Exploring the Boundaries of Historic Landscape Preservation

The Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation will convene its 29th annual meeting on the campus of the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia.

The University of Georgia campus and the Athens region is an ideal venue for pursuing the conference theme: Exploring Landscape Preservation Boundaries. Since the early 1980s, faculty and students in the historic preservation and landscape architecture programs at the University of Georgia's School of Environmental Design have been a major force in advancing landscape preservation theory and practice, and the school remains distinctly oriented toward the integration of environmental design with preservation principles.

Athens is a cultural crossroads, centrally situated in the Georgia piedmont between the distinctive bioregions and cultures of Appalachia and the southern coastal plain. It is a landscape where boundaries and contrasts are plentiful: stately antebellum houses and gardens adjoin strong ethnic neighborhoods, soul food fuses with Old World cuisine, and bluegrass mixes with retro punk in fueling the city’s world famous music scene.

Meeting attendees will experience the historic campus of the University of Georgia; Madison - a nearby town General Sherman thought was too pretty to burn on his March to the Sea during the Civil War; as well as several quintessential Southern examples of designed and rural vernacular landscapes: plantations, rural farmsteads, pecan orchards, African-American gardens and more. 

The AHLP 2007 conference will provide a forum for practitioners, educators, and students to speculate, debate, and share ideas about current trends and future directions in landscape preservation. Like the landscapes we preserve and protect, the boundaries of our field are fluid and continuously reconfigured. Where and what is the "cutting edge" of landscape preservation today? 

As has been the Alliance tradition, the meeting will provide ample time for discussions with invited speakers, presentations by meeting attendees, and conversations about the future of landscape preservation and the Alliance's role in that future. If you are interested in submitting a paper proposal, please review the Call for Papers at http://www.ahlp.org/docs/callforpapers2007.pdf