Doctoral Dissertation Research: Tax Credits, Historic Preservation, and the Redevelopment of Modernist Architecture in the United States

Clark University, Worcester MA

Investigators

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation research project will examine the ways tax credits, historic preservation, and finance intersect to revitalize the cores of American cities beginning in the early 2000s and will analyze the consequence of these changes. It will focus on the widespread use of the Federal Historic Tax Credit by developers to leverage the rehabilitation of mid-twentieth century modernist buildings, a process regulated by multiple state and federal agencies. The project will contribute new information about how historic tax credits have reconfigured the geographies of investment in the built environment as well as how government and private property owners manage their inventory of historic buildings. It will generate timely insights on the geographic variations of this process, and increase knowledge about changing redevelopment strategies and evolving urban governance forms. The doctoral student's work with the National Park Service, State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPO), local government officials, and preservation organizations will generate project outcomes that have direct relevance for government agencies, policymakers, and groups engaged with historic preservation and urban renewal. With many American cities rehabilitating their historic architecture through tax credits, this project's findings will offer insight into the best practices for negotiating the future of modernist buildings and produce information that can be utilized widely by municipal officials and employees, and developers. This award will also provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career. Over $109 billion of private funds have been invested into the redevelopment of historic buildings in the United States. This amount has been offset by $21 billion in federal tax credits. Of the different types of buildings undergoing redevelopment, the average rehabilitation of cost of modernist buildings is nearly three times that of other architectural styles. The central research questions of this project are (1) how have modernist buildings emerged as major sites of urban redevelopment over the past two decades and (2) what have been the consequences of historic tax credits for urban governance strategies, preservation and policymaking, and the financing of redevelopment. The doctoral student will employ a three-part mixed methods approach consisting of expert interviews; spatial data analysis to examine the distribution and concentration of historic tax credits by architectural style and location; and extended case studies in California, Michigan, and Missouri. Several key issues to be examined by the case studies include: the expansion of historic districts to qualify less-significant historic buildings for tax credits, a feature characteristic of new redevelopment practices; the increased preference to finance historic redevelopment through the combination of federal and state historic tax credits along with other municipal funding programs, like tax-increment financing, leading to the uneven concentration of investment between cities and states; and the evolution of preservation-led redevelopment from a local practice into a widespread urban governance strategy, whereby state and federal agencies, like the National Park Service, SHPO, and the Internal Revenue Service, have come to play an important role in contemporary urban policymaking and knowledge transfer.