What scientific evidence supports historic preservation? We study the economics of historic preservation and know that it supports a vibrant and sustainable economy. We research the environmental and energy impacts of historic preservation and know that the greenest building is the one that is already built. We research what people like and know that they prefer old places. But what about the so-called “softer” benefits of historic preservation? What studies support those notions of belonging, continuity, memory, and identity that we all feel?

Although there is abundant anecdotal evidence indicating that older and historic places provide a sense of belonging and identity that is beneficial for people’s emotional and mental health, the health benefits of retaining and reusing such places have not been studied extensively. In four decades of research about the impacts of place attachment and place identity, very little has focused specifically on the factor of age of place or the distinction that age provides. Although I don’t doubt the deeply held attachments people feel for old places, I do think we will be more influential with policymakers if we have solid scientific studies to back up the perceived softer benefits of preservation. Or, as one of the other fellows at the American Academy in Rome said to me, “Show me the studies!” 
It helps to go to the source. At the invitation of Jeremy Wells, professor of historic preservation at the University of Maryland and incoming chair of the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA), David Brown, chief preservation officer at the National Trust, and I spoke at a plenary session of EDRA’s annual conference in Madison, Wisconsin, in June. EDRA’s purpose is to advance and disseminate research, teaching, and practice toward improving an understanding of the relationships among people, their built environments, and natural ecosystems. The theme of the conference, “Voices of Place: Empower, Engage, Energize,” sounds exactly like a preservation conference theme. And, in addition to a historic preservation track, the conference also featured tracks about cities and globalization; health and place; cultural aspects of design; and sustainable planning, design, and behavior—among others. Jeremy has long been an advocate for conducting more scientific research about people’s relationships with old places. He invited us to speak expressly for the purpose of spurring EDRA members to conduct more research that could help us shape preservation practice to better meet people’s needs. 

The timing of the EDRA conference couldn’t have been better. This spring the National Trust released Preservation for People: A Vision for the Future, which, as David Brown said, “signals a philosophical shift toward using preservation to serve people and help them flourish.” Preservation for People recommends that the preservation field “support and publicize research on the health, economic, community, and sustainability benefits of preservation,” including through partnerships with entities performing environmental health research to study the impact of older and historic places on human health. And in November, when we gather in Chicago for PastForward 2017, an entire track of sessions dedicated to health and historic preservation will include a panel on environmental psychology and historic preservation.
At the EDRA conference, David and I shared information about what preservationists say and believe about historic preservation, beginning with the ideas of continuity, memory, and identity from the “Why Do Old Places Matter?” essays and highlighting key themes from Preservation for People—especially the idea that historic preservation should be about helping people flourish. Jeremy discussed which aspects of historic preservation have been studied from a social science point of view and which haven’t. He focused on the following ideas: 

• People prefer older buildings (with some caveats).
• People prefer the more complex design of older architecture over the simple design of contemporary architecture.
• People prefer historicized design in the blending of old and new.
• People appreciate the layering of historic communities and the associated sense of discovery and mystery.
• People can distinguish between real and “fake” historic architecture.
• A sense of patina or decay is necessary for perceptions of authenticity. 

For more information about these, see Jeremy’s article in the spring 2015 issue of the Forum Journal or his website. 

Jeremy also raised a number of questions about historic preservation, hoping to spur additional research: 

• How does the age (evident from decay or patina) of place affect people?
• What makes a place “historic” to most stakeholders?
• How do everyday people perceive and value historic places?
• How does the historic environment affect people?
• How do most stakeholders describe historic places and their importance? 

The audience was engaged. People who spoke to us afterward said that they hadn’t thought that preservation focused on people, only on buildings—and that they were pleased with this forward-looking direction. From my perspective, this ties directly to the concepts in Preservation for People. How do we find out more about what people value in our work? How do we shape our preservation tools to be more responsive to the values that help people? How do we hear what they value? 
We must be open to the possibility of reshaping preservation practice in response to what we hear. For example: 

• If people prefer old places only when they’re well maintained, should our policies and practices place greater emphasis on maintenance—such as through maintenance credits and repair grants?
• If people prefer traditional design for infill, should the current standard that “new work will be differentiated from the old” be further refined?
• If people prefer historic buildings with rich detailing, how do we shape the preservation of buildings that do not have those characteristics, such as many Midcentury Modern buildings?

Additional research could guide the field in answering these questions from a people-centered and evidence-based point of view.

In addition to the plenary session on historic preservation, the conference included a meeting of the Historic Environment Network and a full historic preservation track. Here are some key, relevant ideas I heard while attending some of those sessions:

• In a presentation reporting on “The Livability Audit: A Tool for Measuring Perceptions of Urban Design Qualities,” which is still under review, Deni Ruggeri and one of his co-authors, Chester Harvey, noted that general perceptions of age contributed to greater perceptions of livability and that a general feeling of age was more indicative of the perception than the specific details of a historic building.
• In “An Analysis of Aesthetic Quality of Buildings and Urban Scenes,” the authors Antonio Reis, Maria Seadi, and Camila Biavatti concluded that people preferred buildings and scenes that were ordered with complexity from an aesthetic perspective and that people generally preferred historical buildings because they were ordered and complex, but not because they were historical.
• Anna Marie Bliss presented a paper comparing social media reactions to three interventions at historic places, looking at online “boldness” and identity and at how historic and adapted architecture is portrayed and understood online—that is, with some amazingly harsh criticism.
• Finally, Jeremy shared the results of a recent content analysis of six months of historic preservation job announcements, concluding that preservation job skills should better reflect an understanding of how environments impact people’s perception, behavior, and values. 

These are only a sampling of the papers and ideas presented, and sessions from other tracks were also relevant to the work of preservation. Preservation for People encourages greater partnerships and research to bend the work of preservation more forcefully in the direction of benefiting people. In the past, the practicing preservation field has not generally participated in the meetings of EDRA or considered the potential impact of social science research on our work. I’m grateful to EDRA for inviting us to present, and I hope that this session will spur more research in the field. We will further explore the health aspects of preservation further at PastForward 2017, where Jeremy will be moderating a Learning Lab titled “Old Places, Healthy Minds.”

Summer has arrived in London. A time of year where everyone seems just a little happier, a little friendlier, and a little more open to each other. It was under this sunshine that on Tuesday 13th June, I headed off to a seminar at University College London, funded by the UCL Grand Challenges & British Council Newton Fund on “The Built Environment, Social Networks & Mental Wellbeing: Cross-disciplinary & International perspectives”. The seminar brought together a wide variety of academics and practitioners working in the interdisciplinary fields of urban planning, architecture and public health, providing a rich platform for introduction, reflection and discussion.
 
Using fiction to imagine and experience urban space
Across the afternoon, several speakers introduced their work and approach to the themes. Opening the session was Amy Butt, an architect, lecturer, design tutor, and researcher. Her  work explores how fiction can draw out the human, emotional complexities of everyday urban life, exploring the relationships between people and place. “Strangeness is a vital point of reflection”, she notes, “and science fiction novels are an opportunity to imagine and empathically experience urban space”. Exploring the emotional sense of vertigo experienced in high rises through the 1975 Robert Silverberg novel “The World Inside”, Butt describes the feeling as an unbearable attack on one’s sense of self, a sense of coming apart, a dislocation of the soul:
“how can you create a sense of place when their grounding is mystifying?”

A good urban space is a used space
COHESION, presented by Dr Linda Ng Fat and Dr Leandro Garcia, is a UK-Brazil project funded by UCL Grand Challenge and the British-Council Newton Fund. Set up in 2016, it explores the effects of high-rise, high density housing in various countries. In its first year, COHESION undertook a comprehensive literature review (to be published), and will continue to further review the influence of living in high-rise buildings on social cohesion and mental health and wellbeing. Professor Laura Vaughan from the Bartlett School of Architecture gave a comprehensive and quick fire introduction to the history of housing planning and social aspects. Vaughan introduced the work of Space Syntax, which seeks to understand the relationship between spatial design, the use of space and long term social outcomes.  The use of mapping to reveal connectivity and patterns helped understand the role of spatial layout in community dynamics and network creation. The layout of a housing project for example, makes the difference between neighbourliness versus isolation, and a community where frequent casual meetings are encouraged is more likely to thrive.

“Spatial accessibility shapes movement, and movement leads to copresence” Vaughan notes in closing, “A good urban space is a used space, the spatial nature of human society.” Furthermore, and a recurring theme throughout the afternoon, is that more research is needed, as there is a gap in the ethnographic social studies of architecture.

Copresence: a precursor to interaction
Dr Paula Barros from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, explored the influence of physical design on social interaction within 3 squares in her native Brazil. Through behavioural mapping, her research explores the various contentions between spaces of conflict versus spaces of encounter in public spaces, and how copresence is a necessary precursor to interaction. Identifying ‘delight’, ‘comfort’ and ‘protection’ as factors into favoured spaces (such as on props or edges to sit or rest), she notes that there is a lack of cross-cultural perspectives in the field. By understanding the response to user needs will only lead to higher quality public spaces. Additionally, Barros points to a need to further understand how landmarks support social sustainability.
 
Schizophrenia: does where you live matter?
Dr James Kirkbride, Reader from the Division of Psychiatry at UCL, opened his talk “Mind Over Matter: Does the Built Environment Affect Mental Health” by first making a distinction between common mental disorders and psychotic disorders. Common mental disorders, such as anxiety and depression, are, he pointed out, very different experiences from psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, though they are often confusingly bulked under the same heading. Furthermore, there is an important distinction to be made between mental wellbeing, mental health and mental disorders, and that each have very different experiences and consequences for people.

Kirkbride’s primary expertise is the study in incidence of schizophrenia in East London, and the potential link to inequality in social environments. He found that the strength of evidence varied. The extent to which there are social or environmental causes of schizophrenia remains unknown, though urban births are associated with a higher risk of developing the disorder. As a result, Kirkbride set up Psymaptic, “a free online prediction tool for healthcare planners, commissioners and other key stakeholders who require accurate and reliable data on the expected incidence of psychotic disorder in England & Wales. The tool gives instant access to the expected incidence of psychotic disorder in different regions of England & Wales, based on their sociodemographic and socioeconomic profile”.

Injustices in access to the 'right to the city'
From Reading University, Dr Richard Nunes followed this with a more personal presentation on the journey of his research on mental health and the city, particularly in his work exploring the connection between environmental change and mental health research. Nunes noted the limits of what urban design can achieve if enduring injustices of access to the 'right to the city' persists, that there was still so much to do in terms of re-connecting design/planning with mental health, as well as the difficulties of working with people across various disciplines. The links between environmental change and mental health research remain patchy and under-explained. A strong linear-causal relationship continues to be pursued, with a gap emerging between subjective and objective dimensions of environmental change and mental health research. Moreover, Nunes states, “people are not randomly distributed into space! Remove that [idea] and we can start to try and understand the causality of mental health”. This was complemented by Dr Pedro Morais, Adjunct Professor at Uni-BH, Brazil, who gave a presentation on the height & historical meanings and contexts of high rises across three continents, Europe, USA and South America.  His presentation addressed the issue of cultural associations or social preconceptions of high rises and the discontinuous city.

What if people left work feeling better than when they arrived?
Ankita Dwivedi Senior Associate from Gensler posed a closing question “What if people left work feeling better than when they arrived?” She discussed workplace design, stress and psychological well being, identifying that stress, anxiety and depression need to be tackled within the workspace as a case for action, as the potential rewards for businesses are huge. She asserted that the workplace is a microcosm of society and provides an opportunity for intervention, with the appropriate design and implementation in workplaces connecting to many further health pathways.
 
Research gaps and next steps
The day's discussions revealed an exciting and wide variety of work and entry points into the interdisciplinary connections of the built environment, social networks and mental health. However, what quickly became clear is that there is so much more research needed and encouraged. I walked away from the seminar wanting to do and understand more. As Nunes and Vaughan note, there is a gap in the ethnographic social studies of architecture, as well as efforts to reconnect design and planning with mental health. This, as Morias’s presentation elaborated on, needs more transnational comparisons, to understand the differences, similarities and learning curves from different contexts. Amy Butt’s creative approach to understanding high rises and their emotional experience though science fiction is an inspiring take on often invisible issues. It begs the question: what other ways of seeing and understanding the urban environment could reveal our emotional experiences of it? The afternoon was an excellent opportunity to network and hear from a wide variety of academics, practitioners, policy makers as well as the general public, and points to an ever growing interest and drive for more research.