RALEIGH - About 70 residents gathered in downtown Raleigh on Wednesday night to play the city's latest parlor game: Spot the teardown.

The meeting, organized by the city's Planning Department, involved asking attendees to comment on pictures of new Raleigh homes that rose from the ashes of older homes.

The exercise was designed to help city planners better understand what, if any, types of teardowns residents dislike.

"Simply showing the pictures is not meant to be condemning to a builder or a person living in the house," said Travis Crane, a senior city planner. "I want to make sure people don't get upset."

The planners showed sections of residential blocks without saying which house was new. It took awhile for the audience, including home builders, residents and several city councilmen, to get the hang of the exercise.

Most of the home builders questioned the value of asking people to comment on the photographs, saying it was the equivalent of a witch hunt that failed to consider what was happening in the larger neighborhood.

"I think this leaves out so many critical elements," Garrett Garcia said. "Homes are being torn down because other families and people are not buying them."

Before the photos were shown, one person asked sarcastically whether Mayor Charles Meeker's house would be included in the slide show.

Other attendees applauded city planners for devising a novel way to gather comments from residents on the teardown issue.

"I think it's an important step," said Phil Poe, head of the Five Points Citizens Advisory Council. "It gets people talking about it."

The city is debating whether to regulate teardowns -- the practice of replacing older homes with larger ones that consume much of the lot. Teardowns have become an issue mainly in older neighborhoods inside the Beltline.

Last month, officials held a public hearing to discuss speeding up the process for creating neighborhood conservation overlay districts. Such districts are seen as one way to regulate teardowns.

On Wednesday, the Planning Department also released data about how often older homes in Raleigh are razed and replaced.

Between 2002 and 2007, fewer than 3 percent of the 24,187 new homes in Raleigh were built on sites where the previous home was demolished, according to an analysis of demolition and building permits for single-family houses, duplexes and townhouses.

About 48 percent of the 656 new homes identified by the city were 4,000 square feet or larger. The average single-family home in Raleigh is about 2,800 square feet.

A second public meeting is planned for late May or early June.