CURATING EXCLUSION AND PRIVILEGE: HISTORY, HERITAGE, AND NATURE AS NEOLIBERAL TOOLS

Abstract

In the early 20th century, zoning, restrictive covenants, deed restrictions, and federallysponsored real estate maps that directed bank loans operated at multiple levels to perpetuate spatial patterns that separated whites from Blacks, Asians, and other non-Anglo ethnics; homeowners from renters; and single-family dwellings from multi-family units. The obvious overtly racial biases of those systems are socially unacceptable today but their underlying purposes have since been augmented by new tools that mask further discrimination. This article presents a critical examination of the relationship between historic preservation, open space easements, and farmland preservation practices to reveal how these regulations support racial and social discrimination in American land-use practices. Existing literature presumes that history, nature, and farming, preserved by these practices are cultural, environmental, and public positives. An examination of the underlying forces shows how these goals are achieved by restrictive instruments that create exclusion and protect privilege by controlling development and establishing and maintaining social norms that exclude certain groups while welcoming others. Using documentary evidence, this paper establishes historic preservation’s origins as an instrument of racial and ethnic exclusion in Charleston, South Carolina and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania of the United States, and the subsequent evolution of historic districts into gentrified, white neighborhoods. Two case studies in the New York metropolitan area, chosen for their use of historic preservation with farmland preservation (Cranbury Township, Middlesex County, New Jersey), and historic preservation with open space easements (Town of Bedford, Westchester County, New York) as resistance to affordable residential development, demonstrate how enclaves of exclusion and privilege were created. This article further establishes how these tools commodify history and landscapes into transactional entities that attain value in today’s neoliberal wealth-focused environment.