History and our present lives are not mutually incompatible, they can enjoy each other's company. Landmarks should never be treated as something that is too upscale and gentrified to live in. The Exchange Street revived itself by becoming a tourist Mecca with all kinds of shops like Quincy Market in Boston. Certainly I would argue that the introduction of that kind of retail activity was the right thing to do if that was the best way to preserve the fabric of the city, but in the end I would hope the city gets beyond that, that the fabric reestablishes itself as something more than just an attraction for others but a place with grocery stores and places where people can work and live. Turning the Old Port into a tourist Mecca was done to save the area as opposed to tearing it down, but in the end we should strive to have the city have a life of its own.
Generalities are dangerous in cities.
What almost destroyed Portland was a generalization of what a city ought to be. Victor Gruen's plan is a terrifying document in which he proposed to removed to remove automobiles from Congress Street, turn it into a pedestrian mall, and frame it with two arterials, Spring and Cumberland Avenue, as well as High and Franklin Streets, and that would all make a loop around downtown. You'd arrive in arterials and enter elevated garages and walk out into the shopping mall. On a theoretical basis that was logical and the topography of Portland lent itself very nicely to it, the problem was, it was a formula that required the total destruction of the entire city. In Portland it's the street system that's the historic monument.