When traveling to Europe, you step off the platform at the Gare d’Est in Paris and immediately know where you are. As you hear the language, watch the people, and see the architecture, you will forever know Paris. When you walk through Tiananmen Square into the Forbidden City, seeing the guards and military all around and the image of Mao Zedong above your head, you will always know Beijing. What these great cities posses is an essence of place—a sense of beauty and a sense of uniqueness that makes them stand out among the world stage.

Anthony M. Tung, the renowned urban scholar and writer, recently spoke at the University of Georgia’s School of Environment and Design. His lecture focused on using historic preservation to protect a sense of place—to save the buildings and spaces that make a city unique. As cities face unprecedented growth, they face a loss of their cultural heritage through both demolition of historic buildings and the growth of substandard, generic architecture at their borders. In the past century, Mr. Tung asked, what has your city lost? And, what has your city done to prevent that loss?

The goal of historic preservation should not be to simply stop development, since that would be foolish in light of the growth of the urban population. The goal should be to guide and work with architects to develop appropriate modern buildings that also fit within an historic context—to create new buildings that challenge their older neighbors while also echoing the historic city. The goal should be to develop a conversation, whereby development can continue, while working side-by-side with historic buildings.

--By Nathan Bevil, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it