There comes a point when talk stops being enough. We have reached that point with Ulaanbaatar. What this city needs, at its core, is a law that limits building heights, one that draws a firm line against the unchecked rise of glass towers and finally gives the city’s skyline some sense of order and restraint. If we want a law that protects this city, then let’s make it happen, even if that means putting real pressure on the members of Parliament who would rather look the other way, tend to their own constituencies, and leave the hard questions for someone else. Like it or not, they hold the exclusive right to draft and pass legislation. That right comes with a duty, and it is time they were reminded of it.

Failing that, we can take our case straight to the capital’s authorities and demand concrete action, not vague promises. There is precedent for this. The Ulaanbaatar City Council and the government have worked hand in hand before, and done it. The law aimed at easing traffic congestion and redeveloping ger areas, passed during Kh.Nyambaatar’s tenure, proved that when the will exists, cooperation between the two is not just possible, it is straightforward. There is no reason the same partnership cannot be forged again, this time in defense of the city’s heritage. 

Because make no mistake, the alternative is bleak. Without decisive action, Ulaanbaatar stands to lose everything that makes it worth calling home. We are talking about a city stripped of its public streets and squares, a city where even a footpath becomes a luxury. The handful of historic buildings that have survived this long, battered as they already are by developers with no regard for what came before them, will end up swallowed whole, cast into permanent shadow by yet another wall of glass and steel.

Somewhere along the way, we stopped talking about the things that actually give a city its character: its historical silhouette, its architectural landmarks, the way buildings and public spaces are meant to work together as a single, coherent whole rather than a scattershot of individual projects. That conversation has quietly fallen off the public agenda, and the silence has not gone unnoticed by the people looking to profit from it.

The so-called “monument case” that surfaced just days ago laid the problem bare. It showed, in the clearest terms possible, that land developers are willing to seize property that isn’t theirs to take if it clears the way for another high-rise in the heart of the city. This is not a hypothetical risk anymore. It is happening in plain sight. So let’s protect this city, and let’s protect what belongs to the public, before there is nothing left worth protecting. Empty gestures, the kind where everyone nods along and adds their voice to a chorus that goes nowhere, will not save a single building or a single square metre of public space. We have chosen a different route. We have done our part as citizens and submitted a formal proposal for a law in this area through the D-Parliament electronic system, the official channel for public petitions and grievances.

None of this would be new ground for Ulaanbaatar to break. Countries around the world have long turned to height restricting laws as a way to safeguard historical and cultural monuments, preserve public property and open space, protect the safety of their citizens, and stop their cities from losing the beauty and identity that set them apart. The most striking recent example comes from China, a country that holds more world records for skyscrapers than any other. Beginning in 2021, Mongolia’s southern neighbor moved to rein in decades of unchecked vertical growth. The law, jointly approved by the Ministry of Housing, Urban-Rural Development and the National Development and Reform Commission, bars the construction of any building taller than 500 meters anywhere in the country. It goes further still. Cities with populations under three million are capped at 150 meters, while those above three million face a strict ceiling of 250 meters.

Paris tells a similar story. Buildings there cannot rise above 37 meters, roughly the height of an 11 or 12 storey apartment block. That limit followed years of public backlash against the 210-meter Tour Montparnasse, erected in 1973 and now remembered less as a landmark than as a cautionary tale. Athens has drawn its own line at 27 meters, about nine storeys, to keep new construction from creeping into view of the Acropolis and the Parthenon. On the Indonesian island of Bali, a regional law puts the limit even lower, decreeing that no building may stand taller than a coconut tree, roughly 15 meters. Even the USA, hardly a country known for holding back its skyline, first passed height restricting legislation back in 1899 and has revised it repeatedly since, producing a patchwork of zoning rules that still shapes American cities today. In Washington, buildings along commercial streets are capped at 130 feet, or about 39.6 meters, while residential streets are held to 90 feet, around 27.4 meters. Pennsylvania Avenue, the ceremonial artery linking the Capitol to the White House, allows a maximum of 160 feet, or roughly 48.7 meters. The lesson is not that tall buildings are inherently the enemy. It is that cities which value their own history have chosen, deliberately and by law, to draw a line somewhere. Ulaanbaatar has not yet done the same, and it shows.

To be specific, our country currently has three main norms bearing on the question of how tall a building may rise. The first, known as Residential Building Design and Budget Planning, caps all types of housing at 51 meters, roughly 17 storeys. The second, the General Rules for Public Buildings and Structures, governs trade, service and public buildings and sets its own ceiling at 55 meters. The third is the High-rise Building Planning norm, which by its own definition applies to the pre-project studies, technical conditions, design and feasibility assessments of high-rise buildings running from 17 storeys (51 meters) up to 35 storeys (150 meters), whether built as standalone structures or as part of a larger complex, anywhere within Mongolia’s territory. These three norms set a working range of 51 to 150 meters depending on what a building is for and what kind of building it is. 

But height alone was never meant to be the whole story. A second layer of restriction is supposed to apply on top of the first, one tied to where in the capital a building sits, how it relates to the structures already around it, and whether it fits the city’s broader master plan and vision. Mongolia’s rules may allow 17 storey apartment blocks in principle, but that hardly means one belongs next door to the State Palace. And even where multi-purpose complexes are permitted up to 150 meters, that permission was never meant to license a skyscraper rising out of a neighbourhood of low-rise apartments that have stood shoulder to shoulder, in the same old style, for generations. The norms governing height, in short, are supposed to answer to something larger: the general plan that sets out how the city is organized, zoned and meant to grow. Regrettably, in Mongolia, what gets written into urban planning documents has an unfortunate habit of staying there, confined to paper and never quite making it into the world outside. 

Regulating building heights through dedicated laws and zoning rules tailored to a country’s own architecture, geography and historical landmarks is, in other words, standard practice the world over. At bottom, the goal everywhere is the same: keep citizens safe without losing sight of sound urban planning. Mongolia is no exception on paper. We do have norms and regulations meant to govern building heights. The trouble is that in practice, they have been left to gather dust.

In particular, Baga Toiruu offers perhaps the clearest example of just how far that gap between paper and practice can stretch. Back in 2015, the capital approved a feasibility study for the demolition and redevelopment of old buildings in Baga Toiruu, one that set out a clear goal to turn the area into a low density, central part of the city that preserves the historical space and image of Ulaanbaatar. Orders were issued at the time explicitly banning any building taller than six storeys in the area. That was the plan on paper. In practice, every mayor who has held the office since has made the same promise, that no high-rise construction would be allowed in Ikh Toiruu or Baga Toiruu, and that the cultural heritage sites there would be protected, and every one of them has failed to follow through. Then Mayor D.Sumiyabazar spoke about the issue more than most but in the end proved unable to act on it and left office with the problem no closer to being resolved. Under Kh.Nyambaatar, the capital went so far as to run public surveys asking residents directly about building height restrictions in Ikh and Baga Toiruu, only for the results to sit unused, with nothing done to put them into practice.

The consequences of that inaction are now impossible to miss. What is today called the central part of Ulaanbaatar, Ikh and Baga Toiruu, has effectively slipped out of anyone’s control, with multi storey buildings for trade, services, and public use going up seemingly everywhere at once. The historical image and collective memory of the capital are being crowded out, quite literally, by towers rising over them, while what few older structures remain standing get pushed further into obscurity, closer with each passing year to vanishing altogether. Now, under the banner of redevelopment and renovation, even that remaining handful is being torn down without pause.

However, the same pattern threatens to repeat itself. Sooner or later, a new governor will step forward and declare, in familiar terms, that no high-rise buildings for housing, trade, or services will be permitted in the densely populated central part of the city, that no further land will be allocated in the small roundabout or other already crowded areas, and that special permits issued to violators will be revoked. Officials will point, as they have before, to ongoing work revising urban planning documents tied to projects like the New Great Roundabout highway. But the residents of this capital have heard these lines before, and what they need now is not another round of promises. They need realistic, binding decisions, not assurances that expire the moment a new administration takes office. What if, instead of another promise, it were a law? If building height limits keep failing to hold under regulations and planning documents alone, then perhaps the honest answer is to stop asking nicely and start enforcing them by law.

We are under no illusion about our own limits here. We do not have the authority to draft legislation ourselves, still less to bring it to a vote. That power sits with Parliament, and Parliament alone. But the absence of that authority does not leave us empty handed. We still have a voice and voices, when enough of them speak at once and refuse to quiet down, have a way of becoming impossible to ignore. It is time our elected representatives heard this one clearly, and it is time they understood that silence, this time, is not an option. Ulaanbaatar has already lost more than it can afford to lose. What remains of its skyline, its old neighbourhoods, and its historic core deserves better than another decade of norms left to gather dust while glass towers rise, unchecked, over everything that came before them. The choice in front of parliament is not a complicated one. Act now, while there is still a city worth saving, or explain later, to a generation that will not have the chance to see what Ulaanbaatar once was, why nothing was done while there was still time.