Protect Old Buldings or Demolish Them for Urban Development

With the development of economy and society, Major cities around the world share the common troubled in dilemma whether to allocate enormous budget on maintenance of old buildings or spend the money to build more new house and traffic facilitates such as roads. As far as I am concerned, I am in favor of devoting government expenditure to the restoration of some remarkable old buildings.

It is an undeniable fact that if detailed assessment not made, the costs on the restoration of some remarkable old buildings do outweigh those on rebuilding new houses or roads, what’s more, with the population explosion and urbanization expansion, major cities worldwide are faced with similar common problems in terms of land shortage, poverty as well as and traffic congestion. Therefore, it seems quite necessary to remove these old buildings to make room for more compact, high-rise constructions to accommodate the markedly-increasing urban population and more roads to alleviate the traffic accidents.

However, we cannot ignore the fact that destroying or even demolishing some historic buildings that possess exceptional esthetic, cultural or historical value will undoubtedly result in overwhelming tangible and intangible losses . For one thing, some historic buildings uniquely represent specific historic events, figures as well as the dwelling lifestyle of one nation, therefore once such structures are razed, the corresponding memories remaining in our brains would be out of the question. It is hard to imagine what it would be if Tiananmen is removed to build a commercial building. For another, from economic perspective, some historic buildings which attract thousands of tourists gradually evolve to be a symbol of a city, which help augment government income and create numerous employee opportunities. Provided these buildings eventually disappear due to lacking of enough fund for maintenance and for the sake of current urban needs . It would be a disaster for these cities....