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I hear you. I imagine people have many different reasons for self-identifying as YIMBYs. In the context of the article, the theory of agglomeration effects cit

I hear you. I imagine people have many different reasons for self-identifying as YIMBYs. In the context of the article, the theory of agglomeration effects cited by the author posits that increasing a city's density makes a city more attractive, and thus exerts an upward pressure on property values. > This supply-demand model ignores something important: the value of living in a particular place is greatly determined by how many people live around it. As the number of people living in a place increases, so does the value of being there. This is often labeled the "agglomeration effect". I'm not familiar with the empirical evidence for the agglomeration effect, but if it's real, it indicates that aside from whatever specific arguments one can make for or against dense cities, the market values density. The author suggests some plausible reasons why the market might value density, but really it's kind of besides the point why density is valued by the market (which represents the demonstrated preferences of you and I and every other economic actor). If the market values density, and there are perverse incentives which prevent cities from increasing density (the interests of existing property owners), it behooves us to intervene at the national level. One can make a number of other orthogonal arguments for increasing density: smaller environmental footprint, increased diversity and social mobility in communities, equality of opportunity and access, and your argument for a "right of return," to name a few.

zjaffee 8y ago
As someone who supports some aspects of YIMBYism almost entirely because I like very dense cities, I still think it's important to make note of the major negatives of density. Namely, what happens to overbuilt places during periods of population decline (as maintenance of existing real estate becomes virtually impossible to afford). What happens to those living in the area should there be a major environmental or political crisis (it's much harder to evacuate manhattan than most other places). And how can we scale our infrastructure concurrently with increases to density such that transportation and other government resources are never lacking.
- rsync 8y ago
  "As someone who supports some aspects of YIMBYism almost entirely because I like very dense cities" I also appreciate (and spend a lot of time in) dense cities and I wish that a lot of SF were much denser. But I appreciate grass roots, local control more and I am alarmed at how quickly principles of democracy are thrown out the window when they produce "the wrong kind of results".
  - closeparen 8y ago
    >local control Local control is elitism: the people who are local to desirable places control everything that matters. Justifying that by saying the rest of us have "local control" over our Rust Belt garbage dumps and third-world hellholes is worse than the doctrine of Separate But Equal. Democracy means it is not only the rich who vote on taxation, not only the business owners who vote on regulation, not only the defense contractors who vote on foreign policy, even though each is the primary stakeholder in their respective issue. In the same way, it should not only be the homeowners in desirable cities who vote on access to those cities.

zjaffee 8y ago

As someone who supports some aspects of YIMBYism almost entirely because I like very dense cities, I still think it's important to make note of the major negatives of density. Namely, what happens to overbuilt places during periods of population decline (as maintenance of existing real estate becomes virtually impossible to afford). What happens to those living in the area should there be a major environmental or political crisis (it's much harder to evacuate manhattan than most other places). And how can we scale our infrastructure concurrently with increases to density such that transportation and other government resources are never lacking.

rsync 8y ago
"As someone who supports some aspects of YIMBYism almost entirely because I like very dense cities" I also appreciate (and spend a lot of time in) dense cities and I wish that a lot of SF were much denser. But I appreciate grass roots, local control more and I am alarmed at how quickly principles of democracy are thrown out the window when they produce "the wrong kind of results".
- closeparen 8y ago
  >local control Local control is elitism: the people who are local to desirable places control everything that matters. Justifying that by saying the rest of us have "local control" over our Rust Belt garbage dumps and third-world hellholes is worse than the doctrine of Separate But Equal. Democracy means it is not only the rich who vote on taxation, not only the business owners who vote on regulation, not only the defense contractors who vote on foreign policy, even though each is the primary stakeholder in their respective issue. In the same way, it should not only be the homeowners in desirable cities who vote on access to those cities.