| Recognizing cultural landscapes as part of the world's heritage is transforming the field of historic preservation toward a more integrated, comprehensive, and humanistic paradigm. Preservation in the United States has evolved since it began in the mid-nineteenth century to reflect changing definitions of history, culture, and nature. As the preservation field developed, a paradigm formed, articulating an image of the past, and defining heritage and appropriate management. The 1966 National Historic Preservation Act, with a broadened heritage definition, set the stage for the emergence of landscape preservation in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Cultural landscapes were not readily accommodated by existing preservation theory, derived almost exclusively from European and American experience with high-style historic buildings. Developments in landscape preservation over the past ten years, have dramatically revised the fundamental tenets of the national preservation framework-heritage definition, evaluation, and management. This dissertation demonstrates the most important contributions of landscape preservation, to date, have been advancement of a more comprehensive perspective for preservation planning and unprecedented integration of culture and nature. Landscape preservation has made substantial contributions to historic preservation, widening its scope and making it more accessible. This success forms the basis for the extension of landscape preservation beyond the national preservation framework onto the wider regional landscape. This new frontier is challenging and, as argued in this dissertation, will require the emergence of a new, more populist preservation paradigm. |
