ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part argues that urban planner and even real estate developer were often just other names for preservationist, especially in the early twentieth century. If preservationists could recognize the social reform roots of their movement, they would be more apt to see their project not as simply saving individual structures but as shaping healthier urban and rural environments. Preservation could become an anchor of approaches to regulating the urban environment against sprawl and other destructive developments. The burgeoning literature on the social construction of the past has helped to reinvigorate urban and social history by showing the centrality of battles over the past in contemporary social and political debates.
