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It's easy to blame NIMBYism but unless those proposals are actually being brought to planning sessions then it's not really true.

• closeparen 8y ago
  You only bring a proposal to a planning session if it's close enough to existing zoning that the variance might be considered reasonable. Dramatic upzoning is only brought to the table when the NIMBYs are seen as weak enough that it might stand a chance.
  • ryandrake 8y ago
    Plus, you can’t just go into an area with infrastructure capable of supporting 10k people and Just Add Housing™. What about the electric grid? Water and sewer? Schools, parking, trash pickup, etc. You have to have a plan to update all of these. The simple solution of just building urban apartment blocks everywhere won’t work.
    • zozbot123 8y ago
      >What about the electric grid? Water and sewer? Schools, parking, trash pickup, etc. Property taxes can pay for these updates once the additional housing is built, it's self-financing. (Of course this won't work in CA, due to Prop 13. But then again, it was a ballot initiative, and those crazy folks in California voted for it. It's all self-inflicted pain on their part.)
      • closeparen 8y ago
        The usual response here is that existing residents shouldn’t be taxed to pay for later arrivals’ infrastructure needs.
    • closeparen 8y ago
      We’ve built cities before, we can do it again. Infrastructure is cheaper with economies of scale than in sprawl. Remember, the people you don’t house still exist and live somewhere.
    • woah 8y ago
      What a sad perspective. How did anything ever get built in the first place?