When community groups consider proposed new buildings, the emphasis is all on height. Too tall. Too much shadow. Too much wind. We’ll be reminded of this obsession today at 5:30 p.m. when the Boston Redevelopment Authority board is scheduled to consider the guidelines for development along the Greenway. The BRA staff’s recommendations seem reasonable. Most people who complain will do so about the plans for building height in various parts of the Greenway.

This ideology about height distracts most Bostonians from features that could benefit them far more than the 10 stories they want lopped off the top.

I’d like to offer another way of looking at big projects. It’s a good time to consider different points of view since the recession has created a pause in development. Let’s focus on Boston’s history. It’s about steeples and lanes.

In a drawing of 18^th-century Boston, one feature is clear. Boston was full of steeples. Those pointy tops gave the city’s skyline a playful look. Now look at the Boston skyline from I-93 North or the harbor. Flat tops. Dull. Clunky. Looks like Hartford.

Bringing back the steeples wouldn’t be hard. Such features would refer to history, but they would be secular and on the top of tall buildings. After all, the Empire State building still looks good after 80 years. And we do have to admit we now have high rises in Boston. We’re not in the 18^th century.

Steeples would make Boston’s buildings taller, since no developer with his finger on his cash register would reduce the floor plate to steeple size without a trade. But steeples don’t cause the same amount of shade—or shadow, as it’s known when people don’t want it—that a bulkier top would. And they would add a grace note to the city’s skyline.

Now about those lanes. When standing next to a building, most people are unaware of whether it is 30 or 40 stories. What they do sense is the building’s mass and its permeability. Does it present a blank wall? If it has windows, is anything going on inside that is interesting to look at? Does the building invite visitors in or shut them out? Can you walk through? How long a walk is it from the sidewalk to the front door?

Boston’s high rises offer regrettable answers to these questions. David Carlson, the executive director of the Boston Civic Design Commission, said when architects present drawings to the commissioners, they often depict people around the buildings. But he calls this “fiction.” People will be drawn to a building not because of its height, but because of what they perceive beside them. A feeling of intimacy is better than an expanse.

Restaurants, especially outdoor restaurants, engage pedestrians in an intimate way, as do retail shops. Ken Greenberg, an architect and urban planner from Toronto who has worked with the BRA, said these don’t make the only good ground floors. He suggested dance studios or culinary schools with pots and pans and busy chefs-in-training as uses that provide interest for passers-by.

But these uses don’t necessarily allow pedestrians to cut through a big building that takes up a lot of space on the ground. Lanes do. Historic Boston was riddled with lanes, and we’ve still got some. Visit Winthrop Lane, that kitty-corner walkway with the bronze bricks leading from Arch Street. Consider Winter Place, where Locke-Ober’s front door is. Pi Alley is covered by a parking garage, but it provides a quick route from Washington Street to the back of old city hall, keeping one out of the snow and rain.

Some cities have kept such cut-throughs in good order. London’s handsome shopping arcades feature marble tiles, fancy chandeliers and dreamy little shops selling men’s formal wear or elegant hairbrushes. Paris has its “passages couverts,” covered shopping passageways like Pi Alley, but handsomer. Such intimate spaces encourage small retailers. More doorways are better than fewer doorways, said Greenberg.

If a tall building were being built, wouldn’t it be nicer for people on the street if it incorporated these passages? Open at each end, they would invite shoppers out of the cold in the winter or out of the hot sun in the summer. Pedestrians wouldn’t have to go around the whole building to get to a parallel street.

Some will fear that terrorists will be attracted to such passageways. If Parisians and Londoners aren’t worried about such things, and they’ve had more experience with terrorists than we have, we shouldn’t worry either.

Today’s Greenway meeting won’t consider such details as these, said Peter Gori, a senior manager at the BRA who has been involved with Greenway planning. It’s mostly about what types of buildings should go where.

But if developers were to propose such historic features as steeples and lanes, they might get a better hearing from everyone. If community groups were to focus on such features, Boston residents and workers would have better buildings.