With all the noise over Mayor Bloomberg’s tax increases, his smoking ban, and his efforts to improve the city’s public schools, it’s easy to overlook what may just emerge as the mayor’s biggest achievement. That is the enormous construction boom that is already under way in the city and that may expand even further under Mr. Bloomberg’s pro-growth policies.

One reason it’s possible to overlook this trend is that huge development projects are announced one at a time. But count them. Last month saw the city announce a major redevelopment plan for Downtown Brooklyn, including housing, office buildings, and a Nets stadium to be built by developer Bruce Ratner and architect Frank Gehry. The New York Sun’s Julie Satow reported on February 3 about the plans that developers George Klein, Donald Capoccia, and Jeff Levin have for miles of waterfront in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The February 12 Sun carried the front-page news of how the city plans to finance improvements on the far West Side of Manhattan near a new Jets stadium and an expanded Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.

The Greenpoint, Ratner, and West Side developments come on top of the project to rebuild the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan. They come on top of the rezoning of Fourth Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, which will open the door to higher-density development. They come as old housing is being rehabilitated, and new housing constructed, in Harlem, the Lower East Side, the South Bronx, and Staten Island. They come as several new Manhattan office buildings are either nearing completion or far in the planning stages — including new headquarters for Time Warner, the New York Times, and Mr. Bloomberg’s own wire service.

We acknowledge the objections to some of these projects. The buildings at Greenpoint, ground zero, Downtown Brooklyn, and the far West Side haven’t been built yet. There’s a risk they never will be. Mayor Giuliani proposed some stadiums, too, but all that actually came of them were a lot of fancy architectural renderings. Libertarians object to the abuse of eminent domain powers that allow private property to be seized for development. Conservatives and liberals alike complain of the taxpayers subsidizing influential and wealthy businesses and sports-team owners.

Some of the planning seems driven by City Hall pinning its hopes on a 2012 Olympics bid that even Mr. Bloomberg acknowledges has only a 50% chance of success. Some of the public financing, particularly for the far West Side project, seems driven by excessive taxation or borrowing schemes. Many of the projects are said to include too much “affordable” — read, non-market rate — housing, or not enough of it. Many of these caveats and reservations are reasonable and genuine. We share some of them to various extents.

And there’s plenty of credit to go around. Governor Pataki and his appointees have played an important role with respect to the World Trade Center site. There’s private money and initiative at work here too on these projects, by Messrs. Klein and Ratner, World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein, and dozens of smaller players.

But even conced ing these points, Mayor Bloomberg the Builder deserves at least some of the credit for what could be called the Bloomberg Boom. His planning commissioner, Amanda Burden, dismissed by some as a socialite when she was first named to the job, has emerged as one of the most capable and tireless public servants in the mayor’s administration, bringing a development-friendly, can-do attitude that is starting to get results. She has tried to expedite the city’s environmental and land-use review process so that vast swaths of land are approved for development in a fell swoop, rather than on a slower, piecemeal basis as willing developers rise to the task.

Mr. Bloomberg has refused to be cowed. The land-use issues are an area where the mayor’s famous stubbornness — such a political liability on the smoking ban and the tax increases — is actually an asset. For it turns out that Mr. Bloomberg doesn’t cower when faced with the “community activists,” the so-called public-interest lawyers, the knee-jerk think-tank types, even some editorial writers, who are all busy looking for reasons not to build things. “There is a new kind of recognition that the city should not be passive and let opponents dictate what gets built,” said a New York University professor who sometimes advises Mr. Bloomberg, Mitchell Moss.

Many of these projects are so large that it will be years before they are complete. Mr. Bloomberg may be out of office by then. But if even a fraction of the plans that have been rolled out in recent months actually get built, Mr. Bloomberg will have left a legacy on this city second only to that of Robert Moses. He’ll be able to drive around the city and see new office buildings, new residential towers, new stadiums — and the people who work and live and enjoy sporting events there — and know that he played an important role in making it all happen.