In 2012, Hurricane Sandy tore through the city, killing 44 people and leaving billions of dollars of damage. The recovery effort was slow going — five years out, many houses were still in shambles.

The storm was meant to be a reckoning about the city’s environmental fragility, but the shoreline continued to sprout high-rises.

There would be few solutions, and mostly workarounds, like mechanicals put on top of buildings, or in the middle of them, instead of on the ground floor. In Manhattan, this need for rearrangement has been exploited by developers who claim they require more floors for mechanicals than they do.

The result is empty space known as the “void,” which allows buildings to get taller and taller and developers to make bigger profits from the sale of more high-floor apartments with sweeping views.

A progressive mayor delivered a blow to the city’s ailing public housing system.