Fall/Winter 2003 Table of Contents

Community Exchange
by Kerri Rubman

Many of America's communities are facing common threats: increasing homogeneity of design, wasteful patterns of development in both city and countryside, and devastating changes brought on by the collapse of traditional industries. Yet some have developed as attractive and successful places in which to live and work without destroying the character and diversity that is part of their heritage. Indeed, they have identified, protected, and enhanced their historic assets and successfully utilized them in addressing economic development, transportation, housing, and other needs.

The National Trust's new National Community Exchange Program helps communities possessing an important but undervalued and underexposed base of historic and geographic assets to learn from such examples. The program gives community leaders, including those with no interest in or an aversion to preservation, an opportunity to visit and learn from their peers in communities that have used preservation effectively to rebuild and develop their economics and improve community life.

According to Wendy Nicholas, director of the National Trust's Northeast Office: "These exchanges inspire communities. Beyond just showing them new strategies, the exchange generate energy, optimism, new ideas, creative thinking." They also build valuable partnerships within the visiting team and between the participating communities.

The staff of the National Trust Regional Officeworks with the selected community to assemble the participant team (which always includes the mayor), identify issues to be studied, recuit a suitable host community, plan and manage the visit, and promote follow-up activities such as reports, work meetings, and public forums.

Pilot programs in 2000-2002 have sent travel teams from Georgetown, S.C. to Newport, R.I.; Norwich, Conn. to Portsmouth, N.H.; and Buffalo, N.Y. to Pittsburgh, P.A. Expenses were largely covered by the National Trust, thanks to generous support from the Daniel K. Thorne Foundation.

Twenty-eight community leaders from Buffalo visited Pittsburgh for three days in May 2002, hosted by the Pittsburgh Landmarks and History Foundation. The team included city staff, design and planning professionals, developers, local business leaders, and representatives from foundations and community-based organizations. City Hall staff made the application and managed the Buffalo component of the exchange with help from the Landmark Society of the Niagara Frontier.

Robert Shibley, president of the Landmark Society of the Niagara Frontier and professor of architecture and
planning at the University at Buffalo, facilitated the team and participated in the visit. He describes his group's expectations: "The goal was to understand the vision that drives Pittsburgh's preservation community, how it was organized to deliver that vision, and what resource streams were used to finance the work. Mayor Anthony Masiello believed the exchange would contribute to the creation of a much clearer and stronger strategy for both community and historic preservation in Buffalo."

In particular, the Buffalo team was impressed by Pittsburgh's preservation vision that emphasizes quality of life issues (green infrastructure, pedestrian-friendly design and planning, economic and racial diversity downtown and in the neighborhoods, and access to and celebration of the water) and by its means of implementing and funding that vision.

"We learned a lot from our colleagues in Pittsburgh," Shibley says. "The experience of meeting them and seeing their city helped increase our capacity to bring historic preservation and community development work together." He adds, "The diverse composition of the travel team has brought together what are often competing organizations in the community."

Building on reports and proposals submitted by the travel team, the city of Buffalo adopted a preservation work plan for its comprehensive and downtown plans, calling for the use of historic preservation as both an economic development and community development tool. The city has also commissioned a building and land management program and is supporting the development of a Strategic Investment Fund.

Reprinted in part from "Community Exchange Program Shares Successful Strategies" National Trust for Historic Preservation
Forum News, Sept/Oct 2003.