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by TheCowboy 3068 days ago
I'm not a fan of cities dishing out perks, but what you said amounts to NIMBYism. I'm sympathetic to those concerns but housing prices aren't solved by keeping out newcomers or being against development. There can also be an indirect income boost that comes with an increased demand for labor, and it can help make the local economy more robust.

I do think the concern about unforeseen infrastructure costs are warranted, especially if a city doesn't excel in urban planning or has problems with NIMBYism derailing good plans. But I think most of the cities on the shortlist are fair game and could handle a project of this scale.
3 comments
dragonwriter 3068 days ago
> housing prices aren't solved by keeping out newcomers or being against development.

Housing prices aren't solved by forcing homeowners to subsidize commercial development, either. Ml

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apercu 3068 days ago
What is the problem with NYMBYism? Why is that a bad word?

Because a bunch of jerks in SV won't let more housing go in?

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ghaff 3068 days ago
Because it's a cheap, lazy insult to throw out at people who have different preferences than you do. It originally applied more to things like power plants that we collectively need but that basically no one wants to live next to. But there's absolutely nothing wrong with a city not wanting an Amazon HQ because of its impact on current residents when plenty of other places do.
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apercu 3068 days ago
> Because it's a cheap, lazy insult to throw out at people who have different preferences than you do.

Agreed.

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nerfhammer 3068 days ago
Because there are tremendous social costs to intentionally causing housing shortages.

https://www.axios.com/the-great-stagnation-americans-stopped...

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/business/how-anti-growth-...

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apercu 3068 days ago
Right, but we're not talking about housing, we're talking about Amazon.
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melq 3068 days ago
Well, no, you're talking about NIMBYism.

But bringing in Amazon is going to necessitate adding housing stock, and that just doesn't happen in like Boston that already have housing issues and rampant NIMBYism.

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tbirrell 3067 days ago
That fair. However, Austin is already behind the curve and can't keep up with the current influx of people and companies, adding Amazon to the mix will simply exacerbate the problem. Thus my concern. Maybe it'll be a good thing 10 years down the road, but that'll be a tough 10 years and I'm not confident that Austin will even be able to get to that point.
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