It's a $24 million question —- and then some: When do a city's civic values trump its commercial interests?

The answer, in Atlanta, is all too rarely.

The question arises just now because of developer Ben Carter's proposal to raze the landmark Buckhead public library and replace it with a tower more in keeping with his vision for the area. But it's an issue Atlanta struggles with all the time —- or ought to, if it ever wants to become the top-tier city it aspires to be.

More often than not, commercial interests and civic values are congruent. Economic success is any city's engine. But there are times when the two concerns butt heads. And when they do, the matter requires careful consideration. After all, growth in itself does not ensure greatness.

The cities we admire, that we like to visit or live in, have something else: character. Architecture is the physical manifestation of a city's history, habits, fashions and values. Great cities embrace the look-at-me diva and the background building, the elegant and the quirky, the old and the new.

You don't get the texture and personality of a San Francisco or Chicago by sweeping away great swaths of the environment every generation. You can't apply the basic commercial standard of highest and best use to every situation. That way lies blandness. Had that standard prevailed here in 1974, the cherished Fox Theatre would have been razed for another high-rise.

Like the Fox, the Buckhead library is in the way of "progress." But there's an added complication. It's a modern building, around only since 1989. And Miss Congeniality it is not. Enveloped in black slate tiles and announced by the jutting angles of its entrance canopy, it is a dynamic, some say jarring, presence. It's hard to say which is its greater sin: that it is tough and assertive or that it is contemporary.

In general, Atlanta's grand ambitions don't extend to architecture and the arts. (An exception: The High Museum's decision in 1983 to hire Richard Meier, then at the beginning of his career trajectory, was an adventurous move.) But mostly we play it safe. We like polite. And in matters of taste, we are barely out of the 19th century. A beaux arts triumphal arch to nowhere can go up in the middle of Atlantic Station without a snicker, while contemporary architecture and art often evoke Pavlovian contempt or the vitriol usually reserved for politics on talk radio.

This, too, is counterproductive. A city that bills itself as forward looking but doesn't engage the architecture of its time is a contradiction in terms.

Which brings us back to the Buckhead library. Designed by Scogin, Elam & Bray Architects (now Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects), one of Atlanta's most distinguished firms, it has garnered a trophy case of local, regional and national awards. Its potential demise has inspired in its defense a torrent of petitions, blogs and chat room debates. Even the American Institute of Architects, both the Atlanta chapter and the Georgia association, ordinarily mum in such controversies, has issued a statement.

"We must not destroy artistic achievement simply because we don't understand or cannot love a work that doesn't fit our aesthetic sensibility," writes Ennis Parker, president of AIA Georgia.

More than a plea for a single building, his remarks and the fervor in general reflect frustration with attitudes that stifle adventurous architecture here.

All of which is not to say that the library is untouchable. In weighing Carter's $24 million offer for the land on Buckhead Avenue, the library board and Fulton County commissioners have to consider a variety of factors, including the building's functionality,which has been criticized; the alternatives; value of the location; and the cost ($1.4 million) of upgrading mechanical systems and making other repairs.

What's important is that its architectural significance be on the table along with those other issues. Library director John Szabo promises that it will.

These kinds of battles are inevitable. But the outcome shouldn't be. Each side will takes its lumps. The key is that those calling the shots understand that there is always more at stake than a real estate transaction. A city, for better or worse, is the sum of every such decision.

> Catherine Fox is the art and architecture critic for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.