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In a similar vein, my home-city was vying hard to get the Amazon HQ2 to be located in it. The bid was a longshot to begin with, but I was so relieved when Amazo

In a similar vein, my home-city was vying hard to get the Amazon HQ2 to be located in it. The bid was a longshot to begin with, but I was so relieved when Amazon chose not to come to DFW. Sure, I know it would have been great for "The Economy" but terrible for the average Joe and Jane just trying to get a middle class life established here.

buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
I felt exactly the same when Amazon passed over my home city
JPKab 6y ago
I think you're making a big mistake by buying into the argument that a big new employer moving in drives up demand for housing, and therefore it will immediately be a disaster for the community. The reason this argument is flawed is that it's ignoring the supply side of the equation. SV, and especially SF, have numerous restrictions and NIMBY empowerment issues that dramatically constrain the ability to add new supply to the housing market. It's incredibly difficult and expensive to build new housing there. Likewise for Seattle. The local activists tend to ignore this supply constraint, and attack the easy target of the big, evil tech companies and their rather easy to pick-on "yuppie, hipster" employees, acting as if demand for new housing is inherently bad for the region. It's an incredibly myopic, and frankly, greedy, view of the world. "My city was perfect as soon as the dwelling I live in was created, and nothing else should be added after that." DFW doesn't have the same constraints on new development that SV, SF, Seattle have. You wouldn't see a huge spike in housing costs like you had in those locations.
- majormajor 6y ago
  People in DFW love their single family homes. Like most everywhere else in America: if your policy suggestion is "give up a lot of space and turn your residential neighbourhood into multi-family housing," you're going to get a lot of resistance. It's not so land locked, which has delayed things since people can expand out, but look at what traffic is doing as a result! It'll keep sprawling, and costs will keep going up in the more central areas, though not as fast for sure. Is it better to have growth spread to places that aren't in a not-geographically-bottlenecked-already-full area? Sure, probably. Seems a lot more sustainable and a lot less just a boon to existing lucky landholders. But then your policy solution goes back to "close SF and the other places that are full to push the growth elsewhere," not some sort of "just manage SF's growth better!" wishful thinking.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  It's an incredibly myopic, and frankly, greedy, view of the world. What's greedy is thinking that one has any right whatsoever to the land and community that other people have invested decades of their lives to build. Democracy is and should be run by the people who actually live in an area, not by literal invaders who want to take it away. The place to apply leverage on the housing problem is on the employers and investors who are forcing concentration of industries in one tiny area. There are plenty of places in the US with plenty of land and a willingness to build.
  - JPKab 6y ago
    "Literal invaders"...... wow. So where do you live exactly? Were you born there? If not, how old were you when you "invaded" it? Because somebody lived there before you, right? How cruel of you to take their house from them. I wasn't aware of the fact that if I own a piece of land adjacent to my house, and then choose to legally sell it to another party, who then pays taxes to the local government to fund the externalities of their presence (traffic, water, electricity, schools), that it's an "invasion". Cities either grow or die. There is nobody in Detroit complaining about gentrifiers "invading" their neighborhood. Instead, they are desperately trying to maintain the infrastructure and find money for schools as their city has lost population over the years. I grew up in a rural county with a declining population. The elementary and middle schools I attended have been shuttered. The only hospital in the county has closed, forcing the locals to drive an hour to get to one in a neighboring county. The young all leave and never return, because there's no jobs, leaving their parents to never see grandkids except on holidays. That's the alternative to growth. If you can find a city in the US with absolutely no growth or decline in the population, and a strong economy, please let me know. A city that fights development and growth will just push the poor out quicker, as older houses that they could have afforded are snapped up and remodeled by rich folks who otherwise would have built a brand new home.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      What else do you call it when a bunch of people who don't live somewhere think they know better than the people who do? I grew up in a semi-rural area with an exploding population. When one farmer retires and builds a neighborhood that's not that different from the existing houses, it's not a big deal. When a property developer wants to steamroll the city's zoning and put 200 apartments sharing a fence with people who've maintained the community and lived for decades with 1 or 2 neighbors, that is a big deal. When a bunch of people from out of state decide they know what a random city should look like (ahem, strongtowns), that's colonialism.
refurb 6y ago
This is a great NIMBY argument. “There are people who would benefit highly from Amazon moving here and creating new jobs, but i like DFW the way it is now, so screw those people”

buzzerbetrayed 6y ago

I felt exactly the same when Amazon passed over my home city

JPKab 6y ago

I think you're making a big mistake by buying into the argument that a big new employer moving in drives up demand for housing, and therefore it will immediately be a disaster for the community. The reason this argument is flawed is that it's ignoring the supply side of the equation. SV, and especially SF, have numerous restrictions and NIMBY empowerment issues that dramatically constrain the ability to add new supply to the housing market. It's incredibly difficult and expensive to build new housing there. Likewise for Seattle. The local activists tend to ignore this supply constraint, and attack the easy target of the big, evil tech companies and their rather easy to pick-on "yuppie, hipster" employees, acting as if demand for new housing is inherently bad for the region. It's an incredibly myopic, and frankly, greedy, view of the world. "My city was perfect as soon as the dwelling I live in was created, and nothing else should be added after that." DFW doesn't have the same constraints on new development that SV, SF, Seattle have. You wouldn't see a huge spike in housing costs like you had in those locations.

majormajor 6y ago
People in DFW love their single family homes. Like most everywhere else in America: if your policy suggestion is "give up a lot of space and turn your residential neighbourhood into multi-family housing," you're going to get a lot of resistance. It's not so land locked, which has delayed things since people can expand out, but look at what traffic is doing as a result! It'll keep sprawling, and costs will keep going up in the more central areas, though not as fast for sure. Is it better to have growth spread to places that aren't in a not-geographically-bottlenecked-already-full area? Sure, probably. Seems a lot more sustainable and a lot less just a boon to existing lucky landholders. But then your policy solution goes back to "close SF and the other places that are full to push the growth elsewhere," not some sort of "just manage SF's growth better!" wishful thinking.
nitrogen 6y ago
It's an incredibly myopic, and frankly, greedy, view of the world. What's greedy is thinking that one has any right whatsoever to the land and community that other people have invested decades of their lives to build. Democracy is and should be run by the people who actually live in an area, not by literal invaders who want to take it away. The place to apply leverage on the housing problem is on the employers and investors who are forcing concentration of industries in one tiny area. There are plenty of places in the US with plenty of land and a willingness to build.
- JPKab 6y ago
  "Literal invaders"...... wow. So where do you live exactly? Were you born there? If not, how old were you when you "invaded" it? Because somebody lived there before you, right? How cruel of you to take their house from them. I wasn't aware of the fact that if I own a piece of land adjacent to my house, and then choose to legally sell it to another party, who then pays taxes to the local government to fund the externalities of their presence (traffic, water, electricity, schools), that it's an "invasion". Cities either grow or die. There is nobody in Detroit complaining about gentrifiers "invading" their neighborhood. Instead, they are desperately trying to maintain the infrastructure and find money for schools as their city has lost population over the years. I grew up in a rural county with a declining population. The elementary and middle schools I attended have been shuttered. The only hospital in the county has closed, forcing the locals to drive an hour to get to one in a neighboring county. The young all leave and never return, because there's no jobs, leaving their parents to never see grandkids except on holidays. That's the alternative to growth. If you can find a city in the US with absolutely no growth or decline in the population, and a strong economy, please let me know. A city that fights development and growth will just push the poor out quicker, as older houses that they could have afforded are snapped up and remodeled by rich folks who otherwise would have built a brand new home.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    What else do you call it when a bunch of people who don't live somewhere think they know better than the people who do? I grew up in a semi-rural area with an exploding population. When one farmer retires and builds a neighborhood that's not that different from the existing houses, it's not a big deal. When a property developer wants to steamroll the city's zoning and put 200 apartments sharing a fence with people who've maintained the community and lived for decades with 1 or 2 neighbors, that is a big deal. When a bunch of people from out of state decide they know what a random city should look like (ahem, strongtowns), that's colonialism.

refurb 6y ago

This is a great NIMBY argument. “There are people who would benefit highly from Amazon moving here and creating new jobs, but i like DFW the way it is now, so screw those people”