With historic landmarks or districts you can generally transfer unused development capacity to other sites. Grand Central famously was spared from demolition but its unused zoning rights have been transferred elsewhere.

One issue with using hollywood accounting for zoning is failing to consider the context of the site, especially in terms of infrastructure and job access, in favor of historical protections. All that subway capacity and walkability to so many jobs in greenwich village for example is being squandered by punting potential upzoning elsewhere.

Sure but they are still a finite resource. Once you've transferred those rights to a super tall luxury condo building, you can't readily transform that into affordable middle class and lower income housing.