Your looking at the wrong "elites". Look at who is preventing 30 story apartment buildings and then you'll know who actually runs the city.

This seems pretty silly to me. 30 story blocks of flats tend to be prevented by the planning permission system (potentially before they are proposed as developers may know what won’t succeed) which is roughly a combination of local government and local residents. There are other things which may make building difficult – historical preservation (eg listed buildings) applies to much of the more central parts of the city, construction can be expensive, etc.

Perhaps the real London elites are the clay underneath the city which makes tall buildings more expensive.

I'm sure everybody would like the right to build on their property as they see fit. That doesn't mean that they would want to grant their neighbors the same privilege.

Have you heard the expression cutting off your nose to spite your face? That's exactly what you're doing here.

Yeah, maybe some elites will get to renovate their houses. Who cares. Large apartment buildings would get built with huge numbers of units to help drive down rent.