[LouisVanDerWright]

Well it's pretty clear that the lack of NIMBY's is due to the fact that this area has been planned from the onset to be this huge. No one can claim they didn't know a building was planned for this lot because it has been explicitly designated for a large, view terminating, building since the area was laid out. In the same vein, the area already has all the basic developer entitlements in place. These buildings are more or less pre-approved from a zoning perspective and, as such, there really isn't any venue in which any NIMBY contingency could make their obnoxious voices heard. Finally, being planned from the onset ended up resulting in an ideal layout from a views perspective where no ones toes are really getting stepped on when the next tower goes up. The buildings are all linked together like a jigsaw puzzle where there are no "loose ends" from a planning perspective.

The towers are placed in rows with ideal spacing between them and the low rise portions create a sense of human scale and provide a seamless streetwall to the development. Another example; even though others were fretting about this before, the views of Aqua from (and therefore to) the river will still be quite substantial. Enough space is given between all buildings that there are always a few ways to appreciate these buildings from a distance. As a result there are also always a few corridor views from each building which, to me, is far more exciting that pure height without much to look at. The views from the Trump Hotel, for example, are much more intriguing than the views from the condo units because you are looking at the lake down the river canyon and not from above the canyon.

LSE is really one of the bigger planning successes in the United States for a long time. There are very few places in this country where such a large project was so successful over such a long time. Obviously there are other megaprojects now getting under way, but this was really the first massive downtown section redevelopment since WWII. It really is on or beyond the scale of historical mega projects like Rockafeller Center. Once it is fully built out it will be an even more impressive spectacle to behold.