4 ms·

Here is a separate argument I wish to pick with city governments + planners, especially if you are claiming to be liberal, pro-living-wage, etc. all these kinds

Here is a separate argument I wish to pick with city governments + planners, especially if you are claiming to be liberal, pro-living-wage, etc. all these kinds of things (and by no means is this a new criticism, I acknowledge) More than just the slowness of development or lack of housing that results -- the amount of red tape, approvals, and permits (for honestly ridiculous aspects of aesthetic considerations) that a city imposes, the more it discriminates against middle income / low income people. What you find in our most liberal cities is that the more that entrenched old populations who got there first want to keep the city to be a certain character by making the permitting process difficult, the more it is that only rich people can afford to get through those processes. Have you ever noticed that fancy new condos or rich people's houses are able to be built, while the average homeowner throws up his/her hands at the amount of permits and hearing necessary to get a simple remodeling done? It's really discrimination against anyone but the rich, who have the money to hire people who can navigate this system that's been created. I once randomly sat in a building permit hearing where the committee members seemed to out of obligation, require certain changes to any application that came along just to seem to be doing their jobs. The color of a door, the location of a chimney. Absolutely ridiculous. Maybe the city has good intentions, but like so many things left on unintended autopilot, it has become a conservative force. The family of 4 who could either get much more out of their house in living space, upgrade their life, or at least sell it for more, are forced to give up those plans when confronted with the ridiculous permitting/approvals process. So you end up with cities where only the rich can afford to apply for a permit and succeed at it. We would do well to confront what we've incentivized, and whether they're living up to our claimed values.

CPLX 3y ago
An interesting revelation I had was realizing that culturally speaking all Boomers were conservative, they just picked different things to be conservative about. Maybe that’s just an attribute of old people maybe not, I haven’t seen enough generations up close to have an opinion yet. We’ll see how my generation (Gen X) does I guess.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Wanting to preserve what you have, even at the expense of others, is not limited to people born within certain timeframes.
  - ddq 3y ago
    By contrast, any system that relies on benefiting others at the expense of the self as a core foundation seems doomed to instability, by human nature itself. Requiring a class of expendable people, expected to deprive themselves for the benefit of the group, the utilitarian price to pay for the needs of the many. It’s immoral and it’s just plain flawed design.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Every generation is. Note that liberal and conservative are not actually opposites. While are media often pretends they are, you can be both in different areas. People love to claim to be whatever makes them fit in.
- User23 3y ago
  It's funny hearing the generation of the civil rights movement, free love, recreational drug use, and anti-war protests, to name just a few of their cultural achievements, described as "conservative."
  - gottorf 3y ago
    Well, that same generation as a whole is probably accurately described as conservative now! After all, it's well-known that people become more conservative as they age.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      That generation was a lot more divided into lefties and righties just like other generations, and those divides have largely remained (my dad as a lifelong liberal didn't become a conservative before he died at 70, his brother was a conservative, but was his entire life). However, the younger generations are currently less polarized (mostly lefties), which is why they come off as being more left than aging baby boomers.
Schiendelman 3y ago
Plenty of people have written books about the issues you're talking about - they're well understood by many policymakers. But there's nothing illegal about discrimination against low income people, and older homeowners are about twice as likely to vote (and like 100x as likely to donate to candidates) as the people who are impacted. I'm open to any theory of change - I've been trying to come up with one for a decade, and I've had thousands of conversations about it.
- jmoak3 3y ago
  >I'm open to any theory of change - I've been trying to come up with one for a decade, and I've had thousands of conversations about it. Same, and I've only found one which works. Move.
- philwelch 3y ago
  At least in Seattle, a lot of the voters who are impacted don’t understand or agree with or possibly even care about how hard it is to get a building permit. If you run for city council in Seattle and promise to streamline building permits, maybe some older middle income homeowners will vote for you. But it turns out you can also win by talking about rent control or nationalizing Boeing and converting it to build city buses, or just accusing all your opponents of being shills for right wing billionaires. In an environment like that, even when the demagogues don’t actually take over the city government, they exert enough pressure on the Overton window that the more reasonable moderates have their hands tied.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Seattle and the Seattle Area has built a lot of housing over the last couple of decades. Whatever problem they have in SF, it isn't a problem here. Whenever people say "Seattle doesn't build enough", they mean in relation to rapidly growing demand, not in absolute numbers.
    - lazyasciiart 3y ago
      No, we have a lot of the same problems as SF.
MAGZine 3y ago
an important question to ask is, who is ultimately allowed to control their living environment (i.e. neighbourhood)? I think it can be easy to try and draw a circle around NIMBYism and call it a class issue. I think it could be that in part. But I also think that if people like the environment they live in, they will naturally try and protect it, and that doesn't necessarily constitute discrimination. in some ways, I'd say middle/low income people in san francisco have done more to destroy affordability in their neighbourhoods than they've done to help it by torpedoing every new development. It is no mistake that the community holds so much power in a city like San Francisco. Look up Jane Jacobs and her book. it's a blueprint for anti-densificiation
- whats_a_quasar 3y ago
  An equally important question to ask is, who is ultimately allowed to control their living environment, i.e. their land, house, and property? Why should the group of neighbors who speak loudly and have the time to attend planning meetings on a Tuesday afternoon get to decide what I can build on my own property? Why does the municipal bureaucratic tangle have the right to prevent a landowner from getting the full market value of their property if they decide to sell? Why is it ok to use a terrible permitting process to stop people from modifying their own houses? There certainly are things that a person can build or do on their property that harm the neighbors. But at the moment, most American municipalities are privileging the loud group of neighbors who oppose any change over the rights of the landowner and over the social benefits of actually building stuff.
  - MAGZine 3y ago
    > An equally important question to ask is, who is ultimately allowed to control their living environment, i.e. their land, house, and property? Society is. This is literally the basis of society--we reach consensus (in some fashion, even consensus is dictated), and abide by the laws. There's this weird attitude in the united states, something along the lines of, "well this property is mine, ergo, i can do whatever the hell i want with it." It's weird because it's actually unfounded. Maybe more true in rural areas. The use of land has always been governed. And the more humans that are nearby, the more governance and consideration of your neighbours there must be. I actually hold no opinion on the 'correct' way to govern land use, other than to point out that maybe the reason it's hard to change the character of the city is because it was done so intentionally. Thankfully we have a way to get progressive permitting done with you having to perform your civic duties on a tuesday afternoon! it's called voting. And perhaps if there's not enough votes to install leaders with progressive permitting views, then perhaps it is not a prevalent view. edit: Fascinating I'm getting downvoted, I wish people would explain other than 'I don't like the words you're saying'.
coryrc 3y ago
Progress causes unhappiness. It's understandable to avoid, especially when the government makes it illegal to deal with directly.
gottorf 3y ago
> Have you ever noticed that fancy new condos or rich people's houses are able to be built It's basic economics: the more regulatory hurdles (red tape, approvals, permits, etc.) a construction project has to overcome, the more expensive it becomes, to the degree that the only projects that are economically viable are things like luxury condos. Several of the Southern states rank very highly in land-use freedom[0]; that is, the freedom of the owner of a parcel of land to do what they please with it, including building higher-density housing. House prices and rents are reasonable in those states. [0]: https://www.freedominthe50states.org/land https://www.freedominthe50states.org/land
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  > House prices and rents are reasonable in those states. If you exclude the Seattle Area, housing prices are reasonable in Washington state. If you exclude Austin and parts of Dallas, housing prices are reasonable in Texas. Turns out supply and demand drives most price movements: more desirable places to live will be more expensive (compare Austin to Houston, for example).

CPLX 3y ago

An interesting revelation I had was realizing that culturally speaking all Boomers were conservative, they just picked different things to be conservative about. Maybe that’s just an attribute of old people maybe not, I haven’t seen enough generations up close to have an opinion yet. We’ll see how my generation (Gen X) does I guess.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
Wanting to preserve what you have, even at the expense of others, is not limited to people born within certain timeframes.
- ddq 3y ago
  By contrast, any system that relies on benefiting others at the expense of the self as a core foundation seems doomed to instability, by human nature itself. Requiring a class of expendable people, expected to deprive themselves for the benefit of the group, the utilitarian price to pay for the needs of the many. It’s immoral and it’s just plain flawed design.
bluGill 3y ago
Every generation is. Note that liberal and conservative are not actually opposites. While are media often pretends they are, you can be both in different areas. People love to claim to be whatever makes them fit in.
User23 3y ago
It's funny hearing the generation of the civil rights movement, free love, recreational drug use, and anti-war protests, to name just a few of their cultural achievements, described as "conservative."
- gottorf 3y ago
  Well, that same generation as a whole is probably accurately described as conservative now! After all, it's well-known that people become more conservative as they age.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    That generation was a lot more divided into lefties and righties just like other generations, and those divides have largely remained (my dad as a lifelong liberal didn't become a conservative before he died at 70, his brother was a conservative, but was his entire life). However, the younger generations are currently less polarized (mostly lefties), which is why they come off as being more left than aging baby boomers.

Schiendelman 3y ago

Plenty of people have written books about the issues you're talking about - they're well understood by many policymakers. But there's nothing illegal about discrimination against low income people, and older homeowners are about twice as likely to vote (and like 100x as likely to donate to candidates) as the people who are impacted. I'm open to any theory of change - I've been trying to come up with one for a decade, and I've had thousands of conversations about it.

jmoak3 3y ago
>I'm open to any theory of change - I've been trying to come up with one for a decade, and I've had thousands of conversations about it. Same, and I've only found one which works. Move.
philwelch 3y ago
At least in Seattle, a lot of the voters who are impacted don’t understand or agree with or possibly even care about how hard it is to get a building permit. If you run for city council in Seattle and promise to streamline building permits, maybe some older middle income homeowners will vote for you. But it turns out you can also win by talking about rent control or nationalizing Boeing and converting it to build city buses, or just accusing all your opponents of being shills for right wing billionaires. In an environment like that, even when the demagogues don’t actually take over the city government, they exert enough pressure on the Overton window that the more reasonable moderates have their hands tied.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Seattle and the Seattle Area has built a lot of housing over the last couple of decades. Whatever problem they have in SF, it isn't a problem here. Whenever people say "Seattle doesn't build enough", they mean in relation to rapidly growing demand, not in absolute numbers.
  - lazyasciiart 3y ago
    No, we have a lot of the same problems as SF.

MAGZine 3y ago

an important question to ask is, who is ultimately allowed to control their living environment (i.e. neighbourhood)? I think it can be easy to try and draw a circle around NIMBYism and call it a class issue. I think it could be that in part. But I also think that if people like the environment they live in, they will naturally try and protect it, and that doesn't necessarily constitute discrimination. in some ways, I'd say middle/low income people in san francisco have done more to destroy affordability in their neighbourhoods than they've done to help it by torpedoing every new development. It is no mistake that the community holds so much power in a city like San Francisco. Look up Jane Jacobs and her book. it's a blueprint for anti-densificiation

whats_a_quasar 3y ago
An equally important question to ask is, who is ultimately allowed to control their living environment, i.e. their land, house, and property? Why should the group of neighbors who speak loudly and have the time to attend planning meetings on a Tuesday afternoon get to decide what I can build on my own property? Why does the municipal bureaucratic tangle have the right to prevent a landowner from getting the full market value of their property if they decide to sell? Why is it ok to use a terrible permitting process to stop people from modifying their own houses? There certainly are things that a person can build or do on their property that harm the neighbors. But at the moment, most American municipalities are privileging the loud group of neighbors who oppose any change over the rights of the landowner and over the social benefits of actually building stuff.
- MAGZine 3y ago
  > An equally important question to ask is, who is ultimately allowed to control their living environment, i.e. their land, house, and property? Society is. This is literally the basis of society--we reach consensus (in some fashion, even consensus is dictated), and abide by the laws. There's this weird attitude in the united states, something along the lines of, "well this property is mine, ergo, i can do whatever the hell i want with it." It's weird because it's actually unfounded. Maybe more true in rural areas. The use of land has always been governed. And the more humans that are nearby, the more governance and consideration of your neighbours there must be. I actually hold no opinion on the 'correct' way to govern land use, other than to point out that maybe the reason it's hard to change the character of the city is because it was done so intentionally. Thankfully we have a way to get progressive permitting done with you having to perform your civic duties on a tuesday afternoon! it's called voting. And perhaps if there's not enough votes to install leaders with progressive permitting views, then perhaps it is not a prevalent view. edit: Fascinating I'm getting downvoted, I wish people would explain other than 'I don't like the words you're saying'.

coryrc 3y ago

Progress causes unhappiness. It's understandable to avoid, especially when the government makes it illegal to deal with directly.

gottorf 3y ago

> Have you ever noticed that fancy new condos or rich people's houses are able to be built It's basic economics: the more regulatory hurdles (red tape, approvals, permits, etc.) a construction project has to overcome, the more expensive it becomes, to the degree that the only projects that are economically viable are things like luxury condos. Several of the Southern states rank very highly in land-use freedom[0]; that is, the freedom of the owner of a parcel of land to do what they please with it, including building higher-density housing. House prices and rents are reasonable in those states. [0]: https://www.freedominthe50states.org/land https://www.freedominthe50states.org/land

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
> House prices and rents are reasonable in those states. If you exclude the Seattle Area, housing prices are reasonable in Washington state. If you exclude Austin and parts of Dallas, housing prices are reasonable in Texas. Turns out supply and demand drives most price movements: more desirable places to live will be more expensive (compare Austin to Houston, for example).