Architecture Commons^™

Integrity & Incentives: Seeking Equity In Historic Preservation Law, Anneka Olson

Access*: Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research and Scholarship

In this article, the author presents a case study of mobile home park residents seeking historic designation in the face of neighborhood demolition. The neighborhood’s ineligibility to become a historic site under current law can help demonstrate larger patterns of inequitable outcomes within historic preservation practice. In particular, the author argues that the application of preservation law—despite being formally neutral regarding issues of racial and socioeconomic equity—reinforces existing racial, economic, and spatial inequities. Drawing on the challenge of legal closure from critical legal studies (CLS), the author argues that law and historicity are mutually constituting, and that subjective notions of …