Rise of luxury towers dims de Blasio's shine

New York

WHEN Lynn Ellsworth moved to New York in the 1970s, before she went on to get a doctorate in economics, she lived in a boarding house on the Upper West Side, with a dozen or so young women who were students at Barnard and Parsons. The system was vibrant and efficient; this was high-density living in a low-density neighbourhood.

At some point during more recent years, the buildings on her old block in the West 80s were converted into single-family town houses. In the intervening period, during the 1990s, Ms Ellsworth moved to Tribeca, where the frenetically paced construction of expensive high-rise condominiums - high-density urbanism of a far less romantic kind - has been troublesome and disorienting.