Venice has managed to keep all its churches and tourists flock there in the millions. Quentin Hughes once described Liverpool as the 'Venice of the North' back in the 1960s and people laughed at him. Had we kept a few more of our better buildings (particularly the huge belt of Georgian housing that shrank dramatically in the 1960s and 70s) - Liverpool would have been a much 'richer' city. There is a price to pay - but once you have removed our architural heritage, it cannot be replaced. We can always make excuses about cost - but in the long term these arguements don't stack up (look at the cost of high rise developments that replaced the old streets - they barely lasted 30years and we are still paying for the blight they caused).