Edmonton likes New so it will never be Old

Have you ever been to an old city?  One with rich history, great landmarks and stories on every corner?  How does that happen?  A city needs to be around for 1000's of years, survive war, be part of dynasties, and be ruled be great people.  Right? Do you know what else it has to do?  It has to keep the buildings it builds, build around them, maintain them, be proud of them.

This is something Edmonton is not good at.  We like new.  We have the money, and not much to do in this winter wasteland, so when a building gets a little old we decide to knock it down and do it again.  If we really like the building we might move it to Fort Edmonton first (didn't bother with city hall though)!  I for one don't like this approach, and when I think about the current new arena debate I wonder if it is another situation where we are overlooking what we have because we want something new.

New is nice!  We all like new, shiny, fancy things.  Sure they cost money, but it is worth it because well new things are NEW.  We want to be world class right?  We can't be world class like our fancy brother Calgary if we don't do it up.  I saw one study or report or something near the beginning of this debate talking about a Rexall place renovation, but it was quickly dismissed.  Why pay a third of the price to fix what we have when we can spend triple and have something NEW.  This attitude seems wasteful and maybe we need to take a closer look at why everyone is telling us the Oilers cannot survive at Rexall Place.