In this outstanding article, Roger Scruton eloguently presents many of the ways that high-rises degrade the city: http://www.american.com/archive/2009/december-2009/the-high-cost-of-ignoring-beauty.

A couple of excepts:

"The degradation of our cities is the result of a “modernist vernacular,” whose principal device is the stack of horizontal layers, with jutting and obtrusive corners, built withou… Continue

You mean you wouldn't want this building showing up in your home town?

I'm with ya, about manageable and attractive cities, but there's a price tag for limiting upward development: scarcer supply = higher prices.
If you're in the rental scene, here are some good rental agreement forms, and if you have a funny bone here's a g… Continue

In a world where making a quick buck is the only thing that most people care about, there is a group of residents in Santa Barbara, California that are making preserving their community character a priority. Save El Pueblo Viejo has been organized to preserve the historical and human-scale character of Santa Barbara, especially its downtown, in the face of new development that threatens it. Thank God there is one sane community on this planet that can serve as a beacon to the rest of us and show… Continue

Cut and past the following URL into your browser bar http://reversezone.blogdns.com/ and then scroll down to the entry for Jan 21, 2008 "Place to Grow -- Pictures tell the story". It will you a pictoral representation of how the addition of highrises to a city street destroys the human scale that it once had.

James Howard Kunstler is a leading opponent of urban sprawl especially in regards to how much energy is wasted as a result of people commuting long distances to go to and from work. In that regard, one might think that Kunstler would favour the construction of highrises because to some they are the antithesis of sprawl. But here is what Kunstler actually says about highrises from an interview conducted by The Tyee website in 2006:

"The Tyee: Urbanists say that Vancouver is outperforming America… Continue