[wronglebowski]

Housing doesn’t benefit the local community(from most NIMBY perspectives). It makes housing more affordable lowering their property values, creates the need for more infrastructure and creates change in their environment.

The motto seems to be, “Neighborhoods full, I like things the way they are. No more change please.” Doesn’t matter if it’s a data center, housing, or any type of development.

[bitmasher9]

It benefits local business by having more customers and benefits local government by having a wider tax base.

Maybe it doesn’t benefit some individuals, but the community improves.

[nothercastle]

Many times it’s just unplanned uncontrolled growth. It causes issues that aren’t mitigated and generally makes life worse for existing residents. NIMBY is strong because residents know that their politicians are corrupted and incompetent. Politicians will get kick backs and infrastructure will never get extended sufficiently to support. Theoretically we all benefit from increased density due to reduced infrastructure costs and shared resources, in practice the growth leads to government inefficiency and that offsets any costs savings. Similar to how larger companies cost savings from size is offset by internal inefficiency and friction.

[supplied_demand]

At the same time, the most densely populated large cities are also among the most expensive.

[sorcerer-mar]

That's because the community benefits so much from density. People want to live there because the density has created fantastic amenities and jobs, ergo prices go up.

[dymk]

Depends what you count as an expense and where collected taxes flow. Rural living is artificially cheap by being subsidized by its more “expensive” dense living counterpart.