In the hopes of halting the kind of development it regards as undesirable – particularly out-of-scale buildings – the City Planning Commission began the official review process late last month to downzone Whitestone, a residential neighborhood in northeastern Queens.

Among other things, property owners will no longer be able to build two houses on lots where only one is now standing.

Together with the Bloomberg administration’s other efforts, including the earlier downzoning of nearby Bayside, Rego Park, and Forest Hills, and the planned downzoning of adjacent College Point, these rezonings amount to the “most comprehensive updates to the borough’s zoning since the adoption of the 1961 Zoning Resolution,” a City Planning Commission spokeswoman, Rachaele Raynoff, said. Some 2,500 blocks in 15 neighborhoods are being studied. Some 1,400 blocks in 14 neighborhoods have actually been rezoned.

In an area bounded by the East River on the north, the Clearview Expressway on the east, 26th Avenue on the south, and the Whitestone Expressway on the west, some 8,000 properties will be affected in Whitestone. After Community Board 7 votes on September 26, the plan will wend its way over the next five months toward the City Council.

Queens public officials and many residents are jubilant. Many developers and zoning lawyers are not. After all, once sleepy Queens is booming and real estate prices are escalating daily. Community District 7 alone has seen its new housing permits leap to more than 700 in 2003 from fewer than 100 in 1996.

“This downzoning will preserve our neighborhoods as they’ve historically been and protect their quality of life,” Council Member Tony Avella, who has successfully worked on four downzonings in his district, said. But a zoning consultant and former city planner, Tony Patrissi, says, “This is going to have a profound effect on the number of units produced and reduce the affordability of housing. There’s very little land available for development now. Limiting the number of units will just raise the price of housing further.”

The president of the New York Partnership, Kathryn Wylde, ties the downzoning of residential neighborhoods to the upzoning and – accompanying high density – of Downtown Brooklyn and the Jamaica section of Queens. “I support high density downtown,” she says, “because it allows us to control development in residential neighborhoods. We should increase density where appropriate, in those neighborhoods that are well-served by public transportation, in return for protecting those areas that are low-rise and residential. The dense project downtown preserves the low-density character of the outer rim.”

The director of the Queens planning office, John Young, tactfully regards the situation as a challenge. He points out that the population of Queens is at a historic peak of 2.3 million, and calls Whitestone a hidden gem. “We’re trying to protect the lower density qualities that make these communities attractive – by using the best zoning tools available, while finding additional opportunities for new housing where the infrastructure can support it.”

Under current zoning, which has barely changed since 1961, developers can demolish single-family houses and replace them with McMansions or multiple units. Houses built in the 1950s seldom used the full floor area allowed, making them valuable as tear-downs today. What’s more, developers who attract nonprofit tenants can get an additional allowance to build higher and deeper.

A realtor and civic activist, Cathy Moran, says neighborhood support for stopping such projects is high. “We’re standing firm, and we’re behind downzoning that will keep neighborhood values. Builders have been taking advantage of current zoning, buying houses at top prices, taking them down, putting up two-family homes. We sold a property in the high eights on Marathon parkway. It was only zoned for one family, so they’re taking that down and putting up two one-family units, each marketed at over a million. But it doesn’t always work. A builder bought an 80-by-100 lot two years ago for $700,000, took the house down, put up two one-family homes marketed at $1.2 million each. They’ve sat there for well over a year, almost two, without a sale.”

Under its proposals, City Planning intends to halt this kind of development. It will protect large houses on large lots by restricting them from being subdivided into smaller lots, and preserve small houses by requiring that new houses match the existing scale. Most multifamily apartment buildings and row houses will be forbidden in areas of one- and two-family detached houses.

“These had been quiet neighborhoods for generations,” Mr. Avella said during a recent tour of his district. For Mr. Avella, the sins of developers are many – and obvious. The neighborhood of College Point is a case in point.

“College Point was zoned improperly from the beginning. It’s always been isolated from Queens by a swamp and even today access is limited. The traffic is awful. You’ll see overdevelopment at its worst.” On 115th Street, Mr. Avella pulls up in front of a row of neat, well kept, attached houses – except for the one on the end, which has a large extension being constructed into the front yard. It looms over its sister unit, whose beleaguered owner, Norman Kara, can hardly open his front door. While the neighboring owner had paid $400,000 for the original house he’s now reconstructing into three units, Mr. Kara feels his one-family unit has lost substantial value. “Would you move into a house that has a wall down your front walkway and has front and backyards that aren’t usable?” he asks. “I feel like a prisoner in my own house.”

Mr. Avella’s piece de resistance is yet to come, however. On the way, he points out a development of row houses so badly designed that cars are parked on the sidewalks leading to front doors. “Illegal,” he says, “but no one will do anything because people have moved in.” He drives by a large cooperative development, Clearview Gardens, opened in the early 1950s, that is now proposing various extensions and extra stories. “Fine by me because they fit in and look good.” In the distance is the Willets Point industrial area that the mayor is thinking of rezoning, and perhaps condemning, to make way for a new stadium. “Some of those auto shops have been there for decades. They’re productive contributors to the economy. Let them be.” He pauses in front of a particularly garish and huge McMansion being built in a vaguely Mediterranean style. “I’m sure this is not in compliance but no one has complained,” he says. “It’s a mystery.”

Then he swoops up a winding road of gorgeous houses mainly built in the 1920s and ’30s. Squeezed between two lovely old homes are a group of townhouses set at a 90-degree angle to the main road. “Tommy Huang,” he says, pronouncing the name of the convicted felon who is probably the most notorious developer in Queens. “The ultimate unscrupulous developer.” Even though the attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, has barred him from selling co-ops or condos, and despite his conviction for destroying a landmark theater with an oil spill, Mr. Huang continues to build.

His five row houses are far less attractive than the older homes but will, of course, provide housing to five families in New York’s perennially tight housing market. A zoning lawyer, Sheldon Lobel, says Queens is full of people who want development. “Just last week, a group of homeowners in an R7 zone came to see me. The city wants to downzone them to R2. Of the 32 homeowners, 31 are opposed to the rezoning. They’re all Asians, and the Asian community needs housing. But adjacent community groups are dictating zoning policy.”

Ultimately, these local zoning quarrels matter to the entire city, whose economy depends on new households and businesses being able to move in.