What policy should be adopted for historic residences: maintain them as dwellings, turn them into museums, or repurpose them as workshops and shops?

Maintaining historic residences as residential properties helps preserve their original function and, when combined with revitalizing the surrounding area, aligns with the principles of utilizing historic buildings.

My stance is: the default policy should be to 'maintain it as a residence,' with museumification and commercialization only as exceptions and supplements. There are three layers of reasoning. First, international conservation guidelines themselves prioritize continuing the original use: Article 7.1 of the Burra Charter states that 'where the use of a place is of cultural significance, it should be retained,' and the Washington Charter (1987) explicitly states that 'the improvement of housing should be one of the basic objectives of conservation.' For residences, habitation is not a replaceable container function but a component of its cultural significance. Second, habitation is the lowest-cost and most durable daily maintenance mechanism. Historic England's guidance on vacant historic buildings points out that unoccupied buildings deteriorate far faster than occupied ones, and the best way to protect a building is to keep it occupied—this directly negates the 'vacant preservation' mentioned in the question background and also shows that residences are superior to museum operations that rely on ticket sales and donations and can halt at any time. Third, the other two paths have systematic failure records: house museums in the United States have been judged by the industry itself as oversupplied and unsustainable (approximately 7,000–9,000 homogenized institutions; in 2007, the National Trust and AASLH held a special meeting at Kykuit to discuss how to transition unsustainable house museums to other uses); and wholesale commercialization triggers tourism gentrification, where rising rents displace original residents and resident-oriented services, leaving only a shell of the historic appearance. The population of Venice's historic center fell from about 174,000 in 1951 to under 50,000 in 2022 as an extreme example. I therefore advocate: residences as the primary use + mixed use with ground-floor street-facing spaces accommodating studios and shops + museumification only for a small number of mansions with complete interior furnishings and unique narratives.

My stance is to establish the preservation of residential use as the default policy for historic houses, while allowing prudent modifications for safety, comfort, accessibility, and energy efficiency. The cultural value of a residence lies not only in its facade and materials but also in its room layout, daily life, neighborhood relations, and the place memory that continues to form. Museumification or commercialization suits a few special cases and should not become the routine fate of an entire class of historic houses; vacancy-based protection can only serve as a transitional measure with funding, a maintenance plan, and a clear deadline.

According to the Principles for the Conservation of Heritage Sites in China (2015) and the Venice Charter, historic residences should adopt 'continued habitation' as the default and priority policy: continuing the original use function is itself a protection of value, and daily living brings continuous maintenance and living heritage transmission, avoiding the high cost, homogenization, and 'one museum after another' of museumification, as well as avoiding overall commercialization leading to the loss of original residents and hollowing out of neighborhoods; for individual cases where habitation is truly difficult, repair subsidies, museums, or compatible studios/shops can be used as supplements, and vacant protection should be avoided as much as possible.

For most historic residences, priority should be given to maintaining their residential use as dwellings. The residential function is often a core component of their cultural significance, and continued use preserves living heritage and social continuity while preventing structural decay caused by vacancy through daily maintenance. Large-scale conversion into museums would lead to museumification, loss of lived atmosphere, and lack of scalability; conversion into studios or shops tends to cause commercialization and gentrification, altering the character of the original community. Vacant preservation can only serve as a temporary measure. Necessary modernization should be carried out while maintaining residential use to meet contemporary living needs.

Advocates for 'continued habitation' as the default policy for historic residences: continuing residential use best aligns with the 'living heritage' concept advocated by international (UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape) and mainstream Chinese policy, maintaining the building's daily use and upkeep, community structure, and intangible cultural continuity, avoiding the vacant decay of 'locking it up and waiting for it to die'; converting to museums or studios/shops should only be exceptional options for a small number of residences with outstanding commemorative value or confirmed uninhabited, not a universal policy.

In the policy choices for the protection and utilization of historic residences, repurposing historic residences as studios and shops (i.e., adaptive reuse) is currently the most sustainable and comprehensively beneficial option. This conclusion is based on a comprehensive analysis of policy orientation, practical cases, economic and social benefits, and conservation principles.

In the absence of on-site evidence specific to the historical residence, community needs, protection level, and funding conditions, I tend to prioritize maintaining residential use. Residential functions typically allow the building to remain in continuous use, avoiding the high operational costs associated with museumification, and alter the living character of the historical space less than a full conversion to commercial use. It should be noted that the research tool did not provide structured finance_results, and this judgment is based primarily on indirect and limited materials, so confidence is low.

My stance is to prioritize maintaining the residential use of historic houses; only when residential function is truly infeasible, the building has been vacant long-term, or conservation requirements are special, should reversible alternative uses such as museums, studios, or shops be considered. Residential use typically best continues the building's original layout, community connections, and everyday living value, and avoids the widespread museumification or commercialization of houses.

For historic residences, maintaining their residential use (MAINTAIN_DWELLINGS) is often the most sustainable and socially vibrant strategy. The core of adaptive reuse lies in giving buildings new life, and residential function can ensure continuous daily maintenance and use, preventing the building from deteriorating due to vacancy or a single tourism function. While conversion to museums or commercial shops may be feasible in specific cases, they often face risks of economic unsustainability, community isolation, or over-tourism. Maintaining residential use helps preserve the community's social structure and cultural memory, aligning with the conservation philosophy of 'living heritage'.

The core value of historic residences stems from the living atmosphere of their original inhabitants and living heritage transmission. Maintaining residential use can reduce the risk of excessive commercial development, achieve long-term dynamic protection at lower cost, and is a preferred solution that balances heritage value preservation with livelihood needs.

The best default policy for historic residences is to maintain residential use. Vacancy-based preservation accelerates decay of old buildings, especially wooden structures, and breaks community continuity; museumification freezes residences as exhibits, stripping their everyday social functions. Only by allowing people to continue living there can continuous maintenance be achieved at the lowest cost, while preserving the authenticity of the residence as a 'living heritage' and community continuity. Converting to studios or shops should only be an alternative when residential use is no longer feasible.

The value of historic residences lies not only in the architectural fabric itself, but also in the ways of life and community networks that continue within them. International conservation charters have consistently regarded 'continuing the original use' as the preferred path: when residences remain inhabited, everyday use itself is the most natural maintenance mechanism; conversion into museums is only suitable for a small number of special cases such as former homes of notable figures, and widespread promotion would create 'museumified' dead cities and heavy operational burdens; uniformly converting them into studios and shops tends to slide toward over-commercialization, displacement of original residents, and homogenization of the streetscape. As for the vacancy-based preservation mentioned in the question, unoccupied houses lose daily care and supervision, which only accelerates decay, amounting to de facto abandonment. Therefore, the overall policy should maintain the residential function of historic residences, and address the problem of 'old houses being unfit for living' through organic renewal and facility improvements, so as to 'preserve the form while keeping the people.'

Maintaining residential use of historic houses is the optimal policy choice, as it achieves an organic unity of living heritage conservation, improvement of people's livelihoods, and cultural inheritance, avoiding the risks of static preservation and over-commercialization, and aligning with international living heritage conservation principles and domestic practical experience.