Moe Steps Down

25 February 2010 - 5:00am

Longtime president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation Richard Moe is retiring after radically changing the Trust's direction. Will the next president continue Moe's vision?

Bradford McKee reflects on the changes Moe has brought about, and offers his take on how those goals should continue to move forward.

McKee writes, "Observers credit Moe with taking preservation to the people by funneling money and encouragement toward state, regional, and local preservation groups, and building a solid network of activist affiliates in preservation. The National Trust's mission changed not by drifting from its core imperatives of saving great old buildings, but by expanding what that core might plausibly include.

Gradually, preservation has grown from a relic-focused connoisseur's concern to a multifaceted populist movement dedicated to preserving more ineffable forms of history and threatened ways of life."

Full Story: Futures of the Past
Source: Architect Magazine, February 24, 2010
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All of that only scratches the surface of what's wrong with this study. The idea that complex urban development patterns and human behavior can be meaningfully studied according to one primary criteria — density — is wrong from the start.