Designing new buildings in old cities is one of the perennial theoretical challenges of modern urban development. In Britain, three ancient cities have emerged as representative of three different approaches to heritage conservation in historic cores. At one extreme, Bath is virtually sacrosanct with assiduously enforced protection for its historic core imposing tough stylistic and aesthetic constraints that all new architecture, with mixed results, must abide by. The City of London operates at the other end of the scale, with its historic character recklessly squandered by an indolent planning system that has triggered an architectural free-for-all chiefly distinguished by its crude and largely unsuccessful attempt to pit skyscrapers against spires. While York is undoubtedly closer to the Bath model, it operates somewhere in the middle of the scale. Unlike Bath, York is not the result of a single urban vision and despite its popular perception as a medieval city, has carefully and incrementally evolved over time.
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