It is more expensive to build - High buildings have no genuine advantages except in speculative gains.

Consumes more energy in use

Is less successful in providing the right conditions for a sense of community

Generally fails to provide an attractive and vibrant form at street level and separates residents from street life.

Creates ambiguous intermediate space between the public street and private front door

Cannot be easily adapted to other uses

Provides inadequate outside private amenity space

Destroy townscape and social life,

Promote crime

Make life difficult for children

Expensive to maintain

High rise can wreck open space and reduce direct sunlight

Damage light and views.

Identity can be lost in high rise living.

Loss of the human scale 

High rise sprawl takes up too much vertical space. Not unlike suburban sprawl that promotes isolation and is often devoid of people on the streets.

Tall buildings inflate the price of adjacent land, thus making the protection of historic buildings and affordable housing less achievable. In this way, they increase inequality.

High-rise buildings are not green as they are subject to the effects of too much sun and too much wind on their all-glass skins. And all-glass skins are, despite many improvements to the technology, inherently inefficient. Glass is simply not very good at keeping excessive heat out, or desirable heat in. (Loomans, 2014)

Overcrowded cities can lead to stress and poor health

Social problems are both created and exacerbated by these dysfunctional environments.

More pedestrian casualties,

Urban heat island

Waste and litter issues

Poor ecosystem quality

Loss of privacy

Reductions in physical and/or mental wellbeing.