The renaissance of the East Village and Lower East Side during the past decade is one of the city’s great success stories. But recently the area’s growth has bumped head on into a lively spirit of community activism, and residents are fighting to preserve some local flavor.

On Monday, the city will present its plan to guide future development of the neighborhoods, a step toward finalizing the area’s first rezoning since 1961. Groups are already lining up both in support and opposition of the nascent proposal.

The director of the city’s Department of Planning, Amanda Burden, said the proposal is balanced between preserving the area’s existing character with more restrictive zoning and creating corridors for increased housing density and incentives for affordable housing.

“There is nothing like the East Village: the scale of the buildings, the community gardens, its unique fabric,” Ms. Burden said in a telephone interview. “It is a miracle that it hasn’t been ruined, and that is why this is urgent.”

The vast majority of the area, encompassing more than 100 city blocks, would be rezoned with a height cap of 80 feet. The zoning would end a height exemption available for most community facilities, like dorms or hospitals, and would require new developments to build flush to the street line, preventing “tower-in-park” buildings that soar high above the low-rise neighborhoods.

Ms. Burden said she expects community opposition about the streets that would be zoned for more housing, including areas along East Houston, Delancey, and Christie streets, and stretches of Second Avenue and Avenue D. In those areas, developers would be allowed to build with increased height and bulk if they include affordable housing.

“Where there is good transportation, we have the responsibility to push the envelope for more housing and affordable housing,” she said, adding that more apartments would take pressure off the area’s rising prices.

The drive to rezone the area began in the community as part of an active local resistance to neighborhood change. Some residents and members of Community Board 3 have declared a war on the area’s raucous nightlife and put a virtual moratorium on new liquor licenses. On the area’s western border, residents are battling New York University’s growth, and a developer’s plan to build on the former site of P.S. 64 has drawn intense opposition for years.

South of Houston Street, neighbors say they are particularly miffed about two contemporary structures that soar over the existing rooflines, the Blue Condominium on Norfolk Street near Delancey Street and The Hotel on Rivington. At Blue, a 16-story tower with blue floor-to-ceiling windows developed by the Corcoran Group, one-bedroom apartments have sold for more than $800,000. About two blocks away at the 21-story steel and glass Hotel on Rivington, suites rent for $750 a night. Some rooms offer 360-degree views and Japanese-style soaking tubs.

One longtime East Village resident, Robert Arihood, a photographer, said neighbors feel under siege by development and an influx of transient residents, like college students and young professionals. While real estate developers have enjoyed bigger profits from the changeover, he says it has hurt the community.

“I don’t feel like I belong here. It’s my home, this is where my friends are. But the pressure on this community is overwhelming,” Mr. Arihood said.

He said there is “a great deal of hysteria for and against this zoning change,” and that some residents would oppose the measure because they see it as a gift to developers.

The chairman of the local Community Board 3, David McWater, said he would likely support the city’s plan with a few tweaks, but he was not so sure about other board members, who he said would be more radically opposed to more development. He said that setting a cap on the height of buildings outweighed the addition of some corridors with increased density.

“If you stand on corner of Houston and First Avenue, and look south, all you see are cranes and big buildings now,” Mr. McWater said. “Growth needs to be measured. If you have it in excess, its not good for anybody, and that is what we are perilously close to.”

He said the increased development has raised a host of problems, including the transforming the neighborhood’s character, ensnarling traffic, and unleashing scores of rats.

A founder of the East Village Community Coalition, a civic group that first advocated for a rezoning, Michael Rosen, stopped short of supporting the city’s current plan. He said that the proposal would eliminate some eyesores, but it would also bring a lot more development in the area, sparking demolitions and redevelopment and causing displacements. He said his group would also encourage increased downzoning of certain low-rise blocks where the city’s plan would not afford enough protection.

“There is a feeling that the people who stayed in the East Village and came in those bad years now deserve some protection,” Mr. Rosen said. “Now that the area is developing, it is not fair that it be wiped out by its own success.”

The director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Andrew Berman, said the rezoning should include areas on Third and Fourth Avenues, where NYU could conceivably expand.

“The community approached City Planning and said we want a rezoning and these are the changes what we want. What they came back with was not exactly what we asked about,” Mr. Berman said.

The proposal is also likely to be opposed as too restrictive of development. The president of the Real Estate Board of New York, a lobbying group representing the city’s powerful real estate industry, Steven Spinola, said he has objections to a draft rezoning that was presented to him.

The marketing director of the Blue Condominium, Barrie Mandel of the Corcoran Group, said she supports the rezoning. “I’m a New Yorker and I live downtown and I’m interested in the preservation and historical authenticity and the integrity of individual neighborhoods,” Mr. Mandel said. “At the same time, I am very, very proud to be associated with Blue. Progress marches on and neighborhoods regenerate themselves.”

The city will present the plan Monday at 6:30 p.m. at Cooper Union in a meeting that is open to the public. After more discussions with the community and an environmental review, the city hopes to push a finalized plan through the city’s land use review process next year. It would require approval of the City Council.