Every 10 years or so, a piece of the stone façade of a building in Manhattan breaks off and injures a pedestrian below, followed by a proliferation of new scaffolding and enclosed green construction sheds that protect walkways during façade repairs.

Except that the repairs never seen to get done and the scaffolding and green sheds never seem to get removed. There are now 9,000 construction sheds in the five boroughs of NYC, which if laid end-to-end would measure an estimated 340 miles.

The Mayor's Office is mounting what looks like the most serious effort yet to tear down the ubiquitous maze of green sheds—they're calling it Get Sheds Down—which will deploy increased penalties, much shorter permit durations and higher permit fees to lean on landlords to repair the building facades and ditch the sheds.