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 Actions to enhance the governance of the Heritage Precinct.
32) Heritage Precincts need to have control of their own destiny. Heritage Precincts are the source of their own understanding. Any outsider will always be an observer. An individual accumulates through their lives millions of experiences, and any decisions they make are informed by all that wonderful complexity. We can anticipate how we think someone will act, but they may surprise us. It becomes easier when we look at what an individual does to conclude that their actions were what we might have expected. It is impossible however to live someone else’s life for them,
33) We can never fully understand a Heritage Precinct. A person we love, a work of art, or a Heritage Precinct, never cease to surprise and delight us. When a person no longer enriches our lives we tire of the relationship. When we longer see an art work every day as though we have never seen it before it has ceased to communicate and we may as well replace it. When we no longer are constantly astonished by a Heritage Precinct either the wairua has withered or our own life has ceased to be fully alive. If we think we have understood a Heritage Precinct we can be certain that we have not understood.
34) If we are not grateful for the existence of governance structures we can assume they are fundamentally flawed. Governance systems which seek to control are fundamentally different from governance systems which set people free. This is similar to the difference between teaching and education. Teaching is concerned with one group of people imposing their values on another group of people. Education is concerned with looking inside an individual to release the potential which is waiting to be set free.
35) The purpose of governance is to release the potential of a Heritage Precinct. Seeking to impose an outside set of values on a Heritage Precinct which is steeped in its own values will result not only in anger, resentment and frustration but also in the destruction of the Precinct. The first question we always need to ask is very simple. “Is this governance for the good of the Heritage Precinct or for the good of somebody else?”
36) The boundary of a Heritage Precinct is not a physical line concerned with built-form, but rather a spiritual line which is concerned with “belonging”. Some people may live in a place for a long time, but never belong. Other people may be newcomers, but they truly belong. In part this is concerned with the emptying of self so that the Heritage Precinct is able to speak on its own terms and partly it is concerned with mana. The respect which that person holds within the Heritage Precinct.
37) Once the local-ness of a Heritage Precinct is recognised this automatically implies that governance should be local too. Questions of defence or international relations may have wider implications, but built-environment questions are always local.
Only those who belong should govern.
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