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> Not only does it contradict the received wisdom from the YIMBY movement that community input is bad actually Weird snipe. YIMBYs are certainly skeptical of s

> Not only does it contradict the received wisdom from the YIMBY movement that community input is bad actually Weird snipe. YIMBYs are certainly skeptical of some kinds of community input, but that doesn't mean they're opposed to all community input or control of everything.

rcpt 1y ago
The linked article by Jerusalem Demas is worth reading. And, yeah, community input is bad.
- snovv_crash 1y ago
  It's an incentives issue, not a community input issue. If the only value you are able to hold onto is the development you do yourself, then you aren't going to block your neighbours from building up their property.
  - username332211 1y ago
    Incentives have nothing to do with it. Until the community recognizes that other people have rights and that rights are rights precisely because you need no "community input" (which is an euphemism for "political interference") in order to exercise them, the results will be the same. While developing a piece of real estate can cause a good deal of damage to the character of a community, ideas are much more dangerous in that regard. Why is it then, that we allow for unscrupulous capitalists to disseminate ideas freely? Why isn't there "community input" into the things newspapers are allowed to publish?
    - immibis 1y ago
      incentives have everything to do with it and you're describing incentives while saying you're not
  - rcpt 1y ago
    Members of the community have incentives to prevent high speed rail and apartment towers being built near them. The general population has incentives to build high speed and apartment towers in those neighborhoods. But, because of community input, the voice of local busybodies is louder than that of the general population. It is a a disservice to democracy and prevents our governments from functioning in a way that serves the people.
- throw0101d 1y ago
  > And, yeah, community input is bad. Was the community input to Robert Moses' NYC plans bad? * https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/28/story-cities-32-new-york-jane-jacobs-robert-moses https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/28/story-cities-... How about to the Spadina Expressway in Toronto? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Road#Spadina_Expressway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Road#Spadina_Expressway * https://www.tvo.org/article/the-streets-belong-to-the-people-why-a-premier-killed-the-spadina-expressway https://www.tvo.org/article/the-streets-belong-to-the-people... * https://transittoronto.ca/spare/0019.shtml https://transittoronto.ca/spare/0019.shtml
  - rcpt 1y ago
    Community input is bad. Maybe in the 50s things were different. But that was a long time ago and the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. Robert Moses could not build today. Nobody can build today. Largely because we have given neighborhood busybodies veto power over all decisions. It's a disservice to the people when they democratically vote for something like a high speed rail and then never get it because the voices of local property owners matter more than that of the population.
    - TulliusCicero 1y ago
      > Largely because we have given neighborhood busybodies veto power over all decisions. This is the real problem. There are forms of community input that are fine, but if you let local neighborhood councils veto any kind of building they don't like, they'll do just that.
- TulliusCicero 1y ago
  > community input is bad Community input is bad when it leads to bad results. Kind of a tautology, but my point is just that you can have good community input, it does happen, even if, yes, the general 'local' culture in the US tends to lend itself to NIMBYism.
roenxi 1y ago
It might be more proper to deduce that community vetos are a bad idea although the practicalities of that are complex. I can imagine a situation, for example, where a community bans running a business from a residence and accidentally wiped out a major tech company from being founded. In fact, I suspect that probably did happen in the 90s although for obvious reasons it is impossible to prove. We've seen a huge amount of economic success from allowing talented motivated people to do what they think is a good idea without developing a consensus on the proper course of action. That probably scales down into to the small too. Progress depends on letting outliers happen.
- chii 1y ago
  > where a community bans running a business from a residence and accidentally wiped out a major tech company from being founded. the benefits of the business goes to the private person running the business from their residence. But the externalities falls to the community (or at least, shared by the community). Therefore, a community wanting to ban a business from a residence is very valid imho. However, if the business could either prove there are no externalities, or compensate for it in some way, then there should be room for negotiation, rather than a straight outright ban.
  - charcircuit 1y ago
    >the benefits of the business goes to the private person It's not 0 sum. Someone else, potentially from the community, also gets value in exchange.
    - chii 1y ago
      that's why i call the cost an externality. A business profiting off making goods/services for a community is good and all, but can still produce externalities, for which everyone, including those who _didnt_ participate in the business transactions, would pay.
      - roenxi 1y ago
typewithrhythm 1y ago
There seems to be a growing gap between the people who define "community" as the group of people who live in and wish to direct the changes in the area they are in. And the people who define community as the group who receives the benefits of government intervention. YIMBYs is a silly term, since its usually a developers talking about forcing changes in someone else's neighbourhood. Considering the input they like, it's only from the second definition of community, notably people not currently in an area, or standing to endure the downsides.
- natmaka 1y ago
  > "community" as the group of people who live in and wish to direct the changes in the area they are in IMHO it is the genuine and most adequate 'community', because the less abusive way to decide is subsidiarity ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity ). Constraining people who live near the potential site makes them at best suspicious, they will better memorize this constraint than any benefit from other projects.
- morsecodist 1y ago
  The idea behind the YIMBY movement is not that community input is bad it's that the community input process structurally encourages input only from people who don't like the project. The point of YIMBY activism is to show up in your own community (your back yard if you will) to say that you do want housing.
  - giantg2 1y ago
    The main problem is that many people do want things, until those things present a negative impact to them personally. Yes, build housing, but do it the next street over. I don't personally know anyone who wants an apartment building or trailer park next to their single family home. The real point of zoning should be to group those types of housing together, but it seems many cities are too fragmented, not to mention that consumer preference is strongly aligned with SFH ownership.
    - 1y ago
morsecodist 1y ago
It's such a weird comment that has nothing to do with the rest of the article. The YIMBY movement is concerned with people saying no to housing, it doesn't say anything about community input on assessment or anything else. It seems like the author has some sort of ax to grind.
- larsiusprime 1y ago
  What ax? I’m the author and a YIMBY. Read the linked article, that’s the exact title of it, and I largely agree with it! I wrote that line because it contradicted the expectations of a movement I myself belong to, which I found surprising.
  - dejobaan 1y ago
    Yeah, Lars isn't really the axe grindy type—I think the tone isn't meant to be negative here.
  - morsecodist 1y ago
    Thanks for replying! I liked the article overall. I guess I read into something that wasn't really there.
  - quantified 1y ago
    What does YIMBY have to do with valuing land? I was under the impression that N/YIMBY was about whether projects get done, not land valuation.
    - ubersketch 1y ago
      Land valuation is necessary to implement a land value tax (not to be confused with property tax) which is the main thing Georgists advocate for. Georgists and YIMBYs have an affinity for one another since land value tax disincentives speculation and incentivizes building.
larsiusprime 1y ago
I’m the author and a YIMBY for the record and it’s not meant as a snipe. The link is an article by that exact same title by Jerusalem Demsas

rcpt 1y ago

The linked article by Jerusalem Demas is worth reading. And, yeah, community input is bad.

snovv_crash 1y ago
It's an incentives issue, not a community input issue. If the only value you are able to hold onto is the development you do yourself, then you aren't going to block your neighbours from building up their property.
- username332211 1y ago
  Incentives have nothing to do with it. Until the community recognizes that other people have rights and that rights are rights precisely because you need no "community input" (which is an euphemism for "political interference") in order to exercise them, the results will be the same. While developing a piece of real estate can cause a good deal of damage to the character of a community, ideas are much more dangerous in that regard. Why is it then, that we allow for unscrupulous capitalists to disseminate ideas freely? Why isn't there "community input" into the things newspapers are allowed to publish?
  - immibis 1y ago
    incentives have everything to do with it and you're describing incentives while saying you're not
- rcpt 1y ago
  Members of the community have incentives to prevent high speed rail and apartment towers being built near them. The general population has incentives to build high speed and apartment towers in those neighborhoods. But, because of community input, the voice of local busybodies is louder than that of the general population. It is a a disservice to democracy and prevents our governments from functioning in a way that serves the people.
throw0101d 1y ago
> And, yeah, community input is bad. Was the community input to Robert Moses' NYC plans bad? * https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/28/story-cities-32-new-york-jane-jacobs-robert-moses https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/28/story-cities-... How about to the Spadina Expressway in Toronto? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Road#Spadina_Expressway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Road#Spadina_Expressway * https://www.tvo.org/article/the-streets-belong-to-the-people-why-a-premier-killed-the-spadina-expressway https://www.tvo.org/article/the-streets-belong-to-the-people... * https://transittoronto.ca/spare/0019.shtml https://transittoronto.ca/spare/0019.shtml
- rcpt 1y ago
  Community input is bad. Maybe in the 50s things were different. But that was a long time ago and the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. Robert Moses could not build today. Nobody can build today. Largely because we have given neighborhood busybodies veto power over all decisions. It's a disservice to the people when they democratically vote for something like a high speed rail and then never get it because the voices of local property owners matter more than that of the population.
  - TulliusCicero 1y ago
    > Largely because we have given neighborhood busybodies veto power over all decisions. This is the real problem. There are forms of community input that are fine, but if you let local neighborhood councils veto any kind of building they don't like, they'll do just that.
TulliusCicero 1y ago
> community input is bad Community input is bad when it leads to bad results. Kind of a tautology, but my point is just that you can have good community input, it does happen, even if, yes, the general 'local' culture in the US tends to lend itself to NIMBYism.

roenxi 1y ago

It might be more proper to deduce that community vetos are a bad idea although the practicalities of that are complex. I can imagine a situation, for example, where a community bans running a business from a residence and accidentally wiped out a major tech company from being founded. In fact, I suspect that probably did happen in the 90s although for obvious reasons it is impossible to prove. We've seen a huge amount of economic success from allowing talented motivated people to do what they think is a good idea without developing a consensus on the proper course of action. That probably scales down into to the small too. Progress depends on letting outliers happen.

chii 1y ago
> where a community bans running a business from a residence and accidentally wiped out a major tech company from being founded. the benefits of the business goes to the private person running the business from their residence. But the externalities falls to the community (or at least, shared by the community). Therefore, a community wanting to ban a business from a residence is very valid imho. However, if the business could either prove there are no externalities, or compensate for it in some way, then there should be room for negotiation, rather than a straight outright ban.
- charcircuit 1y ago
  >the benefits of the business goes to the private person It's not 0 sum. Someone else, potentially from the community, also gets value in exchange.
  - chii 1y ago
    that's why i call the cost an externality. A business profiting off making goods/services for a community is good and all, but can still produce externalities, for which everyone, including those who _didnt_ participate in the business transactions, would pay.
    - roenxi 1y ago

typewithrhythm 1y ago

There seems to be a growing gap between the people who define "community" as the group of people who live in and wish to direct the changes in the area they are in. And the people who define community as the group who receives the benefits of government intervention. YIMBYs is a silly term, since its usually a developers talking about forcing changes in someone else's neighbourhood. Considering the input they like, it's only from the second definition of community, notably people not currently in an area, or standing to endure the downsides.

natmaka 1y ago
> "community" as the group of people who live in and wish to direct the changes in the area they are in IMHO it is the genuine and most adequate 'community', because the less abusive way to decide is subsidiarity ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity ). Constraining people who live near the potential site makes them at best suspicious, they will better memorize this constraint than any benefit from other projects.
morsecodist 1y ago
The idea behind the YIMBY movement is not that community input is bad it's that the community input process structurally encourages input only from people who don't like the project. The point of YIMBY activism is to show up in your own community (your back yard if you will) to say that you do want housing.
- giantg2 1y ago
  The main problem is that many people do want things, until those things present a negative impact to them personally. Yes, build housing, but do it the next street over. I don't personally know anyone who wants an apartment building or trailer park next to their single family home. The real point of zoning should be to group those types of housing together, but it seems many cities are too fragmented, not to mention that consumer preference is strongly aligned with SFH ownership.
  - 1y ago

morsecodist 1y ago

It's such a weird comment that has nothing to do with the rest of the article. The YIMBY movement is concerned with people saying no to housing, it doesn't say anything about community input on assessment or anything else. It seems like the author has some sort of ax to grind.

larsiusprime 1y ago
What ax? I’m the author and a YIMBY. Read the linked article, that’s the exact title of it, and I largely agree with it! I wrote that line because it contradicted the expectations of a movement I myself belong to, which I found surprising.
- dejobaan 1y ago
  Yeah, Lars isn't really the axe grindy type—I think the tone isn't meant to be negative here.
- morsecodist 1y ago
  Thanks for replying! I liked the article overall. I guess I read into something that wasn't really there.
- quantified 1y ago
  What does YIMBY have to do with valuing land? I was under the impression that N/YIMBY was about whether projects get done, not land valuation.
  - ubersketch 1y ago
    Land valuation is necessary to implement a land value tax (not to be confused with property tax) which is the main thing Georgists advocate for. Georgists and YIMBYs have an affinity for one another since land value tax disincentives speculation and incentivizes building.

larsiusprime 1y ago

I’m the author and a YIMBY for the record and it’s not meant as a snipe. The link is an article by that exact same title by Jerusalem Demsas