3 ms·

Lack of housing is most of what's wrong with everything in the US right now.

Lack of housing is most of what's wrong with __everything__ in the US right now.

inglor_cz 1y ago
Not just in the US. NIMBY looks almost exactly the same in the US, in New Zealand, in Israel, in Italy, in Czechia or in the UK. Basically, as long as you allow other people to veto new construction, it is almost guaranteed that a few bitter fighters will devote their lives to stopping anything to be ever built again. Roads, trams, housing, anything at all. A veritable vetocracy, not too dissimilar from the legendary Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where every noble could veto anything agreed upon by the Sejm by simply standing up and saying "I disagree". The "community participation" ideal which looked very positive once turned out to empower the worst reactionaries. The few countries that got this problem under control did so mostly by limiting the legal abilities of such people to throw wrenches into everything.
- bluGill 1y ago
  Exactly. The problem with community participation is it can only work when significant numbers of people participate. Most people have too much in life as it is to get involved. On any given night there are 50 different events in my city I could go to - (knitting circle, bible studies, softball, DnD, book club, girl scouts, gymnastics...), plus I have my own hobbies at home I'm trying to work on: I don't have time to attend the community meetings as well - and neither does most people in my community. What is left with the "busy bodies" who decide to make time - but they don't represent the community and shouldn't get input (I went to one: Some women was asking a lot of questions on why the road department decided to not replace a road grader with 14900 hours on it even though the policy was replace it at 15000 hours - that is trying to micromanage the whole county as if the leaders are not competent to make decisions).
- immibis 1y ago
  Don't forget they're saying these things for valid reasons, and a balance has to be struck. For example, (this is not a perfect rule, just a rough draft) if you can only build an apartment block next to another apartment block, high-density areas can exist radiating outwards from existing centers (where you'd want high density and where people who want to live in high density want to live). Or you can build one surrounded by farmland, probably. Apparently that's popular in America though I don't understand why.
  - inglor_cz 1y ago
    My experience with the Czech NIMBY crowd is that when I talk to them directly, they are quite open about "we don't want anything to change and we don't like new people". More constructive reasons like "there is not enough buses to the area" can be usually solved by reasonable compromise, but this sort of intense conservatism "wait until I am dead, then build something" cannot.

Lack of housing is most of what's wrong with __everything__ in the US right now.

Not just in the US. NIMBY looks almost exactly the same in the US, in New Zealand, in Israel, in Italy, in Czechia or in the UK. Basically, as long as you allow other people to veto new construction, it is almost guaranteed that a few bitter fighters will devote their lives to stopping anything to be ever built again. Roads, trams, housing, anything at all. A veritable vetocracy, not too dissimilar from the legendary Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where every noble could veto anything agreed upon by the Sejm by simply standing up and saying "I disagree". The "community participation" ideal which looked very positive once turned out to empower the worst reactionaries. The few countries that got this problem under control did so mostly by limiting the legal abilities of such people to throw wrenches into everything.

bluGill 1y ago
Exactly. The problem with community participation is it can only work when significant numbers of people participate. Most people have too much in life as it is to get involved. On any given night there are 50 different events in my city I could go to - (knitting circle, bible studies, softball, DnD, book club, girl scouts, gymnastics...), plus I have my own hobbies at home I'm trying to work on: I don't have time to attend the community meetings as well - and neither does most people in my community. What is left with the "busy bodies" who decide to make time - but they don't represent the community and shouldn't get input (I went to one: Some women was asking a lot of questions on why the road department decided to not replace a road grader with 14900 hours on it even though the policy was replace it at 15000 hours - that is trying to micromanage the whole county as if the leaders are not competent to make decisions).
immibis 1y ago
Don't forget they're saying these things for valid reasons, and a balance has to be struck. For example, (this is not a perfect rule, just a rough draft) if you can only build an apartment block next to another apartment block, high-density areas can exist radiating outwards from existing centers (where you'd want high density and where people who want to live in high density want to live). Or you can build one surrounded by farmland, probably. Apparently that's popular in America though I don't understand why.
- inglor_cz 1y ago
  My experience with the Czech NIMBY crowd is that when I talk to them directly, they are quite open about "we don't want anything to change and we don't like new people". More constructive reasons like "there is not enough buses to the area" can be usually solved by reasonable compromise, but this sort of intense conservatism "wait until I am dead, then build something" cannot.