It is a neighborhood that was spared from destruction by New Haven’s infamous “urban renewal” bulldozers through the intervention of preservationists who understood the built environment as not just a collection of buildings but as a fragile ecosystem, and the mission of historic preservation as not just conserving architectural details but as stewarding the social and cultural fabric of intact traditional neighborhoods.

It is troubling to see historic preservation turn away from this humanistic ethos into a set of arcane bureaucratic procedures that appear to the layperson as reactionary, elitist and contrary to social solidarity. “Putting people first” is the preservation ethos that saved my neighborhood from annihilation and to which I will always subscribe.

Aaron Goode

New Haven, Conn.

The writer is co-founder of Walk New Haven Cultural Heritage Tours.

To the Editor:

To say that historic preservation exacerbates global warming by obstructing change for the better is a reductionist stance for a field that has fought to revitalize and defend our nation’s most treasured sites. If this position is to be taken seriously, then Binyamin Appelbaum must broaden his blame to encompass thousands of homeowners’ associations that impose similar restrictions regardless of a building’s pedigree.

The larger question at hand is who decides what is worthy of preservation in the first place? The preservation process democratizes this vital question. Framing historic preservation as a detrimental regime serving the needs of the affluent is irresponsible. A more apt description is that preservation acts as a forum for communities to engage and negotiate our shared cultural resources.

This rough and rowdy attempt to define preservation as an instrument of class conflict is as convenient as it is misguided. Are we honestly to believe that limits on renovation are causing the proliferation of tent cities? Could there be other factors aside from preservation at fault? If only my window choices had that much power.

Andre P. Jauregui

New York

To the Editor:

Binyamin Appelbaum sets up a straw man in order to advance an attack on preservation that has been mounted in recent years by a number of developers and economists. His neighborhood in the Capitol Hill District has some of the toughest zoning regulations in the country and is not at all reflective of the rather weak or nonexistent protections in most of the country.

In centering his argument on solar panels, Mr. Appelbaum seeks to try tug at environmentalists’ heartstrings, when, in fact, preservation has been shown to be far greener than new construction.