The Powers of Preservation: New Life for Urban Historic Places proposes a sophisticated, and at times controversial retooling of historic preservation in order to reverse our current epidemic of urban decay, neglect and abandonment.

As a pioneer and one of the most prominent architects of the modern preservation movement, Arthur Cotton Moore draws upon more than three decades of professional experience and his enormous portfolio of large-scale rehabilitation projects to show how preservation, by embracing a wider range of historic buildings and a looser attitude toward contextual design, can remedy the visual chaos and economic divestment that now characterize our cities.

He outlines a series of ingeniously simple and realizable steps to use preservation politics, economics, and aesthetics to re-emphasize community and common sense in America's public life and bring our cities and small towns back.