[jpdivola]

Yeah, the lack of tall buildings in Brooklyn is basically a zoning issue. Historically, there was a small cluster of high rises around downtown Brooklyn from the early 20th century. But, downtown stagnated in the later half of the 20th century, with only marginal new construction in that period. Outside downtown, high rises are basically limited to mid-century tower-in-the-park style public housing projects throughout the borough.

In the past 10 years, Brooklyn has embraced high rise construction once again, in a somewhat limited manor. The city rezoned downtown Brooklyn and the Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfront to allow new high rise development. For better or for worse, these rezonings were accompanied by offsetting down-zonings in other parts of the borough, so the net increase in allowable density was actually pretty modest.

Outside of these high rise zones, most of Brooklyn is low rise row houses. Brooklyn is just as dominated by NIMBYs as the rest of the country, so there is no political will to rezone these areas to allow for greater density. This leaves only room for limited "contextual infill", basically super expensive 3-4 story infill townhouses and 5-7 story tall condos on old industrial lots.

By the standards of most American cities the pace of high construction in Brooklyn would be impressive. But, relative to the enormous scale of NYC, the high rises are basically a drop in the bucket and will do very little to address the demand. Brooklyn isn't really full on embracing high rise living in the way a city like Toronto is.