While it is possible to trim a tree so severely it doesn’t grow back - there’s a few in the parking lot at the Pho place down the street - the real energy against “tree topping” is mostly on aesthetic grounds using arboricultural concerns as a front, and the latter-day tendency to inflate it to a moral and then regulatory issue along the same path as animal welfare stuff like anti-declawing is worrying

And historically it’s perfectly normal for some of the trees near centers of human settlement to be pollarded