The expensive building casts a shadow the surrounding street receives for free.

Costs travel outwards even when benefits do not. A tower is paid for by whoever owns it, but the loss of light, the wind at the corner and the darkened afternoon on the pavement are absorbed by people who were never asked and receive nothing in return. Shadows are just the most visible version of this. Noise, traffic and rising rents work the same way, arriving on the street without an invoice.

When something near you changes, ask who gains and who is quietly paying. And in your own decisions, look for the shadow your convenience throws across somebody else’s day.