[J. Will]

Fifteen years ago downtown Toronto had massive amounts of surface parking and plain empty land (empty land alongside the train tracks for example). This is where most of the new towers have been built - not where previous buildings stood (or if there were previous building(s), it was usually an insignifcant, architectural nothing of a lowrise (like a warehouse building). If downtown Boston and the immediate surrounding neighbourhoods (since I know "downtown Boston" proper only covers something like 1.2 square miles) had such huge amounts of parking lots and vacant land, I wonder if there would still be NIMBY outcries.

Boston is like Manhattan, in that something new being built usually means an existing building(s) has to be torn down to make room.