This is probably the one issue that has the biggest online/offline divide. Online, I hear nothing but YIMBY-ism. Is there any centralized online NIMBY advocacy?
nobody thinks they're a nimby. every nimby ever will tell you they aren't against development, they just don't think this project is right for this neighbourhood.
if there was any centralized advocacy, they'd have to confront the fact that they all want development to happen in each other's backyards and it would expose the lie.
Here's where I come out and maybe others end up in the same scenario.
I think it's definitely a good thing to build up more high density housing. I've got no complaints there.
However, a major problem we are having locally is that while that local housing is being built like gangbusters, the infrastructure to support that housing, such as the roads and public transport, hasn't been upgraded in tandem. 10 years ago, I could drive to work in 20 minutes. Today during rush hour it's a 40 to 60 minute affair. It's start/stop traffic through the neighborhood because there's no buses, interstate, etc to service the area where all the growth is happening.
It also doesn't help that promised projects, like new parks, have been stuck in limbo for the last 15 years with more than a few proposals to try and turn that land into new housing developments.
What I'm saying is housing is important and nice, but we actually need public utilities to be upgraded and to grow with the housing increase. It's untenable to add 10,000 housing units into an area originally designed to service 1000.
Everyone is nimby when it touches the most valuable thing in their life. You'll turn nimby once you buy a house. There's no lie, anyone will be against a landfill or skyscrapers near their house. If you think otherwise, you're lying.
Public polling is very YIMBY too, they are the majority.
It's just the public input process is a filter that selects for extremely high activation, interest, and agency. So if a democratic vote ruled these decisions, YIMBYism would rule the day, but if you go to the meetings it's NIMBYs who are prevalent.
There are definitely centralized NIMBY groups, like Livable California:
And there are tons of smaller groups that organize locally, far more than YIMBY groups. In my city there are 2-3 people that typically organize a group, give it a new name, make a web page, and act like they have the backing of everybody in the city when they talk even though most people disagree with them. They've been doing it for decades, and have found many tactics to amplify their voice to be much larger than the sum of the individual group members. YIMBYs are far behind on doing this, though they are getting better at it.
When I first joined NextDoor about a decade ago I dared speak up in favor of a plan to allow apartments to be built on a commercial thoroughfare, and the onslaught of a single person in their replies and direct messages was completely overwhelming (If people here think I'm loquacious, well, I have been far bested in that....). That was my first entrance into city politics, and I quickly learned that this person was in charge of a large "group" that mostly consisted of that single person. They had also been doing it for years, with creative group names, the best of which was probably "Don't Morph the Wharf" which even launched lawsuits to prevent changes to the wharf, delaying necessary maintenance and repairs which a few years ago resulted in the front falling off of the wharf. Individuals can have very undemocratic impacts on local politics.
Ish. Polling is very YIMBY. So long as it is exactly what I want in my back yard. With a lot more leeway granted to what should be allowed in someone else's back yard.
Not sure why people think that no one thinks they're a NIMBY. I am. I bought a house in a neighborhood with a particular character and if it turns into a bunch of urban high-rises, I won't like that.
I would make money, since more high rises means higher price per square foot of land, but I wouldn't like having to move. If someone moves into an area that is zoned for particular types of properties, then new zoning is imposed by outside fiat (not a vote of the people who live there) is not appropriate.
my own brand of yimbyism at least respects that. there's nothing wrong with quiet neighborhoods and loud neighborhoods. the sort of things i want to allow in neighborhoods like yours are locally-owned corner stores and cafes and wine bars and walkable development like cut-throughs and bikelanes. part of the problem with the urbanism debates is that no one has quite figured out how to allow "the good stuff" while keeping out "the bad stuff" because as soon as you upzone, like, walgreens and gas stations and corporate high rises are expected to start showing up. IMO this is something of a "social technology" problem: if we can't figure out how to allow healthy development without stopping unhealthy development, that's a problem to solve systematically.
the other issue with urbanism debates is that everyone's version of Yimbyism is different and you end up not trusting any of them because some people really DO think that you should shut up and allow high rises. They have a moral reason for that too---because housing really is at a shortage and costs too much and some people getting their fancy neighborhoods while others have access to nothing is sorta unfair. But that position is basically untenable, if you try to enforce it you just make an enemy of everyone. But it seems to me that the happy medium, the "build good stuff and not bad (carefully)", is an everyone-wins situation (except for a few crotchety people I suppose). That goal is to break the equilibrium of "some (established) people get to govern what happens to almost-everybody" and replace it with something more generally democratic, but without letting in all the repugnance of how the free market will build things if you don't govern it at all.
(this is all very idealistic of course. The problem is that a random anti-development suburban neighborhood that likes being that way has no incentive to let anyone change at all, and is probably basically right that the urbanism program doesn't benefit them at all. I imagine that only really systematic way around that is to end up in a higher-trust version of society where towns are mostly nice, instead of mostly not, so that people actually crave this sort of development instead of reacting negatively to it.)
I always find this 'character' argument disingenuous.
The character of the neighbourhood is only invoked for perceived negative externalities. No one complains when the cracked sidewalks get repaved, or fiber internet lines replace slow copper, when increasing affluence mean that houses are better maintained, when a new sewer line allows people to remove septic tanks. That all changes the character of a neighbourhood, but never gets fought.
Go ahead and commit to the bit, lock in on the character in ALL ways: make sure you fight any alteration to any building, any change in the shade of paint should be fought! Your neighbour replacing their front door? Denied! Replacing a concrete driveway with pavers? unacceptable? Replacing incandescent bulbs with LED? Uncharacteristic! Increasing home values changing who can afford to live there? Not acceptable, gotta sell your home for what you paid to maintain the character!
> If someone moves into an area that is zoned for particular types of properties, then new zoning is imposed by outside fiat (not a vote of the people who live there) is not appropriate.
How small are we going to allow the "area" to be defined? Is it one vote per property owner, or one vote per resident? Can we call a block an area? Who decides the arbitrary boundaries? Do people living on the boundary line get to vote for projects in adjacent properties in adjacent jurisdictions?
Just call NIMBYism what it is, selfish justification for control of other people's property. Your position is - explicitly - that other people and property owners should be made less well off for your comfort. "The Character of the Neighbourhood" is a red herring.
Not many people consider themselves a nimby even if they are. I was talking with my mom about how I'll never be able to afford a house and she agrees with me it's insane then says that she voted against allowing apartments near her house because it will bring in more crime, she wasn't connecting the dots.
There's also a lot of them because many people live in cities.
Also many online communities driven by user moderation are controlled by folks with a lot of time to participate and skewed against certain segments of society. Online views often skew wildly from real life.
I've basically given up trying to find community online. Talking with real people is so much more rewarding and less frustrating.
The urbanists are vocal online because of something they're unsatisfied with in their life - if you talk to them and dig into it, they're complaining about a lack, a lack that they think would be filled if they could just afford to live in NY or Europe (because they assume everyone in NY lives like Friends or something).
If instead of trying to solve loneliness through urban development they dedicated their efforts to "touching grass/concrete" and got to know their community - suddenly they'd discover they have the power to urbanize - but do they still have the desire?
Yes, there are plenty. They don't call themselves NIMBY though. Usually it's stuff like opposing gentrification, protecting the environment/green spaces, or protecting historical areas. The net effect is NIMBY.
I totally get it. People don't like change - I certainly don't. Especially when it changes the neighborhood you're living in.
It’s not “centralized” (because as the sibling comment noted, nobody thinks they’re a NIMBY, they just want to stop development in their town), but some of it happens on Facebook and NextDoor. I think a lot more happens face-to-face at the sort of activities that older and retired people hang out at though.
Oh they're all over Nextdoor and local mailing lists and Facebook groups. They organize in small local communities though, different model from yimby types who band together in cross-regional interest groups instead.
YIMBYs in my area are almost exclusively terminally online young adults who are bitter that they can't afford to live precisely where they like with their single 20-something income, and basically want to make desirable areas more affordable (aka less desirable) so they can move in. The worst of them are openly hostile to anyone who made the apparent mistake of choosing to live in an upper income area.
I am pretty much in favor of people being able to do what they want with their properties, as long as they are responsible for any externalities the changes create, and I still largely find these groups insufferable (in case you couldn't tell from the paragraph above).
NIMBYs are mostly people who have other things to do with their day than agitate to make their neighborhood worse (where worse is a change from the status quo, which they presumably are at least okay with given they live in the neighborhood), so you don't hear much from them most of the time.
In short, there is no need for advocacy for the status quo unless someone is attempting to modify it, as it just continues on by default.
This is amusing, because the usual NIMBY argument I hear is about "gentrification", i.e. it makes the neighborhood better and that's bad.
terminally online young adults who are bitter that they can't afford to live precisely where they like
More accurately: they would like to live in a particular location, the owner of that location would like to sell or rent it to them, but a third party wants to forcibly prevent that transaction.
Why don't we let people who like living in dense housing build and live in dense housing? And leave those who don't in peace? Right now we only do the second one but make the first one illegal.
notatoad|23 days ago
if there was any centralized advocacy, they'd have to confront the fact that they all want development to happen in each other's backyards and it would expose the lie.
cogman10|23 days ago
I think it's definitely a good thing to build up more high density housing. I've got no complaints there.
However, a major problem we are having locally is that while that local housing is being built like gangbusters, the infrastructure to support that housing, such as the roads and public transport, hasn't been upgraded in tandem. 10 years ago, I could drive to work in 20 minutes. Today during rush hour it's a 40 to 60 minute affair. It's start/stop traffic through the neighborhood because there's no buses, interstate, etc to service the area where all the growth is happening.
It also doesn't help that promised projects, like new parks, have been stuck in limbo for the last 15 years with more than a few proposals to try and turn that land into new housing developments.
What I'm saying is housing is important and nice, but we actually need public utilities to be upgraded and to grow with the housing increase. It's untenable to add 10,000 housing units into an area originally designed to service 1000.
zug_zug|23 days ago
Basically the law should be the newly added properties be more valuable than the existing ones.
stackedinserter|23 days ago
There's nothing wrong with nimby.
epistasis|23 days ago
It's just the public input process is a filter that selects for extremely high activation, interest, and agency. So if a democratic vote ruled these decisions, YIMBYism would rule the day, but if you go to the meetings it's NIMBYs who are prevalent.
There are definitely centralized NIMBY groups, like Livable California:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-26/how-to-br...
And there are tons of smaller groups that organize locally, far more than YIMBY groups. In my city there are 2-3 people that typically organize a group, give it a new name, make a web page, and act like they have the backing of everybody in the city when they talk even though most people disagree with them. They've been doing it for decades, and have found many tactics to amplify their voice to be much larger than the sum of the individual group members. YIMBYs are far behind on doing this, though they are getting better at it.
When I first joined NextDoor about a decade ago I dared speak up in favor of a plan to allow apartments to be built on a commercial thoroughfare, and the onslaught of a single person in their replies and direct messages was completely overwhelming (If people here think I'm loquacious, well, I have been far bested in that....). That was my first entrance into city politics, and I quickly learned that this person was in charge of a large "group" that mostly consisted of that single person. They had also been doing it for years, with creative group names, the best of which was probably "Don't Morph the Wharf" which even launched lawsuits to prevent changes to the wharf, delaying necessary maintenance and repairs which a few years ago resulted in the front falling off of the wharf. Individuals can have very undemocratic impacts on local politics.
taeric|23 days ago
apparent|23 days ago
I would make money, since more high rises means higher price per square foot of land, but I wouldn't like having to move. If someone moves into an area that is zoned for particular types of properties, then new zoning is imposed by outside fiat (not a vote of the people who live there) is not appropriate.
ajkjk|23 days ago
the other issue with urbanism debates is that everyone's version of Yimbyism is different and you end up not trusting any of them because some people really DO think that you should shut up and allow high rises. They have a moral reason for that too---because housing really is at a shortage and costs too much and some people getting their fancy neighborhoods while others have access to nothing is sorta unfair. But that position is basically untenable, if you try to enforce it you just make an enemy of everyone. But it seems to me that the happy medium, the "build good stuff and not bad (carefully)", is an everyone-wins situation (except for a few crotchety people I suppose). That goal is to break the equilibrium of "some (established) people get to govern what happens to almost-everybody" and replace it with something more generally democratic, but without letting in all the repugnance of how the free market will build things if you don't govern it at all.
(this is all very idealistic of course. The problem is that a random anti-development suburban neighborhood that likes being that way has no incentive to let anyone change at all, and is probably basically right that the urbanism program doesn't benefit them at all. I imagine that only really systematic way around that is to end up in a higher-trust version of society where towns are mostly nice, instead of mostly not, so that people actually crave this sort of development instead of reacting negatively to it.)
dghlsakjg|23 days ago
The character of the neighbourhood is only invoked for perceived negative externalities. No one complains when the cracked sidewalks get repaved, or fiber internet lines replace slow copper, when increasing affluence mean that houses are better maintained, when a new sewer line allows people to remove septic tanks. That all changes the character of a neighbourhood, but never gets fought.
Go ahead and commit to the bit, lock in on the character in ALL ways: make sure you fight any alteration to any building, any change in the shade of paint should be fought! Your neighbour replacing their front door? Denied! Replacing a concrete driveway with pavers? unacceptable? Replacing incandescent bulbs with LED? Uncharacteristic! Increasing home values changing who can afford to live there? Not acceptable, gotta sell your home for what you paid to maintain the character!
> If someone moves into an area that is zoned for particular types of properties, then new zoning is imposed by outside fiat (not a vote of the people who live there) is not appropriate.
How small are we going to allow the "area" to be defined? Is it one vote per property owner, or one vote per resident? Can we call a block an area? Who decides the arbitrary boundaries? Do people living on the boundary line get to vote for projects in adjacent properties in adjacent jurisdictions?
Just call NIMBYism what it is, selfish justification for control of other people's property. Your position is - explicitly - that other people and property owners should be made less well off for your comfort. "The Character of the Neighbourhood" is a red herring.
danny_codes|23 days ago
thatguy0900|23 days ago
bombcar|22 days ago
01100011|23 days ago
There's also a lot of them because many people live in cities.
Also many online communities driven by user moderation are controlled by folks with a lot of time to participate and skewed against certain segments of society. Online views often skew wildly from real life.
I've basically given up trying to find community online. Talking with real people is so much more rewarding and less frustrating.
bombcar|22 days ago
If instead of trying to solve loneliness through urban development they dedicated their efforts to "touching grass/concrete" and got to know their community - suddenly they'd discover they have the power to urbanize - but do they still have the desire?
AlexandrB|23 days ago
I totally get it. People don't like change - I certainly don't. Especially when it changes the neighborhood you're living in.
Analemma_|23 days ago
wffurr|23 days ago
bpt3|23 days ago
I am pretty much in favor of people being able to do what they want with their properties, as long as they are responsible for any externalities the changes create, and I still largely find these groups insufferable (in case you couldn't tell from the paragraph above).
NIMBYs are mostly people who have other things to do with their day than agitate to make their neighborhood worse (where worse is a change from the status quo, which they presumably are at least okay with given they live in the neighborhood), so you don't hear much from them most of the time.
In short, there is no need for advocacy for the status quo unless someone is attempting to modify it, as it just continues on by default.
orangecat|23 days ago
terminally online young adults who are bitter that they can't afford to live precisely where they like
More accurately: they would like to live in a particular location, the owner of that location would like to sell or rent it to them, but a third party wants to forcibly prevent that transaction.
colechristensen|23 days ago
It makes people unable to do anything themselves because they don't have space.
It gives investor groups exclusive power over housing and locks even people who own into rent-like housing association fees.
It removes people even further from nature.
It drives up costs.
triceratops|23 days ago
manuelabeledo|23 days ago
How?
Upkeep is arguably more expensive for a detached house, and suburbs make cars almost mandatory.
iamnothere|23 days ago
In any case, it shouldn’t be illegal to build either dense or sparse housing.
jollyllama|23 days ago