Community agency and heritage recovery in climate-vulnerable historic districts: lessons from Riverine Montpelier, Vermont

Abstract

Heritage-rich communities face increasing climate hazards that necessitate tailored strategies to build resilience while preserving cultural assets and maintaining community fabric. Through analysis of the 2023 floods in Montpelier, Vermont, this study examines how community-based recovery processes and institutional arrangements shape heritage preservation outcomes. Combining machine learning analysis of 271 affected heritage structures with thematic analysis of stakeholder interviews, we investigate how social capital, institutional bricolage, and knowledge integration dynamics influenced recovery trajectories. Our analysis identifies a preservation-urgency paradox where strong community networks that enable rapid mobilisation can inadvertently undermine heritage recovery if preservation expertise and local knowledge are not effectively bridged and integrated into emergency response. Feature importance analysis demonstrates how building characteristics and socioeconomic factors influenced divergent recovery trajectories. Investigation of stakeholder decision-making reveals how institutional memory loss and delayed integration of preservation expertise created path dependencies affecting long-term outcomes. Despite collaborative governance frameworks aiming for equitable recovery, pre-existing institutional arrangements privileged certain recovery pathways, resulting in uneven outcomes. This research contributes to emerging discussions about community-based heritage management for maintaining cultural continuity under environmental pressures, suggesting the need for adaptive and inclusive heritage governance approaches that democratise preservation expertise and facilitate knowledge exchange while addressing recovery inequities.