The Exploration For The Ideas And Practice In “Pre-Happening” Historic Preservation In United States

Historic Preservation can be extraordinarily historic and practical significant for constructing the social affiliation, enhancing the national pride, arousing patriotism, preserving the prototype of architectures, and promoting sustainable development of Society.However, among various strategies in Historic preservation, taking some actions to ensure the right for historic environments to exist should come first, which is the precondition for exploring the practical methods for conservation and reuse. Now in China, the public common sense for historic preservation still remains vague. When the historic preservation seems go against the economic development, people always choose the latter instead, which should be responsible for the heavy loss of historic environments. Compared with that in China, historic preservation in the United States apparently has more experiences dealing with the situation when development meets historic preservation unfriendly. Therefore, when coming to the issue that how we can ensure historic environment existing and prevent it vanishing in the economic development and social improvement, it is essential to study about US successful experiences.In the dissertation, based on the exploring and analyzing about the development progress and the situation of historic preservation in China, some key problems are found which may cause failure in the preservation process. Aimed at these problems, finding out what and how the US has done to solve the similar problems before can provide some clues for us to deal with the problems in China. By using documentation analysis, field investigation, case study and comparison methods, the core values of historic preservation in US is revealed firstly after exploring the basic concepts and history of it, the successful experiences and practices in dealing with the “existing or not” issue in US are investigated deeply and detailed, focusing on the “pre-happening” legal system, listing, surveying, incentives, easement, air-right, education and popularization. In the end, the new ideas and conceptions are pointed out for bettering historic preservation in China to protect the basic living right of historic environments.The dissertation falls into four parts. In the first part,which is Introduction, the development history, the nowadays situation, and the key problems in historic preservation in China are analyzed and summarized,in order to find the start points where the investigation and referencing from US experiences can begin. The second part is consisted of Chapter I to Chapter II. In these three chapters, the essential concepts, the history and the ideas of historic preservation in US are discussed deeply. From Chapter III to Chapter VI, it is the third part, in which the US “pre-happening” practices are explored, such as the legal system related to historic preservation, organization, registering and listing, surveying, incentives, education, and also the comparisons between US and China in the related historic preservation fields are made, so as to discover how the “pre-happening” historic preservation are made in US and what kinds of inspirations we may get from US experiences. Conclusion and Prospects is the last chapter, in which the part that has been studied in this dissertation is reviewed, and the part that will be studied is outlined.