As new hotels and condos sprout up along the Bowery, forcing out the Lower East Side corridor’s legendary raffishness and squalor, community residents are pushing back against builders by seeking restrictions on new development.

With a community forum on the issue scheduled for Thursday, residents peeved by the rapid transformation of the Bowery are urging a possible rezoning that would limit building heights and density. Such restrictions would require approval from the Bloomberg administration and the City Council, and would likely draw the ire of developers and landowners.

Community Board 3 in Manhattan passed a resolution calling for a zoning change, and residents are seeking out funding for their effort, which could cost tens of thousands of dollars, according to the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Andrew Berman.

“The Bowery is being so dramatically and so inappropriately transformed that we’ve got to try,” Mr. Berman said.

The Bowery, a wide avenue that runs between Chinatown and Cooper Square, was for years a skid row, characterized by the drunks and the homeless who congregated along a street lined with restaurant supply and lighting wholesalers, bars, and flophouses.

The booming real estate market of the past few years has brought a sweeping change to the area, as developers have put up new hotels, apartments, and rooftop additions, helping the street’s shady reputation to melt away.

While residents welcome the loss of skid row atmosphere, many are criticizing the height and scale of the new buildings, pointing to developments such as the 23-story Cooper Square Hotel at Fifth Street and the nearby 16-story Bowery Hotel as glaring examples of out-of-character upscaling.

Given the existing zoning regulations, developments such as hotels and dormitories may be built at greater densities than apartments, a bounty for specific building types that residents say they would like to see discontinued.

While a downzoning of the Bowery is still far from a reality, real estate professionals say height and density restrictions would slow the progress of the street, driving away potential builders. “It would probably be very ill considered to crimp the development process, because it’s had a highly positive economic impact,” the chief executive of real estate services firm GVA Williams, Robert Freedman, said. “You’re establishing critical mass, and you can literally legislate it all away.”

But opponents of the developments claim new zoning restrictions would still allow for development, but at a scale within the context of the existing low-rise neighborhood.

“We need to get something that enhances and fits in with the history,” a resident leading the push for the rezoning, David Mulkins, said.

While specifics have not yet been hashed out, Mr. Mulkins said he would like to see a Bowery rezoning stretch from Canal Street to Fifth Street, and continue up Third and Fourth Avenues to Ninth Street.

Any change would likely have to be initiated by the community, as the city did not include the Bowery in its proposed rezoning of the Lower East Side, which is currently in the early stages of public review.