Need a City quant PhD to invent a mathematical analog of Black-Scholes [1] for pricing and trading the irreplaceable value of culturally significant physical spaces to future generations. Then City-like [2] institutions can compete financially for ongoing preservation rights, rather than a one-time chop shop auction.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes_model
"Preserving the irreplaceable value of ..." works great as a personal motivation or a mission statement, but terribly as an explicit rule. It's the same problem as carbon offsets - if there's a formula for converting intangible values into cold hard cash, people will exploit the definition of the intangibles to make money.
This is largely because we’ve built a philosophy that eschews any concept of a collective or a people or a culture or a future.
Which legal and financial instruments have defended the City of London itself from being auctioned for parts?
Subsets of culture are preserved, packetized & traded daily. Even StubHub has a "food festival" category.
Before learning that this[1] was a thing, I honestly would have interpreted your remark in passing as figurative rhetoric.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Bridge_(Lake_Havasu_Cit...