I wrote in many posts on Steemit about "the good old" and "the bad new" and how that slows us down while we're trying to keep up with the 21st century. I always choose "the bad new" and that "bad" is just because people got used to "the good old" and they feel safe there. That's why "the old" is good and "the new" is bad. "The old" doesn't have to be necessarily good, "the new" doesn't have to be necessarily bad, but I am kind of person who will take all chances to explore "the new".
The region where I live has a long, long tradition of using stone as the building material. We have a lot of it, our landscape is made of stone and, logically, the people in our history took from nature what they needed to build their homes, churches, city walls and the streets. Using stone for building structures requires great mastery and experience. Those buildings are stunning, permanent and solid. Some of the buildings in my city are more than 1000 years old and they are still in some function. But the most of the really old houses are not usable and their owners found themselves in trouble. Their real-estate cannot be used and also cannot be destroyed because the city council doesn't allow it! So you can't live there, you can't rent it, you even can't have a proper toilet there, forget about the normal electricity... You also can't call a plumber or an electrician to fix things, because they would have to drill the walls! But you can't drill the walls because those walls have a historical value. And if you wish to change that, you'll need a lot of money and time to deal with a hell of the paperwork.
From 1945 to 1991, Croatia was a part of the federation called Yugoslavia and it was ruled by the communists. Those commies didn't care about the history much, so the owners could re-build their old houses made of stone and replace pipes and wires. But the people were not so eager to do it since many of them found their new homes in some of the project buildings, each city became surrounded by awful socialist architecture, it looks so scary how they placed 500 people to live in few square meters. But luckily, in that period, some people renewed their old buildings in the city center, so our narrow streets are full of those little stores that are tourist attractions in the summer but empty and cold in the winter.
So the most of the owners of the old stone building have no use of those buildings at all. Only expenses because you have to pay those bills anyway. It is very hard to sell them since they can be renewed only inside and you can't drill the stone, you can't change the pipes and wires. City council is very strict about the rules (but with some exceptions) and some of your neighbors just can't wait to call the police because they heard the sound of the hammer drill from your place.
My city is the fertile ground for corruption, bribery, and nepotism. It is not the city council or mayor who is in charge. There are a few puppeteers, we all know who they are. They are war profiteers, the owners of the most businesses and real-estates in the city. When they own an old stone building, they can destroy it with no troubles. Just like that. Their projects usually have nothing with sanity, placing a modern building between two old stone houses is ugly and inappropriate. But they fill the pockets of those who bring those rules and everything is allowed to them.
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