Parisians used to joke that the view from the rooftop terrace of the Centre Georges Pompidou was the best in the city. It was not what you could see – the Eiffel tower in one direction, Notre Dame in another and the ethereal dome of Sacré Coeur over a vast expanse of roofs. It was what you could not see: the Centre Georges Pompidou itself, with its inside-out, colour-coded architecture once described as having all the charm of an oil refinery.

Today the joke has worn thin. Like Gustave Eiffel’s once-derided iron “monstrosity”, the Pompidou, commissioned by the French president of the same name, has gone from eyesore to icon in the public mind. A new generation of city officials, led by the Socialist mayor, Anne Hidalgo, wants to change the view from the Pompidou, calling for ideas to “reinvent” the cityscape. However, plans for a skyscraper, known as the Triangle Tower, have divided Parisians and prompted a wave of protests that the city’s cherished skyline is about to be violated.

That skyline is protected by regulations banning most high-rise buildings, to the extent that Unesco has described Paris as one of those rare “horizontal cities”. Jean-Louis Missika, deputy mayor in charge of urban planning, told the Observer: “If we build something like the Triangle Tower, it has to be an exception, a signature building.” However, the City Hall is facing fierce opposition from conservatives who remain fiercely protective of their city. The Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry’s massive glass Cloud – recently opened by the Louis Vuitton Foundation in the Bois de Boulogne to mostly rave reviews – continues to divide opinion.

And when the city authorities proposed to build a 180-metre, 42-storey glass Triangle Tower near the Porte de Versailles in the south-west of the capital – Paris’s first skyscraper in more than four decades – the reaction was predictably hostile. The plans were barely off the drawing board when residents set up a protest group and hung “Non à la Tour Triangle” banners from the balconies of their flats. Patrice Maire, president of the protest group, argued that the Triangle would have a “devastating impact” on the skyline and described it as “irresponsible”.

The Eiffel tower and the Pompidou Centre are often cited in Paris as symbols of how a city can move with the times while retaining its historic soul, but they are far from alone. On a rainy winter’s day, tourists running from coaches into the Louvre still stop under the drizzle to marvel at its illuminated, multifaceted glass pyramid entrance sparkling in the gloom. Surrounded by three wings of the classic building, the pyramid, completed in 1989 after being commissioned by another president, François Mitterrand – who detractors accused of having a “pharaonic complex” – was no less controversial. Today no one but diehard traditionalists would argue that it has not been a popular addition to the historic palais.

A short walk away are the Colonnes de Buren, the once equally controversial black-and-white striped columns of varying heights in the Cour d’Honneur of the Palais Royal. The brainchild of former Socialist culture minister Jack Lang, the columns – which were derided as sticks of rock unsuitable for such a lofty historic landmark – have gained a grudging acceptance in the last 20 years.

It was ever thus. Baron Haussmann, Napoleon III’s architect, faced fierce opposition to his plans to replace swaths of the city – including what Voltaire described as the filthy, narrow, infected streets around the Louvre worthy of “Goths and Vandals” – with airy boulevards, parks and squares. Critics described Haussmann’s Paris as a “triumph of vulgarity … and awful materialism”. To describe a building as Haussmannian in the 19th century was an insult. Today it adds tens of thousands to the sale price.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A view of Paris at sunset from the Montparnasse tower, looking north-west across the Champ de Mars, the Eiffel tower, the Bois de Boulogne and beyond. Photograph: Alamy

As the economic crisis gouges scars into the national morale, shaking its self-confidence, the nation has sought reassurance in its glorious past. The Triangle Tower has become one of the focal points of opposition to change. Another is the Samaritaine building on the Rive Droite of the Seine. The emblematic former department store continues to be the subject of legal wrangles over plans to install a “glass wave” on the northern facade on the chic Rue de Rivoli.

Deputy mayor Missika says the eternal challenge is balancing preservation with renewal. “We must preserve, but also give a second, third, fourth life to areas. A city like Paris has to renew century after century.” City authorities recently launched an appeal for project ideas for 23 sites in the capital called Reinventing Paris, which Hidalgo said would “shape the future metropolis”.

“Surprise us by offering Parisians a new vision of their city, revealing new quarters with a wealth of possibilities!” she urged.

Numerous avant-garde projects suffer from what French town planners call Tour Montparnasse syndrome. This refers to the fallout from the 210-metre skyscraper opened in 1973 and seen by many as a blot on the skyline. Members of the Paris council rejected the €500m Triangle, designed by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, the Swiss architects behind London’s Tate Modern, in a narrow vote in November, but Hidalgo has appealed against the result.

“The first reaction is to say that the heritage must not be disfigured and opposition is linked to concern that a building will disfigure the skyline, but the city must evolve,” Missika said. “Like the Louvre pyramid, which has added something to this historic palace, the Triangle Tower will do the same thing. The reactions are linked to concern that a building will disfigure the city. We cannot be allergic to change.”

Prize-winning architect Christian de Portzamparc also regrets the vote against the Triangle.“We are in a general climate of blockage, of pessimism and bad news about our industrial and commercial future. So it’s a pity to discourage positive moves,” Portzamparc told France TV.

“Public opinion was traumatised by the era at the end of the trente glorieuses, when a quite brutal urbanism came in. But we learned from our mistakes. There was too much [architectural] brutality at the time, and now we have become too fearful. We are in a phase of total rejection – no more concrete, no more building, no more big projects – but it’s not the solution. Cities show us history, but must also show us that there is a future.”

Alexandre Gady, conservationist, historian of French architecture and professor of modern architecture at the Sorbonne, argues that changing or “renewing” Paris diverts from its real need to look outwards. Paris, he says, is a “finished” city that does not need improving or anything more doing to it. “It’s not that we should be doing this or that – we should not be doing anything in central Paris ... any plan is a diversion from the need of the city to grow outwards,” Gady told the New Yorker. He accused the French elite of having no long-term vision and being “mediocre in the sense that they have no capacity for projection, for seeing what’s happened or what’s coming”.

In an interview with the Observer before she became Paris mayor, Hidalgo recognised the problem. “Without doubt the beauty of the city is its monuments and its preservation; there are few cities in the world that have known how to keep their heritage. Having said that, it’s important that the beauty of yesterday does not stop us developing the beauty of tomorrow. It’s a sensitive subject, balancing history and the future, especially when it comes to architecture. But Paris has to move forward; it cannot become a museum.”