4.0 HPSR 12-08-2005 - Laserfiche WebLink

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10 particularly for those without formal advanced education. That too should be part of our social responsibility within sustainable development. I told you that I work in the area of economic development. Economic development takes many forms -industrial recruitment, job retraining, waterfront development, and others. But historic preservation and economic development are the only forms of economic development that are simultaneously community development. That too is part of our social responsibility. Finally, I'd ask you to take a moment and think of something significant to you personally. Anything. You may think of your children, or your spouse, or your church, or god, or a favorite piece of art hanging in your living room, or your childhood home, or a personal accomplishment of some type. Now take away your memory. Which of those things are now significant to you? None of them. There can be no significance without memory. Now those same things may still be significant to someone else. But without memory they are not significant to you. And if memory is necessary for significance, it is also necessary for both meaning and value. Without memory nothing has significance, nothing has meaning, nothing has value. That, I think, is the lesson of that old Zen koan, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears, did it make a sound?" Well of course it made a sound; sound comes from the vibration of molecules and a falling tree vibrates molecules. But that sound might as well not have been made, because there is no memory of it. We acquire memories from a sound or a picture, or from a conversation, or from words in a book, or from the stories our grandmother told us. But how is the memory of a city conveyed? Here's what Italo Calvino writes, "The city ... does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightening rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls." The city tells it own past, transfers its own memory, largely through the fabric of the built environment. Historic buildings are the physical manifestation of memory -and it is memory that makes places significant. What is the whole purpose of the concept of sustainable development? It is to keep that which is important, which is valuable, which is significant. The very defmitions of sustainable development is "...the ability to meet our own needs without prejudicing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." We need to use our cities, our cultural resources, and our memories in such a way that they are available for future generations to use as well. Heritage conservation makes cities viable, makes cities livable, makes cities equitable.