Not to discard your comment, but wrt Stockholm: Build higher! Urbanize areas outside of the core inner city. Lots to do in planning and building to not create artificial social policy.
The only people who want to live "higher" are the people who want high end apartments in the inner city. And those are the places where height restrictions are there to protect the historical nature of the inner city.
I've lived in areas like this myself, and I agree they're not nice. However, I have to think it's not only locality to city center that makes central areas good, it's also that they are self sustaining burrows. There's ample housing, parks, jobs, retail, restaurants, bars, etc.