Easing restrictions on building heights in Vancouver’s downtown core would create a more dynamic skyline, but some detractors believe that tampering with the city’s existing view cones policy — and ultimately the vistas of the North Shore mountains they protect — is too high a price to pay.

The issue was debated at Simon Fraser University last night. Former Vancouver city planning director Larry Beasley, arguing in favour of the city’s existing policy, faced off against local architect Richard Henriquez.

 The event highlighted the ongoing dialogue generated by the city’s Downtown Capacity and View Corridors Study, which is reviewing the height limits and view corridor policies.

“It’s fair to say in general that the public input has reconfirmed the importance of public views to our livability and sense of place as a city,” said Brent Toderian, director of planning with the City of Vancouver, who also presented at the event.

View guidelines were established in the city 20 years ago to protect views of the North Shore mountains from various vantage points south of the downtown peninsula.

Proponents of the change argue that easing restrictions would create more development opportunity, which in turn would fund more civic infrastructure, from parks and affordable housing to heritage revitalization.

 “On the one hand we’d be hard pressed to design buildings as beautiful as our setting,” said Toderian.

“(While) we’d like to see opportunities for great architectural expression within the skyline … the key message is that this should be done not at the expense of our connection to the setting.

Our setting is our greatest strength, and we have the opportunity to layer on great architecture on top of that.”