ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

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BuildingScout
Also one of the reasons Besançon is so much nicer is because over the centuries they have never been afraid to take down their ugly buildings while defending the nicer ones.

I’d be very surprised if Besançon was a free-and-easy demolition town. France must be one of the most rigorous preservers of architectural heritage on the face of the Earth. And not only does it mandate conservation. A family whose modern (but “compatible”) home I stayed in near St. Malo was describing to me how it took 3 successive building plans to satisfy local authorities that their design would not disrupt the character of the surrounding historic structures.

These are unrelated. Not being afraid to take a structure down doesn't mean that you do not have to ask for permission. The point is you do have to ask for permission, but it is routinely granted if the building is unremarkable. Just being an old structure is not enough of a reason to keep a building.

We fail on both counts: on the one hand we let the very nice old Kitchener city hall be taken down and then we have heart attacks over Barra Castle's demolition.

These two straw man examples on the far ends of the spectrum beg the question. Serious initiative regarding the ones in between is the issue.

There are many other examples from where this comes from. The dry cleaners on Victoria St. and half the properties in that report were unremarkable. So much so that in this case the recommendations were rejected. But this shows the tenor: defend everything and anything.

We have a meddling planning department unafraid to stop a project because the parking lot isn't large enough yet routinely lets really bad plans go through. We also have a heritage committee who sees itself as a defender of the old instead of a defender of the remarkable.

I've posted plenty of pictures here of new construction for example in Strasbourg, Paris and Prague with new daring buildings smack in the middle of historical downtown. Can you imagine this ever been allowed here? The heritage committee would have a mass heart attack.

I am hard-pressed to recall “the heritage committee” here objecting to daring buildings smack anywhere. I do recall many instances of objection to removal of the “historical”. Where on the spectrum lies the appropriate resistance to demolition is the real issue. Juxtaposition of the old and the “new daring” can be stimulating – see the area of The High Line in Manhattan – as long as there is enough of each. And both the locals and the touristic public seem to find a well-conserved place like Besançon appealing. Thus my admittedly facetious commentary on the Besançon train tour.

The heritage committee would oppose the demolition to begin with, as they are wont to do when the building clocks at over 100 years. Then the planning committee starts talking about "respecting the character of the street" which is code for nothing daring goes (not even four stories in Uptown Waterloo). There is even a name for this attitude to planning, though the word escapes me at this very minute.

I agree 100% that juxtaposition is the way to go. Is how cities evolve. Locally we do not have much of it. The Breihaupt block comes to mind.