Mary Means, Mary Means Associates

What is meant by “heritage development?” A way of planning, thinking and approaching communities and regions.

More than traditional planning or economic development, it is asset-based community development.The word “development” associated with “heritage” implies an active, rather than passive, role for heritage assets. And, the assets can be grouped in two categories: those that are place-based or physical — such as main streets, neighborhoods, small towns and infrastructure — roads, rivers, or other linkages; and those assets that are socio-culturally based living traditions, cultural practices, arts and music.

Heritage development components include economic revitalization, growth management, recreation, cultural conservation, storytelling, and celebrating.

As an approach, heritage development crosses boundaries. Sometimes the boundaries are geographic, for the common heritage of a region often reaches beyond jurisdictional lines. Almost always, heritage development initiatives involve a melding of two or more arenas of community activity, such as transportation and recreation, or economic development and the preservation of historic buildings. Thanks to a booming interest in heritage tourism, many heritage development initiatives also involve investment in enhanced visitor attractions, providing quality of life benefit and increased community pride among local residents as well as visitors.

In the United States, examples of heritage development range from large regional projects like Pennsylvania’s Delaware & Lehigh Canal National Heritage Corridor (140 miles long, five counties, scores of local jurisdictions, museums, heritage and recreation groups participating), to geographically more concentrated efforts like the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, considered the cradle of the American Industrial Revolution.

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Several states have active heritage area programs and provide matching funds for planning and early implementation efforts. These include New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and South Carolina.On top of these, there now nearly 20 regional efforts that have achieved federal designation as National Heritage Areas or National Heritage Corridors. In the nationally-recognized areas, federal funds are also available to stimulate planning, implementation and management.

The best way to understand the potential for heritage development is to look at some of the wide variety of community-based projects being undertaken around the country.

Generally, revitalization involves efforts to bring life and greater activity back to main streets and older neighborhoods. In the U.S., main street revitalization programs have helped hundreds of traditional town centers find new roles and compete in the marketplace, meeting new needs in older buildings adapted with respect for their historic character.

Revitalized mill villages are a central feature of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor in Massachusetts/Rhode Island. Once the center of the textile industry, these villages had seriously declined and residents had limited opportunities. A decade of regional effort in heritage development has led to hundreds of revitalization projects, including reuse of many of the large architecturally excellent mill buildings for a wide variety of contemporary industrial and commercial uses.

Increased tourism and economic life leads to healthy small businesses that meet local needs, providing visitor services that also add to the economic web.Examples include art galleries, bicycle rental shops, and restaurants in the tiny villages along the towpath trail in the Cuyahoga Valley Recreation Area (between Clevelandand Akron). Even a spandex-clad cyclist can carry a platinum American Express card, and have the painting shipped home.

Baltimore’s innovative water taxi service is an outstanding entrepreneurial response to heritage tourism.For $3.50 a visitor can get on and off all day, and with an easy-to-read map and discount coupons, comfortably explore neighborhoods that might otherwise be too off-the-beaten path to feel safe. The water taxi is a vital part of how the economic activity of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor attractions is being dispersed into surrounding areas.

Revitalized mill villages are a central feature of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor in Massachusetts/Rhode Island. Once the center of the textile industry, these villages had seriously declined and residents had limited opportunities. A decade of regional effort in heritage development has led to hundreds of revitalization projects, including reuse of many of the large architecturally excellent mill buildings for a wide variety of contemporary industrial and commercial uses.

Increased tourism and economic life leads to healthy small businesses that meet local needs, providing visitor services that also add to the economic web. Examples include art galleries, bicycle rental shops, and restaurants in the tiny villages along the towpath trail in the Cuyahoga Valley Recreation Area (between Cleveland and Akron). Even a spandex-clad cyclist can carry a platinum American Express card, and have the painting shipped home.

Baltimore’s innovative water taxi service is an outstanding entrepreneurial response to heritage tourism. For $3.50 a visitor can get on and off all day, and with an easy-to-read map and discount coupons, comfortably explore neighborhoods that might otherwise be too off-the-beaten path to feel safe. The water taxi is a vital part of how the economic activity of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor attractions is being dispersed into surrounding areas.

Lancaster, Pennsylvania is at the heart of a newly emerging regional heritage area encompassing much of Lancaster and York Counties, known for their association with the Plain People, Old Order Amish and Mennonites. Here, efforts to focus development and re-use in town centers is the corollary to conserving the rich agricultural lands that are part of the region’s character.

Many communities struggle to grow in ways that reinforce community character. Somehow, heritage development as a concept can help foster greater understanding of the potential for achieving prosperity while saving countryside. Heritage development acknowledges the need to avoid over-development. It also provides a context for planning ways to avoid character-destroying development patterns or loss of invaluable agricultural lands through sprawl.

Trails, parks, greenways, and rivers are critical assets and serve as links in many regional heritage areas.With cleaner water, canals and rivers provide popular recreation and nature tourism experiences.The scenic byways movement (given backing through ISTEA) is stimulating creation of a web of popular driving and bicycling routes. And, in a growing number of places, such as the Seaway Trail through Pennsylvania, New York and Vermont, driving/cycling routes provide the skeleton for packaged itineraries that enable visitors to linger and explore.

Heritage assets are more than buildings and landscapes; they also include the people and culture side of community.Music, arts, and craft traditions are an important part of how we live; expressions of cultures that remain are strong links. Ethnic pride and identity is an important asset, more so for the community itself, but sometimes for visitors, too. And, don’t think cultural expressions are always something from the past.In Baton Rouge, a long-standing tradition of holiday lighting continues in modern suburbia. At the same time, it is important to tread lightly, making sure that a people’s private expressions are respected rather than put on display. Pennsylvania’s Old Order Amish have been seriously impacted by exploitation.

A major component of heritage development, as contrasted with traditional approaches to planning, is the emphasis it places on understanding what happened, what shaped this place, who we are, and why it matters. The technical word for it is “interpretation,” but storytelling says it all. Through exhibits like one on Maine’s lobster fishing industry, or story panels dispersed throughout an area (there is a particularly nice one from Birmingham, Alabama explaining the neglected pig iron workers), visitors (and residents) encounter the past.A particularly evocative example is the recreated dining room in one of Lowell’s boarding houses, where hundreds of young New England farm girls lived and worked in the mills.Today, the visitor’s presence triggers a hidden sound system: girl’s voices (reading from diaries) and the sounds of breakfast china provide a haunting immersion in another time.

Storytelling can be included in a variety of public settings, including streets and sidewalks.On Atlanta’s “Sweet Auburn” Street, artists and landscape architects collaborated with the community to produce sidewalks with inscribed quotes, panels, and artworks commemorating the stories of struggle and everyday living in the segregated Black community.Even unused boarded-upbuildings provide opportunities to tell the story. And, the story is a powerful one with deep meaning for us today, as exemplified by a family photo opportunity in front of Martin Luther King’s birthplace.

Storytelling can take many forms and can even be told separate from specific places. Iowa’s Silos & Smokestacks National Heritage Area produced an engaging series of audiotapes similar in format to an NPR feature. Voices of famous Iowans (Herbert Hoover, Billy Sunday and others) are mixed with descriptions of farmscapes and life in small towns. The Silos tapes have been very popular with visitors and residents.

Festivals, special events and activities provide reason to invite the public, but they are also an important part of the community’s own heritage. Galesburg, Illinois has grown its popular “railroad days” into a three-day annual celebration that attracts 60,000 visitors. Waverly, Iowa (population 1,200) holds a draft horse sale that brings buyers from all over North America. Being there is very special experience, since it is not really a “tourism attraction.”That is likely to change, as the New York Times travel section did a feature on it several months after this trip. And, celebrations can bring a lot of heritage development threads together.At a waterfront festival on the Chesapeake Bay, a high school class was proudly displaying the beautiful replica of a Hooper Island Drake Tail they had built, continuing a tradition of regional boat building.

Perhaps the most important quality of heritage development is the fact that it touches on so many dimensions of community life, and in so doing, affords an invaluable opportunity for working together, collaborating to craft the larger regional vision, then planning and taking many actions over time.

Heritage development is not “the true path,” if such a path really exists. What this asset-based approach to community development does is provide missing links between what the community was, and what it is going to become in an era of global change; between its traditional economy and its emerging one; between old timers and new comers; between those who hold on to the past and those who seek to change it; between citizens and their elected leaders: between professional planners and historians and “just folks.” yes; letter-spacing: -1.75pt">  Heritage development offers conversation among residents, planners, and developers.

Storytelling can be included in a variety of public settings, including streets and sidewalks.On Atlanta’s “Sweet Auburn” Street, artists and landscape architects collaborated with the community to produce sidewalks with inscribed quotes, panels, and artworks commemorating the stories of struggle and everyday living in the segregated Black community.Even unused boarded-upbuildings provide opportunities to tell the story. And, the story is a powerful one with deep meaning for us today, as exemplified by a family photo opportunity in front of Martin Luther King’s birthplace.

Storytelling can take many forms and can even be told separate from specific places. Iowa’s Silos & Smokestacks National Heritage Area produced an engaging series of audiotapes similar in format to an NPR feature. Voices of famous Iowans (Herbert Hoover, Billy Sunday and others) are mixed with descriptions of farmscapes and life in small towns. The Silos tapes have been very popular with visitors and residents.

Festivals, special events and activities provide reason to invite the public, but they are also an important part of the community’s own heritage. Galesburg, Illinois has grown its popular “railroad days” into a three-day annual celebration that attracts 60,000 visitors. Waverly, Iowa (population 1,200) holds a draft horse sale that brings buyers from all over North America. Being there is very special experience, since it is not really a “tourism attraction.”That is likely to change, as the New York Times travel section did a feature on it several months after this trip. And, celebrations can bring a lot of heritage development threads together.At a waterfront festival on the Chesapeake Bay, a high school class was proudly displaying the beautiful replica of a Hooper Island Drake Tail they had built, continuing a tradition of regional boat building.

Perhaps the most important quality of heritage development is the fact that it touches on so many dimensions of community life, and in so doing, affords an invaluable opportunity for working together, collaborating to craft the larger regional vision, then planning and taking many actions over time.

Heritage development is not “the true path,” if such a path really exists. What this asset-based approach to community development does is provide missing links between what the community was, and what it is going to become in an era of global change; between its traditional economy and its emerging one; between old timers and new comers; between those who hold on to the past and those who seek to change it; between citizens and their elected leaders: between professional planners and historians and “just folks.”   Heritage development offers conversation among residents, planners, and developers.