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New York City has experienced a boom in elite “luxury” housing development. With large apartments and expansive amenity spaces, luxury buildings offer uncrowded living in an otherwise densely populated landscape. However, making space for these luxuries requires novel engineering, especially high-rise development. This article maps the expanding footprint of luxury real estate in three dimensions, analyzing 943 housing projects built between 2000 and 2020. It assesses how construction of taller buildings with larger footprints increased height and volume of the built environment, and how these landscape changes interact with social changes related to gentrification. On average, new build luxury development increased height by 6.8 stories and more than doubled building volumes. Building heights and volumes are also significantly larger than neighboring structures. The resulting intensification of land investment leads to new kinds of displacements, especially middle class displacement. Vertical development is closely associated with super-gentrification, the further intensification of gentrification processes in already gentrified or otherwise middle class neighborhoods.
John Lauermann (Tue,) studied this question.