by Julie Larry

It’s hard to predict the future, especially now when even predictions for next month are at best wild guesstimates. When I was a kid I thought the future would be like the Jetsons. While telemedicine is more common now, I am still waiting for my flying car and a robot maid to clean up around the house. I could really use the robot, but the flying car I can live without. Unlike George Jetson, I am working from home these days.

Elroy Jetson ‘sees’ the doctor. Credit: Hanna Barbera

So what will Landmarks be advocating for in the future? Two topics at the top of my list are interrelated and the third is a topic that Landmarks has been an advocate for since our early years.

Be Prepared.
We can’t prepare for all contingencies, but as historic building owners, we should be prepared for fire, storm events, and natural disasters. Across the country preservationists are working with state and local governments as well as homeowners to prepare for hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and earthquakes. Closer to home, one of Portland’s local Landmarks, Etz Chaim Synagogue, home to the Maine Jewish Museum, suffered a fire late last week. Luckily the building was saved, but there was damage to the building’s interiors and contents.
Homeowners can face some of the most immediate impacts of disasters: temporary housing needs, loss of and damage to our personal belongings, financial uncertainty, and stress. You can effectively reduce the risk of these impacts with good planning. There is a great deal of online information to help homeowners reduce the risk of fire, minimize the impacts of flooding, and strengthen a home's resistance to extreme wind, rain and other climactic forces. The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s disaster preparation resource guide is a good place to start.
Be Resilient.
Historic preservation and resiliency advocates share a common goal, to protect assets and maintain them for the long term. We need to do our best to prevent building decay, incorporate flexibility and adaptability into our buildings and communities, fortify buildings and neighborhoods against climate change and energy shortages, increase building durability, increase the use of local materials, and reject planned obsolescence in our buildings.
I can hear my Yankee grandparents, who grew up during the Great Depression, in my head telling me these ideas are only common sense!
Building maintenance, adaptive use, and use of locally sourced or salvaged materials have been part of historic preservation’s toolkit for decades. To include climate adaptability and sustainable building practices is a natural extension of our current advocacy work. Historic preservation isn’t the solution, but it can and should be part of any solution to make our homes and communities more resilient.
Good Design.

Well designed buildings and well built communities that respond and adapt to our changing needs is something for which Landmarks has long been an advocate. That is unlikely to change in the future, especially given point #2 above. In the last decades, we have seen a steady rise in demand for neighborhoods and communities with safe and friendly streets, mature trees, and walk-able access to services like schools, coffee shops, and small neighborhood stores. Most historic neighborhoods in greater Portland include a variety of housing options with easy access to a local business node that serve as models for planning developments and future zoning initiatives.

We must advocate for future landmarks. Historic preservation and new architectural design are not in opposition to each other, but are in fact very much related, connected by an interest in architecture, history, and the future. New buildings should be designed to outlast a single tenant or owner, repairable, and be adaptable to new uses and needs. We will continue to be advocates for buildings constructed with substantial materials, careful detailing, and a recognition that they will need to change and adapt over their lifetimes like their historic neighbors.

What do you think the future holds? What should Landmarks be focusing on in the future? We will be resuming our strategic planning later this years, so let us know in the comments what you think we should be planning for in our near future.