In the Shadow of Rising Towers, Laments of Lost Sunlight in New York Having to live in someone else's shadow is one of the risks of being a New Yorker. Yet for untold thousands, this vexing state of affairs is literally true. In a city forever sprouting new buildings, the quest to reach higher often comes at the cost of stealing somebody else's light. Alice O'Malley, a photographer, chose her apartment in Lower Manhattan because of the light, but a high-rise is darkening her view. She and other New Yorkers are losing their sunshine. And so, despite the approach of the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year and the harbinger of more sunlit hours - as well as naturally occurring vitamin D - home and street life for many New Yorkers remains, or is about to become, dark. On Ludlow Street in Lower Manhattan, Alice O'Malley, a photographer, now gazes dolefully across the street at the relentless rise of her neighbor due west - a 20-story hotel that has wiped out the last of her apartment's gentle pink light. On the Upper West Side, Ilonna Pederson greets a darkened apartment for the second winter after nearly 50 years there; her southern windows were bricked over a year ago to make way for a high-rise inches away. And in a once-sunny pocket of the far West Village, many are finding themselves in the large penumbra cast by the newly built 150 Charles, which rises 15 stories and houses 91 residences selling for an average of $8.6 million. "Going higher and staying narrow would've allowed light and air," said George Sanders, 58, who, with neighbors, waged a losing battle to get an alternate structure built. Now we're just plunged into darkness. It's just too bad. As dark and getting darker as many of the city's growing number of canyons may be, things could be worse. The city has long endeavored to balance the insatiable thirst for sky-high buildings with preserving a modicum of street-level sunlight, with mixed success. The 1916 zoning code mandated that tall buildings have setbacks, resulting in ziggurat-style structures resembling giant, layered wedding cakes. The revamped code of 1961 encouraged more plazas and arcades, like those at the Seagram Building and at Lincoln Center, which ended up being windswept and largely unused. Such guidelines pale compared with those in place in Japan, where enormous importance is placed upon a property's access to sunlight. There, the shadows of buildings cannot be cast on other buildings for more than a set amount of hours a day, with the minimum requirement being set on winter solstice. In New York, however, focus was placed on building higher. In the 1960s, the city was rezoned to accommodate expectations that its population would swell to 12 million to 16 million people. This meant that for nearly every tract of land there exists an invisible outline delineating how much farther a building set there could grow. "It's a total imaginary city," Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council, said of the invisible envelope that dances higher than the existing skyline. Everything was zoned higher. The city does not track how much of that envelope has been filled. But, together with the salability of air rights and the rezoning of pockets of the city such as the Williamsburg waterfront in Brooklyn, home to a forest of new condo towers, density grows by the year. While the short-term effects of this are aggravating enough - rare is the person who enjoys living alongside a construction site - the long-term effects feel grimmer when people end up losing their view and their light. It spills to the streets, ending languorous hours whiled away on sunny stoops or sun-brightened gardens, as happened near 150 Charles. Nor are the city's most cherished public spaces immune: seven towers are planned or underway along West 57th Street, the most sky-piercing of which are projected to cast shadows as long as a mile across Central Park. For apartment dwellers, the loss of light can be intensely personal. Bill Siegler, 72, a retired television producer, once enjoyed unparalleled views and opulent light from the sunsets over New Jersey at his apartment of nearly half a century, far west on 72nd Street. Then came the rise of Riverside South, also known as Trump Place, the clifflike row of buildings that stand sentinel along the West Side Highway from 59th Street to where Mr. Siegler lives. Susan Beachy contributed reporting.