Who Benefits from Preservation, and How?

Preservation can help anyone in any place. It benefits young and old, urban and rural areas, residential neighborhoods and commercial districts. It has visibly benefited Dunwoody.

Preservation's advantages range so widely that it's impossible to list them all. But there are at least three that show up again and again.

Appearance

A flat-faced modern office block or an elegantly detailed pre-war commercial building?

A strip mall fronted by a parking lot or a pedestrian-friendly retail district?

A twenty pump convenience store or a historical Farmhouse?

Comparisons like these illustrate one of preservation's most obvious advantages: it creates more attractive places to live and work. The style and variety of historic places make communities much better to look at.

Economics

Preservation isn't something smart people do when they can afford it -- it's something they know that they can't afford not to do.

Rehabilitation and adaptive use of historic buildings creates profits as well as appealing places to live and work.

Towns and cities that protect their historic areas attract more visitors, and those people stay longer and spend more.

Investing in traditional commercial districts both produces new jobs and eliminates the cost of sprawl, such as time lost in the car and the expense of providing new infrastructure like roads.

History and Culture

Historic places tell a community where it came from—what previous generations achieved, what they believed, what they hoped to be. By protecting these reminders of the past, preservation also builds the present and the future, since it saves valuable resources and recalls a community’s goals and dreams.

Protecting the buildings at the heart of Dunwoody life, such as neighborhood schools and downtown commercial districts, is crucial to creating better communities.