4 ms·

It's easy to vilify NIMBY, but those are ALSO the people stopping developers from tearing down historical buildings just to put up parking lots or worse. Then

by larrik 4y ago

It's easy to vilify NIMBY, but those are ALSO the people stopping developers from tearing down historical buildings just to put up parking lots or worse. Then again, there's also a vocal minority who thinks the government should spend as little as possible, and new projects are even worse.

quacked 4y ago
I always end up qualifying as a NIMBY, because all of the projects proposed are endless 4-on-1s that look exactly the same as everywhere else with no parking, or godawful commercial real estate. If there was any taste in development, I'd be a YIMBY.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  Yeah that's the problem. If taste is important enough an objection that you block infrastructure that could save lives or house folks on the edge of homelessness, then do we really need to take the objection seriously? As a GP said, there's always a list of pros and cons. We can't let any tiny con, namely something as subjective as taste, get in the way of building life-saving infrastructure.
  - quacked 4y ago
    Ah, get real. None of that infrastructure is life-saving, most building is happening in rapidly growing areas, and most rapidly-growing areas are filled with moneyed transplants who are coming for local industry jobs. That's who new development is for: people who will make rent that will cover the loans that were taken out to finance the property. No one seems to understand this: developers develop when they predict an increase in housing prices. Their builds will accompany a massive increase in demand. The number of people who need their "lives saved" will only grow as a city grows in popularity and density, and the rent only goes up. If you want to look at what continuous "life-saving" no-taste development looks like, go to Houston, or Chicago, or SF, or really anywhere that's very populous. The people still need their lives saved, but everything is disgusting and falling down after ten years anyway. If you want to get serious about housing people in America, you need to think about supporting policies that would slow down the 200K-1M people we add to the US every year, each of who needs housing.
    - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
      > most building is happening in rapidly growing areas, and most rapidly-growing areas are filled with moneyed transplants who are coming for local industry jobs If you don't build for them, they're going to buy up whatever property they can, raise rents, and destroy existing communities instead. Or you can somehow stop... them from moving in? America has never blocked freedom of movement so this seems unlikely. > If you want to get serious about housing people in America, you need to think about supporting policies that would slow down the 200K-1M people we add to the US every year, each of who needs housing. No I don't think I need to stop population growth for building aesthetics, sorry I don't like to count my cityscape in lives blocked to maintain it ("ah that genteel cul-de-sac was worth 300 people #blessed"). Unless you can make a convincing argument as to why this very moment in history is when America needs to add blocks to development, as opposed to the development of the trans-American railroad, the creation of Route 66, or the establishment of the Interstate Highway System, then I'm going to say you're just the garden variety NIMBY that everyone else seems to think you are.
      - quacked 4y ago
        > Or you can somehow stop... them from moving in? This is done by: > Buy up whatever property they can, raise rents. That's going to happen whether or not they build new developments. > No I don't think I need to stop population growth for building aesthetics, sorry I don't like to count my cityscape in lives blocked to maintain it I'll keep happily blocking ugly, poorly-built new developments from people like you until you all get real about sprawl and start proposing buildings that make sense and cooperate with existing living patterns. I actually like living in a town neighborhood with a community, not a transformed economic region with several dozen 6-story apartments stuffed full of transplant yuppies, which is the only thing YIMBYs are capable of rubber-stamping. As I said: go to any town in the US that's had a lot of development recently (Chicago, Boston, SF, Durham, Houston, Austin, Denver, Boulder, etc.) and that's what you'll find. You need to understand that for "NIMBYs", this is a zero-sum game. Either people who live in a nice area keep their claws around that niceness, or YIMBYs get ahold of it and it becomes a paved, crowded area that houses either apartment stacks or commercial real estate. Either way, the rent goes up. As I said in my first post: start proposing some nice development instead of the shell-corporation aluminum-siding wood-frame crap that everyone is building now, and you'll convert me as well as, I suspect, many other people to the pro-development side. Leaving a nice town in the hands of developers is a recipe to get the exact result that the developers have perpetrated on the other towns in America. > No I don't think I need to stop population growth This is the real kicker. How many more people do you want in the country? 500M? 1B? What's your end goal? I don't want to live in a crowded, extremely dense area, especially not if I've already bought property in a less crowded area. What do you expect me to do, roll over for you and the "we need to save lives by building shitty apartments everywhere and opening the borders" train?
blobbers 4y ago
Americans need to start realizing that a 100 year old building isn't historical; it's just old and may have outlasted it's useful life. That said, we also need to start modeling our cities based on the success we see outside America, because you're right, a lot of the new projects are much worse. In the words of the Joni Mitchell: "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot"

by larrik 4y ago

quacked 4y ago

I always end up qualifying as a NIMBY, because all of the projects proposed are endless 4-on-1s that look exactly the same as everywhere else with no parking, or godawful commercial real estate. If there was any taste in development, I'd be a YIMBY.

Karrot_Kream 4y ago
Yeah that's the problem. If taste is important enough an objection that you block infrastructure that could save lives or house folks on the edge of homelessness, then do we really need to take the objection seriously? As a GP said, there's always a list of pros and cons. We can't let any tiny con, namely something as subjective as taste, get in the way of building life-saving infrastructure.
- quacked 4y ago
  Ah, get real. None of that infrastructure is life-saving, most building is happening in rapidly growing areas, and most rapidly-growing areas are filled with moneyed transplants who are coming for local industry jobs. That's who new development is for: people who will make rent that will cover the loans that were taken out to finance the property. No one seems to understand this: developers develop when they predict an increase in housing prices. Their builds will accompany a massive increase in demand. The number of people who need their "lives saved" will only grow as a city grows in popularity and density, and the rent only goes up. If you want to look at what continuous "life-saving" no-taste development looks like, go to Houston, or Chicago, or SF, or really anywhere that's very populous. The people still need their lives saved, but everything is disgusting and falling down after ten years anyway. If you want to get serious about housing people in America, you need to think about supporting policies that would slow down the 200K-1M people we add to the US every year, each of who needs housing.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    > most building is happening in rapidly growing areas, and most rapidly-growing areas are filled with moneyed transplants who are coming for local industry jobs If you don't build for them, they're going to buy up whatever property they can, raise rents, and destroy existing communities instead. Or you can somehow stop... them from moving in? America has never blocked freedom of movement so this seems unlikely. > If you want to get serious about housing people in America, you need to think about supporting policies that would slow down the 200K-1M people we add to the US every year, each of who needs housing. No I don't think I need to stop population growth for building aesthetics, sorry I don't like to count my cityscape in lives blocked to maintain it ("ah that genteel cul-de-sac was worth 300 people #blessed"). Unless you can make a convincing argument as to why this very moment in history is when America needs to add blocks to development, as opposed to the development of the trans-American railroad, the creation of Route 66, or the establishment of the Interstate Highway System, then I'm going to say you're just the garden variety NIMBY that everyone else seems to think you are.
    - quacked 4y ago
      > Or you can somehow stop... them from moving in? This is done by: > Buy up whatever property they can, raise rents. That's going to happen whether or not they build new developments. > No I don't think I need to stop population growth for building aesthetics, sorry I don't like to count my cityscape in lives blocked to maintain it I'll keep happily blocking ugly, poorly-built new developments from people like you until you all get real about sprawl and start proposing buildings that make sense and cooperate with existing living patterns. I actually like living in a town neighborhood with a community, not a transformed economic region with several dozen 6-story apartments stuffed full of transplant yuppies, which is the only thing YIMBYs are capable of rubber-stamping. As I said: go to any town in the US that's had a lot of development recently (Chicago, Boston, SF, Durham, Houston, Austin, Denver, Boulder, etc.) and that's what you'll find. You need to understand that for "NIMBYs", this is a zero-sum game. Either people who live in a nice area keep their claws around that niceness, or YIMBYs get ahold of it and it becomes a paved, crowded area that houses either apartment stacks or commercial real estate. Either way, the rent goes up. As I said in my first post: start proposing some nice development instead of the shell-corporation aluminum-siding wood-frame crap that everyone is building now, and you'll convert me as well as, I suspect, many other people to the pro-development side. Leaving a nice town in the hands of developers is a recipe to get the exact result that the developers have perpetrated on the other towns in America. > No I don't think I need to stop population growth This is the real kicker. How many more people do you want in the country? 500M? 1B? What's your end goal? I don't want to live in a crowded, extremely dense area, especially not if I've already bought property in a less crowded area. What do you expect me to do, roll over for you and the "we need to save lives by building shitty apartments everywhere and opening the borders" train?

blobbers 4y ago

Americans need to start realizing that a 100 year old building isn't historical; it's just old and may have outlasted it's useful life. That said, we also need to start modeling our cities based on the success we see outside America, because you're right, a lot of the new projects are much worse. In the words of the Joni Mitchell: "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot"