GEOG 262 Week 7 - Built Environment

National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA)

• signed into law by LBJ in 1966

• introduced federal policy for preserving historical and archaeological sites in the US

• before, preservation hadn’t been a public policy issue nor part of America’s architectural, planning, and real estate development culture

Urban Renewal

• set of government facilitated programs in the mid-20th century that involved extensive clearance of central city neighborhoods for urban redevelopment

• common practice in 1960s but is generally considered today to be a failed ‘social experiment’ that isolated low-income BIPOC communities and resulted in a range of issues still challenging US cities today

• preservation vs urban renewal in pike place and pioneer square

Environmental History

• study of the interaction between humans and the ‘natural’ environment in the past (or between culture and nature)

• principal goal is to deepen our understanding of how humans have been affected by the natural environment in the past and how they, in turn, have affected that environment and with what results

Reginald H. Thomson

• “the man who flattened Seattle”

• Seattle City Engineer from 1892 to 1911

• City surveyor from 1884 to 1886

Denny Regrades

• began informally in 1890s

• leveling of Denny Hill, which covered approximately 60 city blocks

• steepness of Seattle’s hills prevented roads and buildings from being constructed

• sluiced the hills with water

• displacement, eminent domain, and “spite hills”

spite hill

• disparaging term for a house in the regrade zone whose owners refused to move

• land around the houses was removed leaving a house on stilts on a solitary “hill”

Conflicting Elites

• Seattle’s historic preservation program originated in the 1960s fight to save Pioneer Square and Pike Place Market from urban renewal

• often portrayed within the traditional narrative of a grassroots “people’s movement” but Sohyun Park Lee argues that the motivating force behind the preservation movement in Seattle was the “cultural elite”

• conflict between business elite and cultural elite

Business Elite

city officials and downtown business leaders pushed for redevelopment of pioneer square and pike place market

cultural elite

artists and architects pushing for a different kind of redevelopment, credited with preserving pioneer square and pike place square

Urban Blight

• urban areas with abandoned buildings, vacant lots, and declining property conditions often resulting from economic downturns, population decline, and lack of investment

• used to justify urban renewal / redevelopment / gentrification

Monson Plan

• 1963

• plan put forth by the business elite to redevelop downtown fringes (such as Pioneer Square and Pike Place Market) into parking garages, shopping facilities, and expressways

• believed that downtown would more effectively compete with outlying shopping malls and offices