For some homebuyers smaller historic properties are a more sensible restoration opportunity. Sarah Susanka, author of the Not So Big House and keynote speaker at Preservation NC's 2009 Annual Conference says that  because of the economy and environment, "people have become concerned with the volatility and cost of maintaining a high amount of square footage."

Sustainability and preservation — one can't exist without the other. That shouldn't be front-page news, but in many minds the goals of preserving historic places and preserving the planet remain separate. How can we get historic preservation and environmental advocates seeing things similarly?

Historic preservation is sustainable development. And any development that claims to be sustainable without preservation doesn't make sense, economically or otherwise.

Donovan Rypkema pulls no punches (sorry, EPA!) in this version of his Community Conversations talk in Raleigh on June 23. The Community Conversations series is sponsored by Raleigh Historic Districts Commission and Preservation North Carolina.

Helping save the planet, one historic building at a time . . .

The greenest buildings—as Carl Elefante, a noted Washington DC architect, told us during Preservation NC's 2007 Annual Conference—are the ones already built, and many are the historic places that tell North Carolina's story. "Taking into account the massive investment of materials and energy in existing buildings," Elefante has written, "it is both obvious and profound that extending the useful service life of the building stock is common sense, good business, and sound resource management."

Across the country, owners of old houses are being encouraged to remove their original windows and replace them with new energy-efficient models. Manufacturers of new window technologies advertise that old windows are inefficient, causing houses to leak energy and contributing to excessive heating and cooling bills, and to deterioration of the planet's environment. Replacing historic windows is touted as the "green" choice.