7 ms·

First off, “NIMBY” is just an offensive pejorative that fails to recognize in good faith that many people like their existing lifestyle, community, and neighbor

First off, “NIMBY” is just an offensive pejorative that fails to recognize in good faith that many people like their existing lifestyle, community, and neighborhood character. People buy houses in certain locations or remain in certain locations seeking these qualities. There’s nothing wrong with that and incumbent residents shouldn’t be under any obligation to alter their governance and give up their lifestyle to accommodate new residents that feel entitled to live in a highly desirable location at low cost. Secondly, the accusation that people in cities today are actively seeking to racially discriminate using policy is without evidence. This is just a stretch that attempts to recast valid personal lifestyle preferences into some kind of oppressor-victim class warfare narrative, thereby painting those with differing opinions as something far worse. It’s simply not a civil perspective to hold.

samatman 5y ago
Should have stuck with the second paragraph. The connection between redlining and NIMBYism is somewhere between dubious and risible. But "give up their lifestyle to accommodate new residents" and "not in my backyard"? Same thing. You can howl offense all you want; the shoe fits.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  They aren’t the same thing. One has the positive connotation of preserving something good. The other has a negative connotation of preventing something, when that isn’t where the motivation comes from. It is a subtle but significant difference that tries to paint people who like the life they’ve built with a caricature, just like other modern pejoratives such as “Karen”.
  - techsupporter 5y ago
    You know what? I don't care if the NIMBYs get their feelings hurt. I'm past the point of caring. Your username says "sea" in it which reminds me of Seattle, where I live. Where, even on the very good salary of a technology industry employee, I am just about priced out of. How can it be that someone who makes a "modest six figure income," to quote a person running for office in Seattle right now, is continually under the threat of a $3,000-or-more monthly bill to rent a place where a car is not required? My spouse cannot drive; I strongly prefer not to. Should be easy to find a place where someone can live and be transit-dependent, what with all of this transit expansion projects? Yet, for some inexplicable reason, we're spending billions of dollars to build a mass transit system that is either solely next to a freeway or goes through areas of the city that are next to golf courses and single-family housing. So, yeah, I don't really care about "preserving something good" when that "good" is turning into a MEDIAN house price of just short of ONE MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS and yet neither myself nor another family member--who also works in tech and has a salary that would be monumentally great everywhere in the country except here--can feel secure about the cost of living. It sucks.
    - soheil 5y ago
      And how ironic to use a throwaway to deny its existence.
    - dcow 5y ago
      Maybe move to a different city where people aren't clueless?
      - techsupporter 5y ago
        We probably will, now that my employer has made noises about allowing remote work from anywhere. My spouse is a citizen of an EU country where my employer has an office so we might just move there. If the NIMBYs want everybody who wasn't alive the last time housing prices were "cheap" in Seattle to GTFO, I suppose that's the only thing we can do. Because there's no damn way I'm scrimping and saving to pay seven figures to someone whose sole contribution to that property was that they were born before I was and got there first to stand in the way of everyone else.
        btmiller 5y ago
        I’m not sure I understand. I recently saved and strategized and worked hard to buy a not-cheap house in Seattle. Who said I was entitled to specifically what I worked hard to get? I’m very fortunate to have what I want, and by no means is it my right to be exactly where I am in the structure that I want.
        samatman 5y ago
        Perhaps I can help. Some of the sticker price of your not-cheap house is the quality of the house itself, and its desirable location. Some is a cynical campaign to prevent owners of land from building more housing on land which, again, they own, through political maneuvering. I would assert that your right to buy what you want implies their right to build what they want on the land they have bought, within reasonable limits, that the zoning regime in big West Coast cities is nothing resembling reasonable, and that we should change it so that those cities can have more, cheaper housing. If you disagree, that's fine, that's democracy, but I consider you a NIMBY, an authoritarian busybody who handwaves about "neighborhood character" to disguise the fact that they feel entitled to prevent a lot owner from putting up a four-story building with eight condos in it.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
Schiendelman 5y ago
There’s no good faith in limiting housing - it’s completely untenable. We have to let our cities grow upward as quickly as possible; letting people live in high density reduces energy use, carbon, even birthrate. Every opposition to building more housing pretends it’s special. Every opposition to building more housing puts people on the street and accelerates climate change.
- TrispusAttucks 5y ago
  I respect your heart but there _are_ situations where limiting housing could be in good faith. Overcrowding and resource depletion are such situations that are currently playing out in the California and several other Western states as water and resources are being stretched to near breaking points. I don't think high density infinite economic growth is green or progressive but I do know it's untenable.
  - Schiendelman 5y ago
    Resource use is still lower at higher density, across all of the axes you’re discussing. Most of the water usage in western states is for farming, not individual use. It is vastly less resource-intensive to get water to someone living in downtown San Francisco in a condo than to get them water in Phoenix in a house - and that’s very commonly the trade here. Overcrowding is a word that doesn’t really mean anything. No Western US city is nearly as dense as most of the major cities in the world. When you say infinite economic growth and density, in the same sentence, I think you are ascribing a bunch of values that aren’t really related to density. To get to a steady state of resource use would require us to live in far higher density than we do today. While all of these seem on their face to be good faith arguments, and you certainly employ them in good faith!, they have relatively easy answers, and yet they are propagating the same way all misinformation does.
    - TrispusAttucks 5y ago
      According to UN Habitat, cities consume 78 per cent of the world's energy and produce more than 60 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. Population growth and corresponding high density cities are the driving force behind resource consumption. Those farms only use water so humans can eat. If they just stopped then we'd be starved instead of thirsty. The efficiency of a city is exactly the cause of resource depletion. Land limitations used to be a limiting factor that would put breaks on run away growth. We are not unlike animals in this regard. Higher density is a taller geometry and less stable. Whether other megacities are more dense is moot. I am not saying this because I have some solution. I am not saying this because cities and people are bad. I'm saying as a fact humans and our resource consumption has put the planet on a perilous path that will not end well. Our problem is carrying capacity and if an area is reaching its max stable carrying capacity it may be time to limit housing. If housing is not limited and controlled a population can overshoot because the illusion of a kind climate that is actually only temporary. Perhaps this is not the case for SF but it is and will be the case for many places.

samatman 5y ago

Should have stuck with the second paragraph. The connection between redlining and NIMBYism is somewhere between dubious and risible. But "give up their lifestyle to accommodate new residents" and "not in my backyard"? Same thing. You can howl offense all you want; the shoe fits.

throwawaysea 5y ago
They aren’t the same thing. One has the positive connotation of preserving something good. The other has a negative connotation of preventing something, when that isn’t where the motivation comes from. It is a subtle but significant difference that tries to paint people who like the life they’ve built with a caricature, just like other modern pejoratives such as “Karen”.
- techsupporter 5y ago
  You know what? I don't care if the NIMBYs get their feelings hurt. I'm past the point of caring. Your username says "sea" in it which reminds me of Seattle, where I live. Where, even on the very good salary of a technology industry employee, I am just about priced out of. How can it be that someone who makes a "modest six figure income," to quote a person running for office in Seattle right now, is continually under the threat of a $3,000-or-more monthly bill to rent a place where a car is not required? My spouse cannot drive; I strongly prefer not to. Should be easy to find a place where someone can live and be transit-dependent, what with all of this transit expansion projects? Yet, for some inexplicable reason, we're spending billions of dollars to build a mass transit system that is either solely next to a freeway or goes through areas of the city that are next to golf courses and single-family housing. So, yeah, I don't really care about "preserving something good" when that "good" is turning into a MEDIAN house price of just short of ONE MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS and yet neither myself nor another family member--who also works in tech and has a salary that would be monumentally great everywhere in the country except here--can feel secure about the cost of living. It sucks.
  - soheil 5y ago
    And how ironic to use a throwaway to deny its existence.
  - dcow 5y ago
    Maybe move to a different city where people aren't clueless?
    - techsupporter 5y ago
      We probably will, now that my employer has made noises about allowing remote work from anywhere. My spouse is a citizen of an EU country where my employer has an office so we might just move there. If the NIMBYs want everybody who wasn't alive the last time housing prices were "cheap" in Seattle to GTFO, I suppose that's the only thing we can do. Because there's no damn way I'm scrimping and saving to pay seven figures to someone whose sole contribution to that property was that they were born before I was and got there first to stand in the way of everyone else.
      - btmiller 5y ago
        I’m not sure I understand. I recently saved and strategized and worked hard to buy a not-cheap house in Seattle. Who said I was entitled to specifically what I worked hard to get? I’m very fortunate to have what I want, and by no means is it my right to be exactly where I am in the structure that I want.
        samatman 5y ago
        Perhaps I can help. Some of the sticker price of your not-cheap house is the quality of the house itself, and its desirable location. Some is a cynical campaign to prevent owners of land from building more housing on land which, again, they own, through political maneuvering. I would assert that your right to buy what you want implies their right to build what they want on the land they have bought, within reasonable limits, that the zoning regime in big West Coast cities is nothing resembling reasonable, and that we should change it so that those cities can have more, cheaper housing. If you disagree, that's fine, that's democracy, but I consider you a NIMBY, an authoritarian busybody who handwaves about "neighborhood character" to disguise the fact that they feel entitled to prevent a lot owner from putting up a four-story building with eight condos in it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

Schiendelman 5y ago

There’s no good faith in limiting housing - it’s completely untenable. We have to let our cities grow upward as quickly as possible; letting people live in high density reduces energy use, carbon, even birthrate. Every opposition to building more housing pretends it’s special. Every opposition to building more housing puts people on the street and accelerates climate change.

TrispusAttucks 5y ago
I respect your heart but there _are_ situations where limiting housing could be in good faith. Overcrowding and resource depletion are such situations that are currently playing out in the California and several other Western states as water and resources are being stretched to near breaking points. I don't think high density infinite economic growth is green or progressive but I do know it's untenable.
- Schiendelman 5y ago
  Resource use is still lower at higher density, across all of the axes you’re discussing. Most of the water usage in western states is for farming, not individual use. It is vastly less resource-intensive to get water to someone living in downtown San Francisco in a condo than to get them water in Phoenix in a house - and that’s very commonly the trade here. Overcrowding is a word that doesn’t really mean anything. No Western US city is nearly as dense as most of the major cities in the world. When you say infinite economic growth and density, in the same sentence, I think you are ascribing a bunch of values that aren’t really related to density. To get to a steady state of resource use would require us to live in far higher density than we do today. While all of these seem on their face to be good faith arguments, and you certainly employ them in good faith!, they have relatively easy answers, and yet they are propagating the same way all misinformation does.
  - TrispusAttucks 5y ago
    According to UN Habitat, cities consume 78 per cent of the world's energy and produce more than 60 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. Population growth and corresponding high density cities are the driving force behind resource consumption. Those farms only use water so humans can eat. If they just stopped then we'd be starved instead of thirsty. The efficiency of a city is exactly the cause of resource depletion. Land limitations used to be a limiting factor that would put breaks on run away growth. We are not unlike animals in this regard. Higher density is a taller geometry and less stable. Whether other megacities are more dense is moot. I am not saying this because I have some solution. I am not saying this because cities and people are bad. I'm saying as a fact humans and our resource consumption has put the planet on a perilous path that will not end well. Our problem is carrying capacity and if an area is reaching its max stable carrying capacity it may be time to limit housing. If housing is not limited and controlled a population can overshoot because the illusion of a kind climate that is actually only temporary. Perhaps this is not the case for SF but it is and will be the case for many places.