 Hi, welcome everybody. Today, we're talking about standards. Title today is Do We Need Another Standard? I just want to introduce myself real quick. My name is Nicholas Van and I am the Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer in Washington State. And I wanted to first start out by framing this session for all of you so you can get an idea of what we're going to be talking about today. We have an equity problem in historic preservation, and it's going to take all of us to address it. While a lot of energy has been focused on what can or should be preserved and recognized, there's not been the same amount of energy and focus on how places should be preserved and recognized. Specifically, I think we need to examine some of our foundational tools, namely the Secretary of the Interior's standards and everything that derives from those. Preservation standards need to be expanded in order to equitably meet the needs of preserving historic and cultural places in a way that doesn't blindly prioritize material integrity. I don't think the existing standards, restoration, reconstruction, rehabilitation need to be changed, but I do think we need more tools in the toolbox. More options and the ones that are more responsive to the needs of people in community in a way that can be self-defined based on their values. We need to return power back to the communities and offer more vetted treatment standards. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here. I don't think any of us are, but I would cheaply borrow from the Burra Charter, for example, which actually has a standard for conservation. We don't have to do much to consider adopting such a thing. The definition that shows up in the Burra Charter for conservation appears as such, and I quote, conservation means all the processes of looking after a place, so as to retain its cultural significance. Furthermore, cultural significance is embodied in the place itself. Its fabric, setting, use, associations, meanings, records, related places, and related objects. Places have a range of values for different individuals or groups, end quote. In other words, conservation is an elastic treatment for embodied culture based on a range of diversely accepted meanings. This is how we understand diverse and marginalized communities, and frankly, a lot of people's organic approach to preservation in the way that it's been practiced for several decades. Conservation standards would essentially place historic fabric, setting, use, association, and meaning on even playing fields, but we don't have this in our toolbox currently. I think we need it desperately. Added flexibility would embrace the intangible elements of preservation rather than negating them by an intense focus on materiality, but it would also acknowledge the truly dynamic and iterative evolution of contributions by diverse communities in the adult environment. If we do this, we'll do a better job at recognizing and acknowledging our most authentic places whose significance are transcended by textual definitions. And finally, we cannot produce equitable outcomes for our diverse and marginalized communities without letting respective communities define what they want and need out of preservation. I strongly believe through years of observation, interactions with folks just like we have on the panel today that the embodied culture of a place is measured most notably in its overall character and cultural significance than by its architecturalist or our integrity. Obviously, architectural integrity is super important. I mean, none of us would be here if we didn't all believe that, but it's not the only thing that's defined a place. Buildings and places are generally for people. Without the people, we wouldn't have places, so we think we need to be more people-centered. Speaking of people, we've surrounded ourselves today with some pretty incredible people with brilliant ideas and perspectives. And I'm going to stop talking because I want to hand it over to all of them to share their wisdom and expertise. And I'd love to go on and on about why we need more tools, but I think we're going to focus today a lot on what the vision might look like and, you know, a little bit of why we needed. But these things have already started to manifest themselves in various places, and we really want to highlight some of these efforts. We'll start by learning about some practical applications of pro-equity initiatives and solutions that have been applied to treatment standards. And these things are all occurring all around us. So first, I'm going to have some presentations, and we're going to follow it up with a moderated discussion. Our panelists today include Sarah Cody, Adrienne Burke, and Christina Hingle. Christina Hingle is an experienced government relations professional specializing in the field of historic preservation. Christina's advocacy and policy efforts promote historic preservation efforts nationwide at federal, state, and local levels. Christina currently represents the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers, Nick Schippel, leading nationwide government relations efforts in support of historic preservation initiatives. With extensive experience in nonprofit associations and the private sector, Christina excels in cultivating relationships with government officials, agencies, and stakeholders to promote historic preservation policies. These efforts span the political spectrum, fostering a collaborative environment on key issues with overarching goals of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Christina shares this desire to better serve communities with more flexibility in our preservation treatments. And I'm honored to have been able to get to know her over the past few years because we've been leaving places and people behind in the preservation movement. Specifically, she'll outline the potential for conservation districts and help us understand why we must ensure that preservation is better integrated in the mainstream municipal planning. Also joining us today are Sarah Cody and Adrienne Burke. Sarah Cody is the Historic Preservation Chief for Miami-Dade County here in South Florida. Sorry, we have to be virtual this year again. In this role, she manages preservation efforts for the county's unincorporated neighborhoods and 24 unincorporated municipalities. With a background in cultural landscape preservation, she brings in a typical lens to govern local government preservation work and takes a broader approach to better understand and uplift the county's unique history and development. Sarah believes strongly in her duty as a public servant to undertake work that's meaningful to the residents of Miami-Dade County in asking what preserving a specific resource does for that community, how does it help meet their goals and maintain cultural heritage? Adrienne Burke is a principal planner with Miami-Dade County working on historic preservation and long-range planning. Previously, she worked in Northeast Florida as planning director at Nassau County, executive director for Riverside Avondale Preservation, and community development director for the city of Fernandina Beach. I hope I pronounced that correctly. Preservation specialties include cemeteries, African-American history, and sea level rise planning. Adrienne has been an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Virginia and a master's degree in preservation and urban planning and a law degree from the University of Florida. She is AICP certified, a member of the Florida Bar, and on the board for the Florida Public Archaeology Network. I don't believe any of these people sleep. Together, Adrienne and Sarah, we have one of the strongest local preservation programs in the country, in my opinion, because of their innovation, and that innovation is born out of caring deeply about who they serve. At one point, there was a recognition that the majority of the history being preserved in Miami-Dade County was white history in a place where non-white individuals comprise a vast majority of the population. Something was obviously not right. Preservation wasn't representing the people, and they were tirelessly dismantled at. They're leading meaningful transformation of preservation policy, and we all need to pay attention to what they're doing. These panelists are all true leaders in the field. I'm truly humbled to share this space with them, and without further ado, I'm going to hand things over to Sarah and Adrienne. Thank you so much, Nick List. That was quite the intro, so Adrienne and I are going to try to live up to your opinion of us, certainly. So today, we're going to talk about expanding the standards and how we're aiming to do this in Miami-Dade County. So when we talk about the history of formal historic preservation in the U.S., I think most of us are familiar at this point with most of the early grassroots preservation leaders were white women, and they were focused on telling the stories of white men. The majority of our historic preservation framework was established before the Civil Rights Act, during Jim Crow era segregation, and before movements for women's rights and LGBTQ plus rights. And when we look at our framework and standards, they were established also before climate change was a recognized threat. And several decades later, our standards really have not been revisited to address the very real issues of equity, resilience, affordability, etc. All of these very real issues plaguing our communities today. And formal preservation really has not been and continues to not be inclusive of voices outside of a white privileged perspective. And here, we always emphasize formal because this is what is traditionally recognized and taught as the history of the preservation movement in this country. Really, it's the story that we tell ourselves and the story that we tell our communities about historic preservation. But, you know, many of us have come to recognize this is not the full story. It excludes, perhaps purposefully, countless stories and community-led efforts to preserve themselves in the face of structural racism. As noted in the Erica Evrami book, Social Inclusion and Preservation, marginalized communities have always taken place-based collective action in resistance to state-backed oppression. But these efforts have not been and often still are not recognized by the professional preservation community as real preservation. And the people trying to preserve their communities are often pushed aside and are told by us, the professionals, what should or should not be important to them. And, you know, often when people talk about historic preservation, what they're really talking about is specifically architectural preservation. But we all know communities are comprised of much more than just their buildings and preservation really does have to expand to allow communities to preserve their intangible qualities. So now's the time to ask ourselves, what should we be doing to proactively support our communities and assist them in a meaningful way? How can we use historic preservation to help make our communities more equitable, more resilient? How can we expand our standards to use preservation as a true tool for community building? If we look quickly at some of our historic preservation stats, there's about 95,000 sites listed on the National Register. Only 8% of those focus on women or racial or ethnic minorities and of that 8%, only 2% focus on African American sites. When we look at the professionals working in preservation, less than 6% of the National Park Services, 20,000 employees are black. And African Americans comprise less than 4% of archaeologists, 5% of architects and engineers and less than 1% of professional preservationists. And when you try to look at the data at state and local levels, the data really varies or just doesn't exist or it's not easily accessible. So if we want to look at the data in Florida, this is data that was not readily available. This is something that Adrienne took upon herself to look at all the data and audit and analyze the types of sites that were represented. So when we look at National Register sites in the state of Florida, this was an audit that was done in 2020. So some of these numbers could be, you know, adjusted as there's been more National Register sites added in the last two years. But as of 2020, we had 1844 National Register sites. Only 4% of those addressed African American or black history, only 4% related to ethnic heritage. And there's an overlap there between ethnic heritage and African American and black heritage. 1.5% related to women's history and there's just no information on any sites potentially associated with LGBTQ plus history. And in Florida, we also have a resource database called the Florida master site file, and we see similar trends when we analyze that data. The master site file has over 200,000 sites recorded and of those only 1.4% relate to African American or black heritage. 1% relate to women and then Latinx and LGBTQ plus each have less than 1% representation. So if we look specifically at Miami-Dade County and our locally designated historic sites and districts compared to our demographics. The demographics data is from 2019 and we were at almost 70% Hispanic or Latinx 16.7% African American or black. Just over half of our population is women and we have 6.8% LGBTQ plus. And when we look at our sites, again, this was in 2020 so we have had a couple more designations that, you know, so our numbers will be reflected next time we update our audit. But at the time, we had 188 county sites. Now, nearly 25% of those relate to indigenous history. And in that category, we're doing pretty well in the 40 plus years that we've had a local preservation ordinance. We've always had a very robust and engaged archeological program. So that's the reason why that number is what it is. When we look at African American or black sites, we have only 11.7%. And again, remember our population is nearly 70% Hispanic or Latinx. 1% of our designations are associated with that community. So that's not good. We have 2% related to Caribbean 15.4% related to women's history. We have zero sites related to LGBTQ plus history and zero sites related to Asian history. And we also, in performing this data audit, you know, we made some assumptions in reviewing the sites. You know, there's some sites that may have an underrepresented history that's not well documented or is kind of mentioned in passing in the designation report. And it's not, you know, a significant part of the designation. In those instances, we did count the sites as being related to that history if it was a possibility. So one example is, you know, we have a lot of early 20th century resources that are constructed of a local material called eulitic limestone. And those are often connected to the Bahamian people who quarried and built the structures. Now, oftentimes that's not addressed in the designation reports. But again, we still counted that in our numbers because we know it is part of the history of that site. When we look at categories, we have to no surprise, 59% of our designations are based on their architectural significance. Now, when we look at preservation in local government, preservation is often linked with local government within their planning programs. We're largely a regulatory function, you know, even though we're nested within planning departments most often. We are oftentimes still separated from the main planning functions. We're often unknown by the public, by other departments, and oftentimes this is a limited community involvement. And, you know, because preservation is linked within local government planning programs, the history of urban planning in the United States is associated with systemic racism. And if you're not familiar with this book, The Color of Law, it's definitely worth a read to get a very in-depth background on the connection between planning and zoning in the U.S. and systemic racism. And, you know, when we consider that preservation is often nested within our planning departments and yet we as preservationists often continue to focus nearly exclusively on architectural preservation, we ourselves are furthering that divide between ourselves and the community, between ourselves and the planning function. But when you start to look at historic preservation as one tool that can be effectively used to further bolster our community, you can start to recognize that historic preservation is not an insular field. It is an essential part of every field that deals with the built environment. So, again, how can we reexamine our current practices and standards to better leverage historic preservation in this way? So what can we do right now at a local government level? And these are examples of things that we are currently doing in Miami-Dade County. First, broadening the concept of historic preservation beyond the building, proactively identify more diverse sites for potential listing or other preservation strategies. And when we talk about other preservation strategies, that means maybe not designation. You know, we often look at designation at a local level at least as an end goal solution, like check, we save that building, time to move on, and then it's the community's problem, we never deal with it again. But, you know, we need to really stop and ask ourselves and more importantly ask the community, why are we preserving this resource? How does it help the community meet their goals? And sometimes designation is the right answer and sometimes it's not. And, you know, that's why working with communities and conducting outreach is really essential. And you can also evaluate and update your existing designations to tell a fuller history of those sites. You can prioritize future survey work to address historically excluded sites in neighborhoods. Again, conduct community outreach and engagement, encourage diverse board membership and staffing. Work on these initiatives with any of your identified partners. We're lucky in Miami-Dade County, we have a very active and engaged nonprofit called Dave Heritage Trust. And they help us out with a lot. They go after a lot of grants to undertake surveys. We have a really incredible affordable housing program that we run with them. So, you know, look for partners that you can help meet all these goals with and ensure ongoing education around these issues for staff and for board members. Another really important thing that you can do right now is identify advantages in your ordinance. In Miami-Dade County, our ordinance, the existing language in it, is a huge advantage that we have. We do not have a specific number of designation criteria that must be met. You know, oftentimes in local ordinances, you'll find, you know, maybe there's seven criteria and you have to meet three out of the seven to be eligible for designation, or you have to meet two out of five or whatever it is. In Miami-Dade County, you only have to meet one criterion and you're eligible for designation. And on top of that, our first criterion is incredibly broad. It's that a resource must be associated with distinctive elements of the cultural, social, political, economic, scientific, religious, prehistoric, paleontological, or architectural history that have contributed to the patterns of history in the community, the county, South Florida, the state, or the nation. So that's incredibly broad. And if you have a resource that meets one thing within that one criterion, it's eligible. We also have flexibility with the age of a structure if it's deemed to be exceptionally important. So I think we're all familiar with, you know, the 50-year rule, but in Miami-Dade County, we can designate resources that are less than 50 years old if they're determined to have exceptional importance. And we do have a court case that sets precedent because we did have a resource that was designated at less than 50 years old and there was a lawsuit that happened. And part of that was the owner saying, well, your ordinance doesn't define exceptional importance. So how can you say this meets that definition? And what the court ended up saying was you don't have to have a definition in your ordinance of exceptional importance. The Preservation Board members have the specialized knowledge and expertise to be able to determine on a case-by-case basis if something is exceptionally important or not. We can also designate archeological zones and sites. And then our ordinance also gives our board the authority to adopt rules and regulations in addition to the Secretary of Interior standards. So, you know, if you're a certified local government, you know, obviously you have to adopt the standards as your baseline. But many of us often apply the standards as a very rigid rather than using them as more flexible guidelines. And, you know, our ordinance, again, it does require application of the standards, but it allows our board to adopt additional regulations as needed to aid in carrying out the intent of our ordinance. And now I'm going to hand it off to Adrienne Burke and she's going to go through some very specific examples of our ordinance and action and how we've actually implemented these ideas. Yeah, thank you so much, Sarah. And thank you for that introduction, Nicholas. Yeah, that's really inspiring to hear that you're inspired by our work. And I have to give shout outs to other governments that we're following in the footsteps of like King County, Washington, San Francisco, San Antonio, Tacoma. So there's a lot of momentum around this, I think, in local governments, so it's really exciting. And of course we wish everyone that's watching was with us here in Miami, but, you know, hopefully we're bringing a little bit of it to you this way. So, following up on what Sarah was saying about the fact that we can adopt additional rules and regulations, a recent example of that is our design guidelines that we just had approved by our board of county commissioners in February of this year. And this was the first major update to our design guidelines since the 1980s. We unfortunately hadn't even really been utilizing them in that intervening time because they have become so outdated. So it's really exciting to have a new set completed. And a big part of this was a focus on resilience. So, you know, Sarah mentioned that most of our standards were adopted at a time before climate change was a factor. Well, here in Miami Bay County, we don't have a luxury of ignoring that. So we had to really think about how we want to ensure flexibility and maintain a balance of historic preservation, but also ensuring that private property owners and historic properties are well protected against some of the climate threats we face, like flooding, sea level rise and increased storm events. So our design guidelines have an intentional focus on resilience and trying to achieve that balance. And because of that, we wrote into the document the fact that the staff and the board, because we do have administrative approval and board approval, we reserve the right to apply additional flexibility and very constricted adherence to the secretary of the interior standards as it relates to the resilience goals of the county. And the resources propose scope of work, proximity to water, shoreline and other vulnerability factors related to climate change. So it was really important for us to make sure that that was included so that we have a very clear baseline for our ability to deviate from the standards if it's necessary. So I'm going to talk a little bit about a couple of specific designations that were done in the last few years. The first is the Richmond Heights Historic District, and this is a historic district that was designated because of its affiliation with African American history being a neighborhood created for World War II African American veterans, which was unique at the time, especially given all the things that are addressed in the book The Color of Law regarding federal policy around banking and mortgages, etc. It was really important that this neighborhood was created. And at the time, like Sarah mentioned with our criteria being so broad, there was a real recognition in the historic designation report that the primary reason that this neighborhood was being designated was because of that historic context and not the architecture. As you can see from the couple of photos there, it's, you know, relatively simple masonry vernacular mid-century structures. They're indicative and representative of their time, but certainly not high-style architecture or anything. So historic context was the primary reason, although it did meet more than one of our ordinance criteria. That was important to call out in the report. We do still require certificates of appropriateness for changes to these structures. However, we keep the reason for the designation in mind, being the historic context. And so we do, especially as the staff approvals, look at it with a lens of flexibility and maintenance of minor repairs do not require any COI whatsoever. The next one is our most recent designation, and that's the Liberty City Elks Lodge, which is associated with the African American Elks organization, which is a really important fraternal organization in the late 19th century, all through the 20th century. And it's one of the few remaining active lodges in Miami Dade County. And again, the primary reason for this designation was the history and the association with the larger Elks organization, but then the specific lodge that was located here and still continues to operate here. The Elks actually approached us about seeking designation for this property. And we specifically, you know, keeping in mind that the Elks want to eventually rehabilitate this property. They're still looking at how they just want to utilize this property. It was important to them that there be some level of flexibility and, you know, to Sarah's point earlier, it's really about working with the community, working with the property owner to understand what their goals are. Their goals aren't necessarily to restore the structure exactly as it was constructed in the 1950s. And so that's, you know, not the primary reason that they were seeking designation. So we wrote into the report and that is how we address these things. They're included as part of the designation report that we have stopped right. We really exempted a lot from review for this property. So you can see here a bunch of words, but in short, the only things that would require the COA and review under the standards are alterations to contributing features, which I'll mention in a second. Significant exterior rehab that deviates from the form and massing you can see there, which is original demolition and new construction. And that's it. So things that do not materially change the structures exterior or honestly, even if they do, for example, we aren't going to be looking at windows or doors for the majority of the structure. We only would look at changes to the contributing features, which really is just that immediate entry facade area with where the roll-up door is, where the area of the signage historically was. The brick veneer and those four squares that kind of have a mid-century aesthetic. That's it. So, you know, it's not important to us that the building get a lot of review. Again, that's not the point and that's not really assisting the property owners with their goals. And there was some discussion about this at our board, but ultimately it was unanimously approved with these conditions as recommended. Thank you. And then these are a couple of potential designations that we're looking at right now. And it's two properties and the one on the left is in the Brownsville neighborhood. It was a property built mid-century and you can see the current photo below. And then the photo on the right is of a property that was built in the early 1940s and across the street is a park. The photo on the left is significant for its association with an important family in the Brownsville neighborhood, a historically African-American neighborhood here. And the property on the right is also associated with a significant African-American family that was really instrumental single-handedly in creating that park across the street. And so we're looking at a potential designation of both the house and the park, which is owned by the county. As you can see here again, architecture is not really the main focus. It's something you can note. Certainly the photo on the left in Brownsville has maintained a lot of its features. The photo on the right, the property is unique. I think it was built originally by a white family in what was then a very rural area of the county and they essentially constructed it themselves. So while the architecture is a part of both of the stories, it's not the primary reason. And so I think that in those designations we'll also be looking to implement some level of flexibility as well. Next slide, please. And then wrapping up our section, you know, moving forward in Miami-Dade, these are just several different things that we're working on. But I'm going to talk specifically about our heritage survey if you want to move to the next slide, Sarah. This is a project we have underway now. Following on some other models, for example, Madison, Wisconsin has done a really great underrepresented community survey. We have a multi, what we anticipate to be a multi-year effort in Miami-Dade County for surveying, we have a lot of property to be surveyed. But this is phase one and we needed a way to prioritize it and that dovetailed really well with our equity initiatives. So the areas that we are prioritizing first in this phase one, and there's probably overlap between the two is one historically excluded communities. So, you know, really trying to get at starting to rectify and correct the deficit that we have of sites that represent our community as it is. We're also looking at intangible heritage and sites where buildings may no longer exist, but that are more of importance to the community. And we're about to kick off some community outreach and surveying to help us with this overall. And then we're also looking at areas facing development pressures, whether that's gentrification, redevelopment, climate change. We have a lot of area in the county that's already been up zoned by county policy. And so those areas are at particular risk as well. And I think that was the end. Yes, that's the end. So, yeah, hopefully this gives you some ideas about some ways to integrate equity and, you know, think about doing the standards differently in your community. And with that, we are done. Thank you. Hey, everyone. I really enjoyed this discussion that Sarah and Adrian just led us through. So I'd just like to kind of continue this conversation and talk a little bit more about how we know preservation is evolving and how we ensure that we're including these underrepresented voices and how we're addressing some of these challenges in achieving historic recognition, particularly in situations where this architectural integrity factor is problematic. As we know, community involvement is going to be something that's really crucial as we walk down this path to promote diversity and inclusiveness and preservation and continue to support the inclusion of more underrepresented community history in preservation. Of course, as we seek ways to celebrate historic resources and try to maintain that sense of place that everyone talks about so passionately in historic preservation. And again, reaching beyond those kind of roots of historic preservation, past that architectural integrity to maybe look at addressing some of these concerns of those historic notions being too rigid as we kind of seek to explore some more holistic approaches. So I know that many of us have already made great strides in this initiative to kind of flip the interpretations of integrity. As Sarah and Adrian just mentioned, certainly in Miami-Dade, I know our SHPO offices are also working to broaden their view and their interpretation of integrity. And certainly that's going to be to the benefit of preservation as a field and particularly for underrepresented communities. We really need to also be looking to ensure that we are exploring tools and employing them to capture everything that we're looking for in terms of preservation. So I know one of the things I'm going to talk a little bit about is conservation districts and how that might be used as a tool to aid in preservation efforts, not necessarily as a replacement for a standard historic district. But just one more tool that we have at our disposal that hasn't been widely used as we seek to maintain our built environment and our history. So talking a little bit about integrity and preservation, we know there's this disconnect in recognizing underrepresented history and preservation. And so whether that's race, gender, or even economic status, we know that there are long-standing barriers of entry to recognizing those histories. And of course that focus on architectural integrity is one thing that really challenges it. Properties that might have a significant history might face a much more challenging time in proving their historicness, if you will. Here's an example I just wanted to share out of New York City that kind of demonstrates this challenge. You can see the black and white photo, which is taken, I think, in the 30s of this beautiful Greek Revival Italian 8 building. And it was known to have been owned by two abolitionists, which were pivotal figures in the neighborhood. This site then also represents some rare underground railroad history, pretty rare in New York documented for obvious reasons. And this particular architectural style of this building is the only Greek Revival Italian 8 known to survive north of 96th Street in Manhattan. So a really interesting story. This building was up for local landmarking and was rejected noting that they must consider the degree of integrity it retains as to its period of significance. And it was deemed that it did not possess the integrity of historic association design or materials. And so the question I pose is that if this building still reflected its 1930s appearance, what then would that mean? That's a pretty easy bar to hit. You can obviously see how the architectural integrity has influenced the validity of this as a historic structure. So then how do we go about addressing situations like these that pop up all over the country? One thing I've really been interested in exploring is the use of conservation districts as another tool to help guide preservation into the next generations. And, you know, of course, historically we've really seen this emphasis on historic districts as a way to capture multiple properties that are associated in historic. And, you know, there are other tools like conservation districts that would allow for a broader representation of history and then maintaining of different cultures and neighborhoods that we've kind of been after for a few years with preservation. This particular example is out of Nashville, Tennessee. This is a modest but cohesive 1930s streetscape neighborhood. And they employed a conservation zoning district to try to keep some of that culture and value, but aren't quite as strict as, say, a traditional historic district. So I anticipate a lot of you to be fairly familiar with conservation districts. So I won't go too in-depth here because I don't have the time. But really the overall goal is to really recognize and promote old and historic neighborhoods and downtowns with less stringent requirements, typically that a historic district would have. And it can also be tailored really easily to what a specific community values. You can emphasize or de-emphasize certain things when it comes to architectural integrity, zoning requirements. And it really gives you this flexible tool that would really benefit preservation and kind of fill in some gaps that might currently exist, particularly with underrepresented communities. And it still has the ability to prevent adverse effects, which of course we are always looking to do in preservation as well. But maybe downplays the significance of having improper architectural alterations, which can also really be a story of where the past has been, where certain cultures have experienced economic hardships. And racism and, you know, that is all a part of that story. And they also really come into play where locally there are a lot of politics politically challenging to have more regulation. This kind of gives a middle ground in terms of things that might be palatable for local officials that might be a little bit hesitant to dip into preservation. Again, something that's going to be important is really trying to integrate preservation into the municipal planning practice. Preservation will really do well by being a little bit more appealing as a community effort, more broadly speaking, and be able to maintain that sense of place again that people want to be in neighborhoods that folks want to move to and having a little bit more flexibility. And so I think as a result, tools like this are really going to lead to more inclusivity by nature in preservation in diverse communities and give you kind of another option there. Currently, it's not a tool that's widely used. I think there's only about 40 nationwide. So certainly something worth looking into as we kind of face this change in preservation over the next few years. And so what's going to be really important in that process, engaging the community? And I know many of you who work in preservation are already well aware how important it is to engage the community. Not only is it important for them to take the initiative to let people know what's important to them in their communities and their culture, but we really need to serve to empower them to do so so they can advocate for themselves and ensure that the history that we're promoting really is reflective of their history and all the population that we can. I think long term, you know, we know that preservation will never be a one size fits all scenario. So being open to broadening our preservation toolbox to meet some of these current and changing needs that we see is going to be really important. And again, to integrate that into planning at all settings, local, state, federal and really ensure to work that preservation doesn't remain siloed in kind of this niche field with limited appeal. We really need to work to engage more people in what we're doing and let them know why they should care about it as much as we do. So where do we go from here? You know, again, making sure that preservation is accessible to the average person. Interesting to the average person, I think are all going to be really important parts of broadening, you know, the work we're doing, particularly with underrepresented communities to be exploring these flexible tools like conservation districts as an alternative emphasis on architectural integrity. And also to complement the existing work that we've been building upon in preservation decade after decade. And of course to, you know, tackle some of those items were also, you know, important to us like curbing demolition, protecting from incongru and developments and really just seeking a better way to preserve those lesser known histories for all. And efforts like this are really going to lead towards, you know, establishing a sense of community, ability to instill civic pride in one's neighborhood and to appreciate history I think on a level that we've never seen before. So with that, I will leave you with that and just thanks again to Nick for organizing this session and I'm looking forward to our moderated discussion. Yeah, thank you so much everybody for your very thorough and well thought out presentations and just it's amazing to be able to share all of your work and perspectives with everybody. So thank you. I want to start out the conversation with a single sentence answer try to maybe give us some grounding and foundation here. And that is in your communities and to find that however you will. Who is currently left behind. I can try to jump in and Sarah if you want to weigh in something that I think we're starting to make efforts around but we definitely have room for improvement. And I think the long way to go is here in Miami Dade County. A majority, well I don't know if it's a majority but a lot of people do not speak English and so you know actually I think English, people who only speak English are in the minority for sure I mean most people here I think speak more than one language. And so, you know, I think that certainly in our community, it would be easy to say if we're leaving behind people who don't speak English. We have two major languages here are Spanish and Haitian Creole. And, you know, we really need to make all of our materials and our outreach efforts, more inclusive from a language perspective to even be able to communicate what preservation is and what we're talking about and what we're trying to do and working with communities so that's a that seems like a quick one right off the top of my head that is a big deal. I don't know Sarah if you have any other thoughts. Yeah, that's a really great point Adrian. And you know it's something we deal with in our office that we have applicants that you know they get our COA and you know maybe they only speak Creole and then it's very challenging to try to explain to them you know how they have to fill it out. So, and thankfully we are trying to move into having our applications translated in our outreach materials. And you know I'd say on a broader level, the community is left behind. You know, I think preservation in general and we've done this at Miami Dade County to we have a long history of kind of having this attitude of like well I'm the professional I'm the one with the education. I know about preservation what do you know about preservation and I'm going to come into your community and tell you what's important and why. And you know we've had, you know we've all had preservation battles but we've had preservation battles in Miami Dade where we had an entire community telling us know what you're trying to do is not important to us and we were like, it is important and we're going to try to do it anyway. And in the end it was a long drawn out battle we accomplished nothing. We accomplished nothing for that community and we accomplished nothing that we could have been doing for other communities, what that we could have been spending our time on. So, again, it's really important, I think to try to pivot to community led efforts to really understand and let the, you know, drop this attitude of we need to educate people on what historic preservation is and what it isn't and we have to let the communities educate us on what matters to them. So for me, I'm in a bit of a unique situation, living in a Washington DC suburb. It's actually a 1960s planned community so the entire town is like a planned town, so a little bit unique. And, you know, a broad problem in some of these suburbs of DC is that so many historic buildings and historic sites have already been lost. You know, the rampant development, land values being higher than what's standing on them has really just obliterated some of these historic places. And, and by the same token, some of those stories that stood behind those buildings, you know, the building is the best visual representation of wanting to find out more of what happened in a place and, you know, the past occupants, and without that building. It does become more challenging. So having seen, you know, decade upon decade of demolition, much of those physical representations are simply gone. And so I would contend that where I am, everyone is also left behind as Sarah kind of mentioned. There's really, I mean, I guess it's good that it's not singling out a certain group. It's kind of everyone is no longer connected to that history. Yeah, thank you all. And I just wanted to add in a point there as well that I think anybody that's currently left behind is anybody that doesn't see themselves or their identities reflected in the people that are making decisions. And I think that's really important because you walk into a historic preservation commission meeting, and you see nobody that looks like you, or identifies as you. That's, that's not a great recipe for success, necessarily, because you don't go in there feeling necessarily welcomed, unless that, you know, culture has really been brought to the forefront, and people started to embracing knowledge. At the same time, we can't serve those communities effectively by telling them what's important to them. We need to know what is important to communities. They tell us, and then our job is to serve them by saying, Okay, well, these are the things that we can do with preservation. But what does it mean to you? What would you find meaningful, you know, out of this relationship? And that's the way that we can serve communities when we don't have that representation at the policy for decision making process, because we need that input, but we can't make that decision on behalf of others, because we can't speak for them without knowing directly what that perspective is. So I think that's really important. And I think it leads into my next question I wanted to ask for you as well. And that is, what is your vision for historic preservation in the next five years? I'll jump in. You know, I'd like to just see more, you know, more acceptance of, Okay, yes, we understand we have to move beyond the building, and then actual, you know, policy change and implementation on the local level. I feel like we've done a good job over the last couple of years kind of talking about what the issue is, and there's been a lot of talking about what the issue is. And I think, you know, it's time to see some real action. And, you know, to really, you know, we're not going to solve all the issues in historic preservation in the next five years. It's, you know, we've been perpetuating systems of racism for a century. And so it's going to take a really long time to really fully address that and to get to a different place, you know, it's not going to be done in five years. But, you know, I think a lot of people trying to say like, Oh, well, what can I do in this one project is one project isn't going to solve the problem. But as you start to implement policy change and as you start to implement on a project by project basis, that is how we get there. So I think in five years if we could just see, you know, more at the local level of people really starting to, you know, not just think about the problem, but to actually take action. Yeah, it's a process and an evolution. There's no checkboxes. We don't have an end zone that we're trying to get to. And then we check that box. We've done it, right? It's going to be ongoing. Christina, Adrian, did you want to add anything? Yeah, I'll tag along the Sarah's comments, just as it relates to policy. I think you're dead on Sarah, something that's so important. One of the reasons I wanted to be engaged in policy is I felt it was incredibly important if you wanted to have a positive impact on preservation that you do look at these policies. And, you know, certainly starting from the top down, you know, federal to state to local everything is going to have a trickle down effect. So, you know, ensuring that, you know, on Capitol Hill, there is talks of preservation and why it's so important. And continuing to maintain that, you know, preservation is good for everyone and getting rid of some of those old notions of it being elitist, you know, because it's certainly not the goals of most of us folks today working in preservation, making sure that we're not partisan, making sure that, you know, regardless of party folks know that these are things that build up communities, strengthen communities. And, you know, again, I think just as, you know, the national register kind of had a trickle down effect on influencing state and local policy, you know, I think the same thing could be said more broadly for preservation, that we need to be ensuring that, you know, at the federal level, we're setting a good tone for preservation. And also kind of related to that, ensuring that we are setting folks up that are coming out of school for these political paths and, you know, getting those folks that are not only interested in preservation, but also in politics, because, you know, it's great to advocate these things, but it'd be even more powerful to be bringing these folks out of school and giving them the power, I think would be a really powerful thing. Yeah, I'll just add kind of my vision is I do hope that local government in particular because I do think there's so much to be done at the local level and local governments should feel empowered to make their own policy choices. I hope that there also is a recognition that local government preservation programs don't only have to be regulatory. And I think that's where preservation has gotten a bad rap for so long is that it's been seen as just this additional process that you have to go through. And, you know, cities like San Antonio, for example, are an amazing example of how a community is still doing that. And that's an important part of the preservation program, but they're doing all sorts of things related to cultural history and intangible heritage. And I'm hopeful that other local governments might kind of pick up with that and run with it and then the other related to something Christina said which I could get on the soapbox and talk about for hours, because I also do wear the hat of being a regular urban planner. Is that I hope that preservation becomes more integrated with planning in general, because I think that that will help the preservation movement and it'll it'll help planning be better too. So many planning projects don't start with an understanding of the history or the the area or the neighborhood or a site history and I think that that will only make planning more strong and more relatable for communities as well. So that's another area I continually advocate for as well. Yeah, absolutely. Those are all fantastic points. And I think, you know, at every level of government we have this element of resistance, but we also have this element of aggressivism that tries to really push the boundary and understand, you know, how we're serving but also some of the limitations and you know there are definitely tools that we sometimes need to protect a place that has a lot of meaning to communities. So we need those regulatory tools, but at the same time, we can definitely be more proactive in that community outreach and understanding so that when we get to that point. We've already built those relationships and that trust with a very, you know, diverse range of of our constituents and you know that I think makes stronger communities as well. You know, because everybody has that trust relationship, people have at least understood and embraced preservation as a critical aspect of our built environment, and you know, better integrating that into planning processes. And, you know, it makes, I think all of the program areas that each of us work on their a little bit easier and more embraced. So we only have a couple minutes left, but I wanted to maybe talk a little bit about, you know, why you think broadening this preservation is a good thing to do and what really motivates you to continue doing this work even though it can feel like two steps forward one step back. I'll jump in. You know, I know Nicholas mentioned this in this intro but, you know, coming from local government, you know, I feel very strongly in my duty as a public servant to serve the public in a way that is meaningful to them. And, you know, if we just continue on this path of, you know, what I often refer to as preservation for preservation sake, what are you contributing to your community. So that's why I think it's essential to really to broaden the perspective if you're in public service and you're not asking yourself, why am I doing this how does this help the community, then you are doing a disservice to your community. Yeah, I would echo Sarah with the public servant component I mean that is in government what we're supposed to be doing. I think what motivates me to is a sense of, you know, for whatever reason I've found myself in this position. There's a way that I can utilize the position to facilitate or assist communities in meeting their goals. You know, so much of local government is this bureaucratic confusing process, especially in the area of land use and preservation. That I think we really can be a bridge to help communities meet their goals and to help these stories that have been purposefully excluded for so long, be brought to light and be honored. And I do see it as a form of, you know, preservation justice I think there's an opportunity for us to really rectify a lot of wrongs, hopefully. We can facilitate and that that in some small way I mean that really helps me keep going. I'm in agreement with everything said so far but I'll just add on, you know, I think something that's really important to me is, you know, continuing to move with the times and to really adapt to things we weren't necessarily necessarily thinking about 30 years ago, 40 years ago and, you know, how we represent these stories and how these stories represent our communities. As some folks have mentioned certainly writing wrongs important part of the process as well. But, you know, really also keying into what's going to be important to these newer generations, Gen Z and younger. You know, every generation has their thing and, you know, the clock slowly ticks on and everybody has a little bit different experience. And so I think, you know, ensuring that we bring those folks in and recognize that, you know, those of us that have been around longer, it's going to be a little bit different year after year in terms of, you know, what's important to them, to their communities, how they see the world, I think is all a really important part of the story. You know, certainly I was one of those folks that got drawn in by the great architecture of preservation and, you know, have come to learn there is much, much more to preservation. So I just look forward to, you know, seeing how that scope broadens and, you know, how much further folks continue to push the envelope. Absolutely. Great. Thank you, everybody for those very heartfelt comments. And I just want to end by saying that none of us were born into this. Yeah, we were all born into this, but we didn't create this problem. We didn't create the problems that we're trying to address right now, but it is everybody's responsibility to address it. And so it's nobody's fault, right? And I just want everybody to be really clear on that that, you know, inaction is basically complacency. And if we don't address the problems, they will continue to perpetuate. We've seen this in history. And that, you know, I think what our duty is as public servants to serve our communities as people promoting preservation and ensuring that it is accessible to everybody, because everybody's entitled to be able to participate in historic preservation. It's not elitist. It's not reserved for a specific demographic or characteristic of people. It's for everybody. And so I hope that this session has inspired you. I hope that it's motivated you. And I hope that it's enlightened, you know, some of the perspectives that we're all experiencing and, you know, working with the communities and the organizations that we all work with and just understanding that there is a better future for historic preservation that is more inclusive that will result in equitable outcomes. I just wanted to close the session. Thank you, Christina. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Adrienne, so, so much for participating on the panel for sharing your thoughts and insights. And it's just been an absolute pleasure to be able to share this space with you today. So thank you all for tuning in. Thank you so much. Thank you.