4 ms·

My belief, from personal experience, is that those who say "this disrupts my view" actually mean it. They've moved early into a place that suits them, and the

by ISL 6y ago

My belief, from personal experience, is that those who say "this disrupts my view" actually mean it. They've moved early into a place that suits them, and the place itself is changing. My neighborhood is slowly being transformed by increased density -- it is less and less the neighborhood into which we moved. It isn't the change in property value, it is the change in quality of life that matters. Different people measure quality differently. It is that difference that gives rise to friction. The effect spans income brackets -- there are people who mourn the loss of community in impoverished neighborhoods as density increases at the same time that there are those who mourn the loss of trees and single-family dwellings in wealthier neighborhoods. Change is hard.

asdff 6y ago
The cognitive dissonance among NIMBYs is astounding. 80 years ago, many neighborhoods in LA were just oil derricks and orange groves, which were sold and cleared (or hidden behind facades in the case of the derricks, which still pump today) for housing to meet surging demand after WWII, which never went away. Decade after decade the demand has only grown, yet the people living in these first batches of housing quickly built to meet demand they themselves created fail to see that their situation is no different. NIMBYs just happened to find work in LA a little bit sooner and fail to see that they were once a changing force to the landscape as well. If you want to preserve your neighborhood, you are free to buy as many parcels as you like and leave them be. If you can't afford the fair market price to dictate what gets built on the land, then you have no ground to stand on imo, but there are also plenty of options for you. There are planned communities you can move to with tight HOA regulations if you insist on limiting what others can and can't do with their belongings. To move to a city like LA, which experiences double digit percent growth decade after decade since its inception, and to expect nothing to change at all the minute after you sign your mortgage, is baffling to me. It isn't grounded in reality. Move to Cleveland if you want stasis, the greater metro population there is virtually unchanged over the past 50 years.

by ISL 6y ago

asdff 6y ago

The cognitive dissonance among NIMBYs is astounding. 80 years ago, many neighborhoods in LA were just oil derricks and orange groves, which were sold and cleared (or hidden behind facades in the case of the derricks, which still pump today) for housing to meet surging demand after WWII, which never went away. Decade after decade the demand has only grown, yet the people living in these first batches of housing quickly built to meet demand they themselves created fail to see that their situation is no different. NIMBYs just happened to find work in LA a little bit sooner and fail to see that they were once a changing force to the landscape as well. If you want to preserve your neighborhood, you are free to buy as many parcels as you like and leave them be. If you can't afford the fair market price to dictate what gets built on the land, then you have no ground to stand on imo, but there are also plenty of options for you. There are planned communities you can move to with tight HOA regulations if you insist on limiting what others can and can't do with their belongings. To move to a city like LA, which experiences double digit percent growth decade after decade since its inception, and to expect nothing to change at all the minute after you sign your mortgage, is baffling to me. It isn't grounded in reality. Move to Cleveland if you want stasis, the greater metro population there is virtually unchanged over the past 50 years.