[gohrt]

There's no need to toss "liberal" in there. Dense cities tend to have rent-control, and Dense cities tend to have people with policies generally referred to as "liberal" (to the extent that "liberal" means anything.

But NIMBYism and status-quoism is not just a liberal issue, and "not changing the neighborhood" is right in line with the definition of "conservative", which means a preference for how things already are and against risky changes.

Trying to squeeze any question into a "liberal-conservative" split just muddies the issue.

[Kalium]

Liberal here.

Yeah, there really is a need to toss "liberal" in there. More liberal dense cities seem to have this problem much worse than dense less-liberal cities. Qualifier: American cities.

Some of it tends to be due to liberal reflexes (participatory democracy at all levels, favoring small local groups of activists over people who stand to profit, etc.) that backfire writ large. Add in a distrust of markets, and you have a recipe for disaster. San Francisco is a great example.

[zorpner]

You have a serious confounding factor in that urban density correlates highly with liberal political views, at least in America.

[Kalium]

This is true. We can separate out which cities have liberal views from which cities have put liberal urban planning policies in place.

[itsdrewmiller]

Can you cite some evidence for this? My guess is that it breaks down much more on a coastal/inland basis than a liberal/conservative one.

[Kalium]

Austin and San Antonio is an informative comparison. They're both inland cities, but Austin has placed significantly more liberal policy into practice. They have problems with spiking rent.

[rrss1122]

So you're saying no need to toss "liberal" in there because it's so obvious.

By the way, conservatives would not object to developing a neighborhood if that development meant more economic opportunities and more jobs.

If you want to split hairs over a dictionary definition, conservatives would prefer to keep things how they are and continue economic growth through expanding the private sector rather than expanding government to direct businesses on how to operate.

[azernik]

Specifically, in the coastal cities where this is an issue, usually both sides of the development/anti-development political spectrum identify as liberal. It's very orthogonal to the issues involved in state or national politics.

[_yosefk]

Dictionary definitions of words are usually not very close to the use of these words in political contexts.

Regardless of dictionary definitions, if we agree that building restrictions are a bad policy, it is a valid and IMO interesting empirical question whether most people supporting it self-identify as liberal, conservative or something else. (I honestly don't think I could guess the answer.)

[scarmig]

My guess is that stated support for the prototypical bad housing policies we love to hate would be pretty constant throughout the political spectrum (though that's just a guess). The issue is that that in BFN no one cares about rent control or constructing new buildings because housing is so cheap and space is so plentiful; only in places where housing is expensive and space is scarce do those issues get any political salience. And since those tend to be more liberal areas, we ascribe "liberal" to those policies as a descriptor.

[techbio]

"Where young, hopeful people want to strike out to do something new."

[a3voices]

Well liberals often favor regulations and licenses for everything, and these prevent or delay new housing from being constructed.