Quote:
Originally Posted by worldlyhaligonian
Nothing above 5 stories = no eiffel tower, no la defense 
Even Amsterdam has an office area with height around the Zuid area.
Also, what about squares such as in Prague that have huge cathedrals.
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To be fair, la Defense is easily the most boring (and least attractive) part of central Paris.
Anyway, "nothing over five storeys" works well only when five storeys is both the maximum and the mean. If the whole city is built out largely to four and five-storey buildings in close proximity, than you've got great density. The only way to do that in Canada--even in Montreal, out closest analogue in terms of built form--would be to tear down 95% of our built environment, even the older and denser areas, and start again. This is obviously not going to happen, so if we're to achieve sufficient density, we need some towers. Of course I wouldn't want to see our cities become Hong Kong-like either. That city may be a paragon of urbanity, but I find overbuilt cities exciting for a few days, then totally enervating. There is such a thing as too much density.
The city the article describes sounds great, but it's definitely written from a European point of view with a particular age of innate preferences.