A city can preserve a building’s facade while evicting everything that made it familiar.

A facade can be kept while everything behind it is replaced. The building looks the same from the street and the shop, the residents, and the life inside are gone. What was preserved is the appearance of continuity rather than the continuity itself.

That distinction is worth applying widely. When something is being protected, ask whether it is the form or the function. Preserving how a thing looks while losing what it did is a very common outcome, and it is often defended by people who genuinely believe they saved it.