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There’s been such a rapid and massive movement towards YIMBYism and pro-housing in people’s performative politics (as in, what they yell loudly about on social

There’s been such a rapid and massive movement towards YIMBYism and pro-housing in people’s performative politics (as in, what they yell loudly about on social and digital media) that I’ve been left wondering what has influenced that trend. It doesn’t seem to be genuine interest in solving the problem, because I’ve never once seen answers to even the most obvious concerns with one-track “build more housing in the already-densest areas with no plan to expand the already-overstressed infrastructure” advocacies that are seemingly so popular. Walking through San Francisco is already an exercise in avoiding a never-ending canvas of human shit stains (some dog shit, but mostly human shit). Every public transit system underserves the transit needs and every terminal is overrun with discarded humans. But yes let’s cram in a shitload more housing and just wave our hands about all the remaining infrastructure, social work, culture change and community-building that would actually make the city a better place.

m-ee 5y ago
I don't really understand this take. I've never met anyone that was vociferously pro housing and wasn't also pro bike/public transit. Also if we need to build more housing, which I think we take as a given, building in the denser areas is going to strain infrastructure less than endlessly expanding the suburbs is it not?
- elefanten 5y ago
  This assumes you can pass all the things you want, which empirically hasn’t worked out so well. Riling people up to demand 1 policy is different than getting 5-6 policies that have to all work together the right way to achieve your change. In practical terms, a suburb HAS to be build with new infra — nobody will move into a community without roads and plumbing. Conversely, it’s pretty easy to clear legal obstacles to various developments. You don’t have to spend, plan, organize anything to achieve that. But adding lanes, adding terminals, fixing roads, upgrading transit systems, connecting deeply-struggling with services that exist for them… all these things take human effort and non-trivial resources. If we don’t have a political climate where you can pass your comprehensive raft of urban reform (each of which will have a variety of entrenched interests fighting back), passing JUST housing reform to open the floodgates to developers seems like far less of an obviously-good idea. It seems like it will make things net worse.
  - m-ee 5y ago
    Ok, but we’re out of space to put suburbs in a reasonable commute distance of jobs. Add a new suburb in the broader Bay Area (which at this point means going all the way to Tracy) and all the highways and Bart get more strained. You didn’t avoid fixing local infrastructure you just added a whole new town on top of it. Yes fixing infrastructure is hard but what is your alternative here?
    - rufus_foreman 5y ago
      >> we’re out of space to put suburbs in a reasonable commute distance of jobs San Mateo County is 69% rural, Santa Clara County is 74% rural, Alameda County is 63% rural, Contra Costa County is 57% rural and Marin is 84% rural. There are plenty of places to put suburbs. It's just not allowed. Yes you would need to build more roads. But progressives don't like roads. And progressives don't like suburbs. If they have to choose between new roads and suburbs on one hand and a housing shortage on the other had, well visit San Francisco. You can see and smell the choices they've made.
      - m-ee 5y ago
        Sure if you plan to pave over huge swaths of currently protected wilderness you can find more land. But there is no universe in which 280, 101, or 880 can be built to handle the extra demand that would cause. They couldn't adequately handle pre-pandemic traffic. And if you stick with SFH zoning that land would be gobbled up fairly quickly and we'd be in a worse version of our current situation. There's an exceedingly obvious third choice, increase density. There's no reason for transit connected areas of a major city to be legally limited to single family zoning.
        rufus_foreman 5y ago
        >> Sure if you plan to pave over huge swaths of currently protected wilderness you can find more land That's exactly my point. You don't have a shortage of land in the Bay Area. You have progressives who would rather have people sleep on the street than build on that land.

m-ee 5y ago

I don't really understand this take. I've never met anyone that was vociferously pro housing and wasn't also pro bike/public transit. Also if we need to build more housing, which I think we take as a given, building in the denser areas is going to strain infrastructure less than endlessly expanding the suburbs is it not?

elefanten 5y ago
This assumes you can pass all the things you want, which empirically hasn’t worked out so well. Riling people up to demand 1 policy is different than getting 5-6 policies that have to all work together the right way to achieve your change. In practical terms, a suburb HAS to be build with new infra — nobody will move into a community without roads and plumbing. Conversely, it’s pretty easy to clear legal obstacles to various developments. You don’t have to spend, plan, organize anything to achieve that. But adding lanes, adding terminals, fixing roads, upgrading transit systems, connecting deeply-struggling with services that exist for them… all these things take human effort and non-trivial resources. If we don’t have a political climate where you can pass your comprehensive raft of urban reform (each of which will have a variety of entrenched interests fighting back), passing JUST housing reform to open the floodgates to developers seems like far less of an obviously-good idea. It seems like it will make things net worse.
- m-ee 5y ago
  Ok, but we’re out of space to put suburbs in a reasonable commute distance of jobs. Add a new suburb in the broader Bay Area (which at this point means going all the way to Tracy) and all the highways and Bart get more strained. You didn’t avoid fixing local infrastructure you just added a whole new town on top of it. Yes fixing infrastructure is hard but what is your alternative here?
  - rufus_foreman 5y ago
    >> we’re out of space to put suburbs in a reasonable commute distance of jobs San Mateo County is 69% rural, Santa Clara County is 74% rural, Alameda County is 63% rural, Contra Costa County is 57% rural and Marin is 84% rural. There are plenty of places to put suburbs. It's just not allowed. Yes you would need to build more roads. But progressives don't like roads. And progressives don't like suburbs. If they have to choose between new roads and suburbs on one hand and a housing shortage on the other had, well visit San Francisco. You can see and smell the choices they've made.
    - m-ee 5y ago
      Sure if you plan to pave over huge swaths of currently protected wilderness you can find more land. But there is no universe in which 280, 101, or 880 can be built to handle the extra demand that would cause. They couldn't adequately handle pre-pandemic traffic. And if you stick with SFH zoning that land would be gobbled up fairly quickly and we'd be in a worse version of our current situation. There's an exceedingly obvious third choice, increase density. There's no reason for transit connected areas of a major city to be legally limited to single family zoning.
      - rufus_foreman 5y ago
        >> Sure if you plan to pave over huge swaths of currently protected wilderness you can find more land That's exactly my point. You don't have a shortage of land in the Bay Area. You have progressives who would rather have people sleep on the street than build on that land.