Incentivizing historic rehabilitation and adaptive reuse in the United States and the United Kingdom

Abstract

The societal value in protecting historic properties and districts through rehabilitation and adaptive reuse has been studied and recognized for several decades, following still-older government policies to protect historic structures and neighborhoods. Approaches to such protection, rehabilitation and reuse reflect a combination of factors including the history and impact of early preservation movements, systems of development control, tax policy and government intervention in the marketplace. Primarily a qualitative comparison, this thesis examines those factors and approaches and specifically the use of incentives in spurring historic rehabilitation in the United States and in the United Kingdom. The thesis examines the mixture of forces and timing of implementation which have led to two different, yet each robust, government systems to ensure the continuity of the historic built environment. In the United States, the result of these combined forces led to the creation and continued use of a market-focused incentive structure - primarily through the creation of rehabilitation investment tax credits -- to enable the private sector to revive historic places for income-producing purposes. Conversely, in the United Kingdom, an equally strong -- yet different -- array of factors led to the establishment of a solid, top-down development-control system that to date has rendered unnecessary its use of any US-style market-focused incentives. The thesis concludes by examining whether lessons and approaches from the United States can be applied in the United Kingdom, and vice versa.