zoning

These towers are not only the product of advances in construction technology – and a global surfeit of super-rich buyers – but a zoning policy that allows a developer to acquire unused airspace nearby, add it to their own lot, and erect a vast structure without any kind of public review process taking place.

The system of zoning would lead logically to the introduction of the modern ticket barriers from 1987 (the Underground Ticketing System, or UTS), in that it allowed the software in the ticket gates to be relatively simple.