junctionist
Senior Member
This issue isn't just about "restaurant row", a memorable but somewhat crude name. What we're dealing with is a cohesive group of heritage buildings built to similar heights and with similar architecture, accommodating different businesses and tenants. It's a solid group of buildings whose individuality and narrow facades make for an engaging and functional urban fabric. To gut this urban fabric for single developments that span across blocks will make for a more dull city aesthetically and in terms of building uses. Obviously, heritage architecture will disappear. I see such proposals as undesirable. If development is going to happen the way it did in the 1960s with blocks cleared of heritage buildings and the traditional fabric of the city torn apart with the exception of a few retained facades, then we'll probably need the kinds of aggressive restrictions that came in the 1970s to preserve the great things that we have.