Just looked this up on Wikipedia:

The height of buildings in Washington is limited by the Height of Buildings Act. The original Act was passed by Congress in 1899 in response to the 1894 construction of the Cairo Hotel, which is much taller than the majority of buildings in the city. The original act restricted the heights of any type of building in the United States capital city of Washington, D.C., to be no higher than 110 feet (90 feet for residential buildings).

This is particularly interesting:

In 1910, the 61st United States Congress enacted a new law limiting building heights to the width of the right-of-way of the street or avenue on which a building fronts, plus 20 feet; thus, a building facing a 90-foot (27 m)-wide street could be only 110 feet (34 m) tall. In modern times the skyline remains low and sprawling, keeping with Thomas Jefferson’s wishes to make Washington an “American Paris” with “low and convenient” buildings on “light and airy” streets.

In the interest of fairness and not to selectively quote, the passage does go on to say the following:

Washington’s height restriction, however, has been assailed as one of the primary reasons why the city has inflated rents, limited affordable housing, and traffic problems as a result of urban sprawl.

What’s the solution? I think Jefferson’s sentiments are exactly right. This is what we have in Dublin and this is what we have to keep. I don’t think the rent or affordability problem is going to be a big one here for a very long time (if ever at all again if we’re smart). Plus there are still a number of empty apartments and homes around the City. We already have urban sprawl and nothing we do now is going to change the fact that people will continue to commute from places like Bray. We just have to make it easier for them. The way to manage this and make things more efficient and sustainable is to focus on public transport (which they just don’t do in the US). That’s the way to improve Dublin viz sustainability/sprawl challenges.

Washington just might prove a very interesting model. But are we too late to turn our thinking in that direction…