Somewhere along the way, "NIMBY" lost a key part of its original meaning. A NIMBY used to be someone who said "I want X, but Not In My Back Yard." For example, if someone said "I want to stay in unregulated/unzoned hotels, but I don't want them In My Back Yard," he would be a NIMBY. Someone who didn't want them to exist -- in his backyard or elsewhere -- would not be.
If it was property rights, they'd be voting on what can be built on their own property. Instead, NIMBYs vote on what can be built in the surrounding neighborhood and beyond, as if the purchase of a home also includes a guarantee that everything around it can never change.
It's elitist gatekeeping and deep selfishness masked as "wanting to retain neighborhood character".
Which is why I don't blame the NIMBY homeowners for doing it as much as I blame the current system for being designed to allow nonstop input from local groups. There is such a thing as too much democracy, and this is it.
Zoning should be made on the state or county level, and for every development that's planned to be built, if it follows the zoning, approve it. Enough of this nonsense "yeah it follows zoning but I don't like it".
No its not. I want the same things you do - good city services, shorter commutes, etc. Allowing runaway building without properly developing infrastructure is long term negative for everyone involved.
Most of those you label "NIMBY" are just looking to maintain an existing community and civic service level.
The people you should be directing your ire towards is not your strawman "NIMBY" but the city planners and commercial developers who overzone and overbuild office space and under-zone housing.
Why do you think they're under-zoning housing? Because office space tends to be built away from existing homes and doesn't face as much opposition from NIMBYs.
Housing, on the other hand, is blocked by them because that "gargantuan 4 story apt building" is going to lower their precious home value. I agree that infrastructure needs to keep up with development, but that's not impossible to do.
If NYC, Chicago, Seattle, etc can do it, why does SF seem to have such a hard time doing so? Because SF local government is a shitshow that does nothing but serve the interests of existing homeowners, who somehow want to benefit from the prosperity of growing cities without the construction/density those cities require.
Yes, those rights. If you’re a newcomer, buy where the community aligns with your development and density desires. Otherwise, go elsewhere. Don’t expect the community to change for you because you think your ideas are “better”.
This isn’t meant to sound combative, these are just facts.
I’m genuinely curious what you think we should do about getting stuck in local optimums?
Allowing buildings to be 2x the height means, lower home prices in general but also the oldest owners have the worst views/property prices in the neighborhood. So optimizing locally, people should not want more homes built.
Meanwhile, 2x taller buildings mean, 2x the people can sleep at night and work in the morning boosting the economy without the inefficiency of a long commute, traffic, CO2, etc. I.e. long term improvements for a larger set of humans.
In the name of progress/innovation shouldn’t the calculation be based on ROI for humanity/environment/etc and not based on a locally popular vote?
One person’s progress and innovation is another person’s theft or deprivation of value and enjoyment. Provide economic incentives for upzoning, and if the community doesn’t bite (which is their right), move on.
Electrification of mobility and transport makes the environmental argument a moot point.
> Electrification of mobility and transport makes the environmental argument a moot point.
I disagree. Electric cars are more efficient than IC, but they still use electricity which mostly comes from fossil fuels. Add in all the massively increased infrastructure spending and emissions per capita that are needed for suburbs, and urbanization is a no-brainer from an environmental perspective.
I’m afraid this reasoning totally falls flat for the SF bay area and other tech hubs. It can’t simultaneously both be the case that Google, Facebook, Uber, Apple and Microsoft are permitted to have outsized global influence and massive impact on communities everywhere AND Sf bay/seattle/wherever else gets to tell every other community to mind their own business because local communities should control their own culture.
Those companies themselves create the conditions that force tech workers everywhere to look for jobs in a few select cities.
That is the height of hypocrisy. The moment Google and Facebook stake out massive cultural monopolies is the moment the community they reside in has to give up a little bit for the well being of the larger national and global community.
I agree that tech companies are the problem, and the only solution is regulation to force them to decouple geography from their jobs. Those jobs could be done remotely or relocated to other communities, yet they dump the externalities on local communities. And this is the result.
What is “the community”? There are plenty of people with interest in / demand for urbanism, just not in a spatial distribution that confers zoning power. For now. Greater awareness might create that interest (most people are surprised to learn that the strip malls they loathe are exactly as required by law). Or zoning power might be limited from a higher level of government where spatial fragmentation is less important. But a big set of people interested in urban living does exist. Why do you think it’s so expensive?
These people are a) a market opportunity, and b) a set that might grow dramatically given the right technology catalyst. I personally think e-bikes will play a large role in getting people out of the cars-competing-for-space mindset at the root of so much NIMBYism, while preserving much of the convenience of personal transport over buses.
Allying with a few neighbors to defect against the rest of the world doesn't confer some kind of automatic "democratic and therefore good" quality on the behavior.