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Earlier this month, William Thorsell, director of the revered Royal Ontario Museum and former editor-in-chief of this newspaper, flew down to New York to boost media attention for the ROM's current $250-million revamp — and, while there, managed to kick an old hornet's nest back home.

Whatever he said in Manhattan — his exact words were not cited — it was taken by Globe and Mail reporter Val Ross to mean the ROM is reviving an aborted scheme to put up a residential tower on its dilapidated south end.

After Ms. Ross's story broke in Toronto, Mr. Thorsell swiftly announced that no deal had been concluded, and that the process of reaching a decision would involve community consultation. The announcement seems to have worked: The last time I looked, the citizenry was not marching on the ROM with pitchforks at the ready.

The history of this month's minor scuffle, you may recall, goes back to the autumn of 2005, when the ROM unveiled a proposal for the site of the decommissioned McLaughlin Planetarium. It was to be a 45-storey deluxe condominium tower designed by Brian Brisbin, principal in the Toronto-based international architectural office of Brisbin Brook Beynon.

The local community — or at least a very vociferous segment of it — was horrified. The University of Toronto was hostile. The idea of raising a skyscraper on the edge of the university's St. George campus struck many as a travesty, and a frontal attack on a historic precinct the city that is much loved for its gentility and charming dignity.

After a noisy public meeting, the ROM withdrew the plan, and that was that — until the director's remarks in New York, anyway. As of this week, the museum is in new discussions with developers, and pondering again what's to be done with its very valuable planetarium site. A decision, says the ROM, could emerge from these talks as early as August.

While the outcome is anybody's guess, I hope the skyscraper option stays on the table during the current conversations.

Keeping it there may simply make local people see red and charge the museum head-on, which would be an unfortunate rerun of 2005. But if handled adroitly by the ROM, and taken seriously as an opportunity for public education, the inevitable uproar could be turned into Toronto's first important, ongoing discussion of the role of tall residential buildings in the urban fabric.

So far, proposals for such structures in this town have too often given rise to shows of animosity, fear of heights and shadows, and suspicion that residential towers are by nature ruinous to Toronto's traditional values of community and neighbourhood. I would never argue that outraged citizens should stay quiet and meekly accept what the high-rise developers are planning for the streets. But all arguments about tall buildings, for and against, should be given a fair, open hearing — and the current ROM discussions would be an ideal occasion for just such an airing of views.

It would be a good opportunity to think again, for example, about the various ways architecture behaves in an urban setting. A new building may reinforce the existing fabric, by attempting to be as much like it as possible, which is just fine. But, occasionally, it can reach for the sky from humble surroundings and provide a moment of uncommon excitement in its low-rise context, like a sparkling brooch on a refined gabardine frock.

In the debate I'm proposing, one can hope the combatants would quickly come to a shared appreciation for the merits of skyscrapers as urban tools. But simple conversion to the cause of tall buildings is not what I'm after here. The discussion of ROM options will be largely pointless if it does not lead to improved public discrimination about what works and what doesn't, and much keener attention to design.

In this regard, the ROM skyscraper, if they decide to put one up, must be brilliant. We should be satisfied with nothing less. The tower should embody the most advanced contemporary thought about tall-building design — aerodynamics, sustainability, "greenness," material and structural innovation — even as the U of T around it symbolizes the most advanced research in science, the arts, and other fields of humane learning. It could become (as Brian Brisbin argued for his building 18 months ago) a new point of orientation for the entire campus, like a bell tower or steeple — a celebration of urban intelligence appropriately placed in Toronto's neighbourhood most visibly dedicated to the life of the mind and spirit.

In a recent column, I mistakenly identified the designer of the outstanding Radio City residential development in Toronto as Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg. The architect in charge of Radio City was Peter Clewes of the firm architectsAlliance.