Mr. de Blasio's first major battle over affordable housing came in 2003, in one of the Bloomberg administration's first land-use overhauls: the rezoning of Brooklyn's Fourth Avenue to permit tall buildings, while capping heights much lower in the adjacent residential blocks.
"What's being engineered now is the replacement of one population by another to capitalize on the luxury housing boom that rezoning made possible," said Lucas Shapiro, a senior organizer for Families United for Racial and Economic Equality, which has opposed much of the development set off by a 2004 zoning change that permitted taller office and residential buildings.
But officials said developers could get around the new height limit by applying for city variances or taking advantage of state density bonuses that permit taller buildings if projects have an affordable housing component.
A rezoning along Lexington Avenue, from 54th to 57th Street, would permit slightly taller buildings than are now allowed.
They asserted that the city had violated his legal rights by issuing permits allowing the four-foot-tall "Fearless Girl" to stand across from the 11-foot bronze bull without Mr. Di Modica's permission.
The hedge surrounding Donald Trump's Beverly Hills mansion is well over the legally imposed limit and, in the eyes of the city, "a public nuisance". In this ritzy Los Angeles suburb, most hedges over 6 feet tall require a permit.
That is half as many tall buildings as were permitted in the original plan.
Ron Cherney, who bought the tenement not long after the colonel's death, said he had no immediate plans to replace it with something taller, as the zoning permits.
This paper will consider the historical, intellectual and policy basis that has permitted – indeed encouraged – the introduction of tall buildings into central London since 2000 by focussing on the design of the Heron Tower, located at the northern edge of the Eastern Cluster of tall buildings in the City of London, and discussions regarding its visual impact on St Paul's Cathedral.
Previously, such tall structures were not permitted in the capital.
The cheeks distend only as far as the high collar – that tall, stiff, grey wall – will permit them to go.
