Expanded Table of Contents and Complementary Reading to Consider Preserving with Purpose Reimagining Buildings for Community Benefit By Amy Hetletvedt
Preface The preface is a first-person presentation of questions that emerged for me during a decade of living in Detroit and how I’ve continued pursuing these questions about buildings, about blight – about disinvestment, demolition, and the metaphysical chasm between ruin and restoration. The book invites readers to enter the discussion on how, together, we can incrementally change course, reimagining buildings for community benefit.
Introduction In disinvested communities, the deep effects of absence are visible within the constructed ecology of the environment. There is a marked vacancy and lack of investment to fully address the properties that remain. Yet abandoned or distressed buildings contain not only embedded energy, but embedded possibilities to be reintegrated into an ecosystem of purpose.
Part I Addressing the Challenge Part I examines the challenges of historic preservation and adaptive reuse, especially within the context of disinvested communities, where buildings are disproportionately lost and access to capital resources may be low. These chapters invite a broad audience of readers to consider the why of vacant, abandoned, and distressed buildings and what we can do about it. 1 of 10