For most Canadians, environment is their city or town, where they reside, work, and spend most of their leisure hours. The quality of this urban or semi-urban environment will have a significant impact upon their everyday life, including stress, cultural identity, and sense of historic continuity. Conserving the cultural and aesthetic values represented by the buildings which constitute this environment therefore deserves attention. One way for such buildings to be saved is to be purchased by someone dedicated to their retention; but since it is impossible to thus acquire all valuable buildings, this article looks at alternate approaches. There are legal mechanisms at five levels: international, federal, provincial, municipal, and private. Furthermore, public participation is an important dimension to any discussion of land use controls. The international and federal apsects of protecting the built environment were already described by this writer in a previous publication. 1 The salient features of that detailed description can be summarized as follow
