A half dozen residential buildings have been put up in my Washington, D.C. neighborhood in the last five years, and the one thing they all have in common is that they are shorter than their surrounding buildings—markedly so. Two recently completed developments are a full two stories shorter than the buildings they abut, and a soon-to-be opened development in the middle of Adams Morgan is just three stories tall despite being next to several five story apartment buildings. A newly completed condo building across the street from our eight-story building is also a mere three stories tall.

The diminutive height was not the desire of the developers, of course, who lose out on millions of dollars for each missing floor; The truncation was at the behest of the neighbors and the plethora of self-styled community activists who reside in Northwest D.C., who have the wherewithal to hold things up indefinitely if they don’t get their way.