Date of Award

1999

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Mass Communications

Department

Business

First Advisor

Michael Castro

Second Advisor

Tom Dehner

Third Advisor

Larry D. Ruebling

Abstract

History is the record of a community or culture in its past life. It symbolizes the continuation of our lives. Different areas nurtured different cultures and these cultures represent different peoples' ways of life and particular values. Not only does history provide evidence for us to trace and explore our ancestors' footprints, it also gives a blueprint for us to learn lessons and experiences so that we may be able to avoid quarrels and wars, and to create a peaceful world. Therefore history and culture has the functionality of carrying on the heritage to provide a way for the future generations. Not only should we not abandon history and culture, we should also spend more effort to study, enhance, and preserve them so that our history and culture can be carried on to the future.

Nowadays, there are so many ancient cultures gradually disappearing because they are being destroyed by modem civilization and wars. The once beautiful earth is no longer the same. However, people are still not alert to the rapid decline and the seriousness of the erosion of our ancient culture. We are still arbitrarily destroying our culture if it hinders the development of modern civilization. Whenever there is a conflict between the culture and the civilization, people often choose to keep the modern civilization so as to satisfy their immediate interest or sense of fulfillment. Hence we are sacrificing our culture without knowing it; we are forever burying it under our memory. Gradually, our history and culture will be forgotten by the future generations, and our children will never be able to experience the existence of it and to know what really happened. Our cultural heritage will be interrupted, even disappear.

Preservation of cultural properties is an extremely difficult job. It covers a wide range of fields, such as cultural products, drama, relics, etc. Each field has its own model of preservation, depending on the requirement a specific item of cultural properties. The most difficult field is the preservation of relics. Not only does it require time and effort, it also mandates a very large financial need for management and maintenance, because many of these relics are directly exposed to the natural environment; they must endure the erosion caused by the wind, the sunshine, and the rain years after years. What is even more worrisome is that relics are often ignored in city development plans. Whenever there is an expansion of roads, it is possible that there is an old street or an old building being leveled. Artificial destruction is far more awful then natural erosion. This kind of problem urgently needs our examination and regulation.

Based on the reasoning above, the author chose "How to preserve the culture of the old streets when under the impact of modern civilization" as the research topic. We treat "old streets" as cultural products. "Products can be defined as goods and services that fill customers' needs"(Douglas 406). We can apply marketing strategies (ideas) to them to create new products and to give new lives to these old streets. Our starting point is the Minchuan Street in Sanshia, Taiwan. We use the successful case of Main Street, Saint Charles, MO, as an example to verify our assumption. As a matter of fact, when considering the preservation of old streets, we should also consider political, economic, social, city development, and cultural factors, together with people's awareness, etc. However, these factors will not be explored in this thesis. We will only treat "old streets" as products and discuss how we can repackage the declining product, apply marketing strategies to push them back to the market, and create positive results.

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