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Here in SoCal I see a massive generational divide. People over 40 tend to be NIMBY and against things like public transit. People under 40 are completely the op
by api 9y ago
Here in SoCal I see a massive generational divide. People over 40 tend to be NIMBY and against things like public transit. People under 40 are completely the opposite, especially about LA's expansion of subways and light rail.
- etjossem 9y agoI've noticed it tends to hinge on whether you own a single-family home.
- jdavis703 9y agoI can't speak for LA, but I know many apartment-dwelling renters who are also NIMBYs. It's a general fear of change us humans have, coupled with in many cases for property owners a direct financial reward for resisting change.
- nerfhammer 9y agoI think it's partially a California thing. Coming from New York I was profoundly baffled to see people trying to stop trains from coming to their neighborhood.
- michaelchisari 9y agoMoved to LA from Chicago. I will never for the life of me understand anyone who can be against trains. The train system in Chicago was great, I lived without a car for four years, and never had a problem. Now I'm stuck in traffic to get anywhere, and it's miserable.
- slg 9y agoIt is basically a chicken and egg problem. We all own cars because we don't have viable trains like Chicago, NYC, Boston, etc. No one supports trains because we all already have cars and don't want our taxes going to trains we won't use.
- MarkMMullin 9y agoFor the record, Boston's mass transit is not always 'viable' - it pretty much hates 'weather' and we do get that here :-)
- nikanj 9y agoIn the US, many people associate trains with 24/7 whistles. Remove that noise pollution, and living within 30km of the tracks becomes much more tolerable.
- curun1r 9y agoOh most people in California are very pro-train, they just don't want them close to their homes. We like the convenience, environmental friendliness and you might even say Europeanness of trains, but no one wants to put up with the noise and lower property values that go along with having them run through your back yard. Tell the truth...when you were in Chicago, did you want to live next to the "L"? with the caveat that the SF-LA HSR project seems to be a boondoggle that will cost the state billions more than it probably should.
- michaelchisari 9y agodid you want to live next to the "L"? Yes. I only wanted to live next to the L train. If I were apartment hunting, and it wasn't a quick walk to an L stop, that apartment went straight to the bottom of the list. And when I sought roommates, my place being steps to a blue line stop meant I got literally 70 emails within the first few hours of posting the ad.
- CalRobert 9y agoI think a lot of people in California have literally never seen the inside of a train. As a result, they can't imagine ever incorporating in to their lifestyle, and it represents, more than anything else, a change in life that might, someday, threaten their ability to drive everywhere. Of course, they have a hard time seeing how their driving everywhere affects everyone else, because it's all they've ever known. (E.G. killing loads of walkers and cyclists, emitting horrible pollution linked to myriad diseases, forcing songbirds to change frequency, demanding that land be used to let their car sleep instead of letting people sleep, and generally destroying street atmosphere and liveliness). Growing up in the central valley I took Bart ONE TIME as a kid, and it's still a highlight of my entire damn childhood. I suppose I may like trains more than most, but after that my goal in life was mostly to escape suburbia.
- rlanday 9y agoIt's fortunate that you only rode BART once as a kid, otherwise you probably would've suffered life-long hearing loss. That thing is loud...
- mark212 9y agoOh God no. Try to build something, anything in Manhattan. Ever heard of air rights? Those don't exist anywhere else but developers will pay millions just to add a single floor to their building.
- nerfhammer 9y agoThat's a real thing. But I don't hear the anything like the passionate, reflexive, absolutist, paranoid anti-development attitudes and the corollary mental gymnastics from common people. It's that attitude I find baffling.
- api 9y agoI've said this before but... I really do not get California's obsession with cars. Of all the places you'd want to be walkable, one that is nice outside almost all the time and gets no real winter to speak of seems like an ideal spot. But no... all the walkable cities are in areas that get run over by a glacier for six months out of the year.
- pcwalton 9y agoRent control is partially to blame for this, in that it creates a huge de facto landlord class out of a group of people who would otherwise have a strong incentive to keep housing prices affordable. They can even reap financial windfalls from rising housing prices by negotiating buyouts. (I say this as someone who personally benefits from rent control. It shouldn't exist.)
- cylinder 9y agoIf you own a sfh, you want development around you... The denser your lands zoning is, the more it's worth. Add infrastructure and the value goes up too.
- twblalock 9y agoActually, you want to maintain scarcity to keep supply low relative to demand.
- timothycrosley 9y agoIt's more complicated than that. Yes by increasing density, you are increasing supply of housing units, but you are also increasing the demand for your property - as now it's not only a single family that would be looking to buy it but but someone building a highrise. Also, counterintuitively, because your allowing houses to be torn down for apartment buildings etc, the supply of SFH actually goes down, and there will always be demand from some for SFH over condos etc. And since most cities can't keep up with the number of people who want to live in them, by allowing more young people to move to the city in apartments, your also increasing future demand as they grow up.
- ucaetano 9y agoYou're getting supply & demand wrong. You want offices near you but no more housing, so that people work near you and are forced to live closer to you, and have to buy houses near you for ever-increasing prices. And people who own homes (older than most of the population) are used to driving everywhere, they don't want people constantly walking in front of their houses. They all want their own cul-de-sacs.
- timothycrosley 9y agoIt's more complicated than that. Yes by increasing density, you are increasing supply of housing units, but you are also increasing the demand for your property - as now it's not only a single family that would be looking to buy it but but someone building a highrise. Also, counterintuitively, because your allowing houses to be torn down for apartment buildings etc, the supply of SFH actually goes down, and there will always be demand from some for SFH over condos etc. And since most cities can't keep up with the number of people who want to live in them, by allowing more young people to move to the city in apartments, your also increasing future demand as they grow up.
- raldi 9y agoI own a SFH and am a YIMBY. Higher density is better for the neighborhood, my family, and the planet.
- xster 9y agoYa emphasis on that. California is one of the lowest footprint places you can live. Everyone we squeeze out is potentially another person blasting AC at 11 cents a kWh in Arizona.
- dmode 9y agoI own a SFH and I am a YIMBY. But you are probably right.
- dmode 9y agoVery true. Also, the divide is between long term residents and recent transplants. I have fights with people on Nextdoor everyday who rally neighbors to fight any development in our suburban city
- mosdave 9y ago> I have fights with people on Nextdoor everyday What a time to be alive.
- jdelsman 9y agoI live in SF (Mission Bay) and just went to the "Mission Bay Citizens Advisory Council" meeting last night for the first time. It was _absurd_ the amount of NIMBYism being spewed from folks over 50 (who accounted for more than half of the occupants in the room, mind you...) whereas the folks nearer to my age were open to the ideas being proposed and discussed. I knew it was bad, but I was bit taken aback. However, I did get a little discouraged that there was a lack of people my age trying to get involved, though. People can complain all they want... but until they do, it won't change.
- xster 9y agoWhere did these over 50 people live in Mission Bay? From surrounding neighbourhoods I assume?
- umeshunni 9y agoAt least your neighborhood meeting was at night. In Noe Valley, half the neighborhood council meetings were on Tuesdays at 10:30am or some such when only the specific demographic that was favorable to their policies were most likely to be free.
- CalRobert 9y agoI went to the meetings of the South Park (San Diego) planning board and it was similar. I could afford to do so because I was wfh at the time and set my own schedule. Taking two hours out of your day is something that's a lot easier for older folks, in general.
- HillaryBriss 9y agoMany owners of SFH in LA are NIMBYs because they know that higher density means lower quality of life. It doesn't necessarily have to mean lower quality of life. But, in LA, that's what has happened most of the time. New three or four story apartment buildings next door to a SFH means less sunlight and the elimination of privacy throughout the yard. More people means more traffic jams, more wear and tear on roads, more crime, more unfamiliar strangers driving too fast on their once-quiet streets, more pollution, and higher demand on a very limited police force, parks, recreational facilities, schools/colleges, airports, open spaces, etc. The LA city government manages infrastructure and resources in a sub-par way. New resources of all types are simply not forthcoming fast enough to meet with increased demand. The city government fails to keep up with existing needs for repair of: water, sidewalk, street infrastructure under current levels of demand. And it's not only quantity: often the quality of new infrastructure (e.g. Red Line train seats) is allowed to detoriorate to a state where it's rather dirty and unpleasant.
- pfranz 9y agoYep. A lot of people in the thread are talking about home values, housing scarcity, etc. All homeowners care about is quality of life--that's NIMBYism. Construction, even if it adds value, is a nuisance and can cause other problems. Trains can increase foot traffic and increase the accessibility for vagrants. That's the exact argument I've heard against connecting Hollywood to the beach from the people in Beverly Hills. I feel like LA city government has been doing better about sidewalk and street repair the past few years. It could be coincidence and certainly isn't exhaustive.
- santaclaus 9y ago> higher density means lower quality of life Ehh? I'd say density is correlated with a higher quality of life. More restaurants, bars, culture (museums, art openings, music), more opportunities to expand your network of friends, etc.
- mosdave 9y agowhat if none of the things you enumerated are important to a person? what metrics are acceptable for them to use to measure their quality of life?
- adrr 9y agoBaby boomers are a very self centered and selfish generation. They'll leave debt that will take generations to pay down, increased the age millennials can retire , and bankrupted most of the pension plans. Because of poor financial planning(45% have no retirement savings, 33% have pushed off retirement), they aren't retiring leading to less jobs of millennials. Its very like them to have a NIMBY attitude.
- seiferteric 9y agoI just read on yahoo finance that social security could be drastically cut by 2028-2034 if nothing changes. Like at what point do we simply refuse to pay into the system if were are going to be shafted?
- sjg007 9y agoOnly if you vote for congressional reps who want to defund it or otherwise take it away.
- bpodgursky 9y agoIt's going to get defunded, either now or when it runs out of money. So you can either raise the retirement age now, cut benefits now, or get totally screwed when it runs out of money in a couple decades.
- mercutio2 9y agoOr, you know, pay out of the general budget, which is what will actually happen and everything will be fine. Governments aren’t like households. They get to print their own money, so budgeting freak outs that apply to one don’t really apply to the other.
- ganoushoreilly 9y agoPrinting your own money doesn't solve the problem, it brings more along with it.