[Daub]

To a degree you have a point. Indeed, this is exactly one of the points of attraction that Asia holds for me. Anecdote: my Japanese girl friend showed me a bunch of Japanese coins. I thought they were cool and asked if I could have one. She agreed and I selected the oldest, to which her response was 'that so British'.

However.... the point I was making was somewhat different. The buildings of Borough market are still there. What has changed is the community, which has been replaced outright. Moreover, it has been replaced with a 'pseudo community' akin to what you might find in an airport - transient office workers looking for somewhere a short distance from city center. It is the commodification of community - sold to the highest bidder.

[Schiendelman]

That transience, ironically, comes from the regulatory structure we try to use to protect community by trying to protect the buildings themselves. The things we've done that make it hard to build end up preventing new downtowns and markets in places that don't have them today, like residential areas. So then everyone's forced to the old markets for all their new needs, transforming them. If we let go, we'd see new downtowns and new markets in places that might be suburbs today, just like the old markets happened - organically, where a developer thinks they'll make money on one.