economies. In these ways, individuals harnessed preservation to garner political, economic, and social profit from the performance of public service. Ultimately, Martinko argues, by portraying the problems of the real estate market as social rather than economic, advocates of preservation affirmed a capitalist system of land development by promising to make it moral.

Analysing political corruption as a distinct but separate entity from bureaucratic corruption, this timely book separates these two very different social phenomena in a way that is often overlooked in contemporary studies. Chapters argue that political corruption includes two basic, critical and related processes: extractive and power-preserving corruption.

This book traces the policy history of urban conservation and its relationship to the town planning process and both are set in their political context. Part One deals with the origins of conservation and its cultural background. Part Two deals with the post-war legislation and the increasing scope of conservation. Part Three deals with churches and their separate control system, and Part Four brings the story up to the present time. New issues such as sustainable conservation and the latest government policy are addressed in the conclusion. This book will aid current practice and help to inform future directions.

Amidst discontent over diversity, racial identity is a lens through which many US white Americans now view the political world.

While urban preservation is almost as old as cities themselves, it has become increasingly controversial in modern cities. In this book, Yue Zhang presents a cross-national comparative analysis of the politics of urban preservation. Based on comprehensive archival research and more than two hundred in-depth interviews in Beijing, Chicago, and Paris, Zhang finds that urban preservation provides a tool for diverse political and social actors to frame their propositions and advance their favored courses of action. In cities from West to East, divergent political and economic interests have caused urban preservation to become contested. Exploring three of the world’s great cities, Zhang deftly navigates readers through each case study, illustrating the complexities of the politics of urban preservation in each city. In Beijing, urban preservation was integral to promoting economic growth and enhancing the city’s image during the lead-up to the 2008 Olympics; in Chicago, it is used to increase property values and revitalize neighborhoods; and in Paris, it offers a channel for national and municipal governments to compete for control over urban space. Although urban preservation serves various purposes in these cities, Zhang explains how different types of political fragmentation have affected the implementation of preservation initiatives in predictable ways, thus generating distinct patterns of urban preservation. A comparative urban politics study of unusual breadth, The Fragmented Politics of Urban Preservation gives us insight into the complex policy process of urban preservation through which political institutions are intertwined with interests and inclinations, fundamentally shaping the direction of urban development, the physical forms of cities, and the lives of citizens.

A lively study of America's first environmental battle describes how, in 1913, Congress authorized the construction of the Hetch Hetchy Dam and Reservoir within the bondaries of Yosemite National Park, chronicling the intrigues that surrounded the project, profiling participants in the debate, and the implications of Hetch Hetchy for American attitudes toward environmental stewardship. 10,000 first printing.