Freddie is doing a thing that I find deeply annoying and that is saying "well X is true at the median so X must explain Y". Wage growth has been weak at the median (which I don't think is necessarily true) so those financial conatraints must explain NIMBYism. But NIMBYism is based on preserving policies put onto place in the 60's and 70's - when economic inequality was at its nadir. It's clearly not about protecting wealth. Add in the fact that some of the most deeply NIMBY cities are places with high renter populations - what economic reason do the 60%+ of households in SF who rent have to be a NIMBY?
People who have a materialist worldview struggle to accept not everything is about wages/wealth.
Nimbyism becomes popular for a lot of reasons once a certain level of density is reached. People dislike sitting in traffic or having a lot of traffic. They want easy parking. They also suffer from loss aversion in wealth communities. And then you have some regional specific things like existing homeowners wanting to maintain their view of the Bay from the window (I live in SF). Along with the pernicious influence of the population bomb ideology.
Property values are a component of nimbyism but they aren't everything and people like Freddie overstate em.
I’ve said it once, but it bears repeating: I have very strong suspicions that much NIMBY-ism is at least partly predicated on how devastatingly ugly and poorly designed almost all medium density housing is. Hell, I am extremely pro housing and even I would object to a developer building the standard mid-century-modern-revival stacked box/ hardyplank/peel and stick brick dreck that is the standard for new construction from Scarsdale to San Leandro. Quality matters.
Strongly disagree on both the importance of aesthetics in driving nimbyism and whether broade aesthetics analysis are a legitimate concern of land use policy.
Most people don't care about aesthetics. If you disagree look at the way the average person dresses. They concern medium density ugly because they consider medium density buildings to large for the neighborhoods that build them
I would question your premise that “most people don’t care about aesthetics” when it comes to housing and neighborhood character, especially since aesthetic concerns are typically near the top of the list of reasons that customers choose one home or neighborhood over the other. And of course evidence that homeowners care a LOT about the attractiveness of their neighbors’ houses can be found in the myriad regulations enacted by homeowner associations and complaints in community meetings/online forums.
After all, one can wear tattered off-brand athleisure to the supermarket and still feel passionately about a neighbor’s new standing seam roof.
HOA are dominated by busybodies while the majority who don't care about aesthetics are mainly a silent majority.
And again if people cared about aesthetics it would show up in places outside housing. They don't. People wear disposable fashion and fell to stay up on current cultural preferences. The joke about guys over 30 dressing in the same style for decades exists for a reason.
And of course there is the problem that even if you accept your premise that people have high values on aesthetics, there isn't much of a consensus.
I hate victorians and love brick. Others love victorians and hate brick.
Even if we accept people value aesthetics the best thing to is have very limited aesthetic regulation rather than allow architecture censors to dictate proper building aesthetics. Because if you allow very strict aesthetic regulations you're going to end up with enormous class biases in the regulation of an art form.
💯 They’ll deny it because it sounds snobby. And you’re totally right on some of the new construction. We have some new apartments and hotels going up that are just awful. The “ industrial look” taken to far looks cartoonish.
I think the biggest misconception many cities have is that the big strip malls are actually financially better long term for them than denser walkable developments and some places are coming to this realization. Car infrastructure is a net loss to cities, every road and parking lot is a liability.
Part of the reason for financial woes of many sprawly cities is that it costs are more to provide services to low density housing, and it would be to find services to higher than city development. It would actually be in cities best interest to build answer developments in order to have a more sustainable balance sheet.
In addition, dense developments provide far more tax revenue per sqft to cities and are much more livable to the people around them. There’s a reason the most expensive places in the country places are more walkable and have denser developments.
Josh I think you should look at chatting with Chuck Marohn from Strong Towns
I'm surprised to read this idea that cities think they can generate more income from more new retail spaces vs more income from additional people who will shop at existing stores.
I think Austin just passed some major YIMBY reforms to. I will say I am both surprised and impressed with the relative quickness that Democrats have turned on zoning. Getting over the biases of more regulation is good and the complaints from Malthusian environmentalists is no easy task.
I think it really does help that YIMBYs are right on the merits and positive sum. While there are places (Long Island) where the existing politics make YIMBY hard, lowering rents and creating jobs are slam-dunks politically almost everywhere else.
Obviously we all have different political preferences, but I don’t see particularly good evidence that a policy that being right on the merits and net positive makes the policy popular or drives politicians to adopt it.
Really? I think this is availability bias. Most policies in place are so obviously correct it doesn’t even occur to you to think about them having been implemented.
Disagree. When you look at the developed world by and large similar policies are adopted everywhere. Every country has a mixed market economy with a welfare state.
The battles between the Right and Left in the US, while extremely important, are mainly fought in very narrow ranges by historic comparison
This reads like a developer’s cheer squad wrote it. Please. Understand that rezoning and density are the kibble electeds scatter to get the political donations and IE committees to support them. I’m a classical urbanist and I ate the bait for decades. Then I realized it was political corruption. If you’ve seen what these policies are doing to Seattle you might get it. Building townhouses for onesies and their dogs is stupid. Townhouse floor plans are a joke. Building nearly all the units for one person is another joke. That’s not density, that’s anti-family, anti-couple, anti wfh. Like all you need to do is work, get a latte and hit the gym and your favorite watering hole. Wash, rinse, repeat. Gross. Meanwhile the rich live well in enclaves and suburbs. It’s disgusting. I have nothing against the rich or suburbs btw. Even Richard Florida admits cities need families and suburbs and rural areas lend awesomeness in terms of lifestyle diversity. I live in my owner-occupied shared house with 6 others and it’s cheap. No one is crowded. Room for gardens and hobbies and trees. Meanwhile tenant-favored legislation makes like small landlords are evil. Stop the insanity. If people were salmon or orcas, we’d be fixing their habitat instead of making it unbearable.
I also live in Seattle, and property developers have done infinitely more to make my life better then every Malthusian hippie put together, in so far as property developers created more spaces humans can live in, while the hippies actively promoted scarcity and had a purely negative impact on the city.
I'm still unclear why so many of these commenters I usually find on the Seattle Times site think that Caddyshack was a documentary and property developers are literally Satan. Luckily no one I have meet under 50 seems to share the delusion, so we can hopefully wait them out.
Also as a post-script small landlords are the worst since they are by definition amateurs who can't use scale to have actual professionals handle issues. Renting for 5 years downtown from a large company, any issue I did have got fixed quickly (<2 hours when the toilet had issues). If small landlords can't meet the same city regulations, that's a reason to not have small landlords, not to compromise on the safety and comfort of tenants.
Great piece that is well-articulated. Something I'd like all of us to do more of us stop acting like we're entitled to or able to stop change. I find both anti-gentrification efforts and NIMBY efforts are based on the false premise that things should never change.
I mean sure, but we’re not entitled to change either. Usually the status quo is correct (my most conservative view) so it’s fine that people take some convincing to favor change. But they should be open to change, too.
100% - change is neither automatically good nor bad, but stubborn resistance to change is not something people who live near other people are signing up for.
An interesting and sad thing about SF is that while the built environment has changed little in the last few decades in most of the city, the people living in certain areas and the communities have changed dramatically. In large part due to previous people being priced out due to shortage of housing supply to accommodate all the new people moving out.
So the resistance to changes to the physical aesthetic of the city has in fact led to massive changes in quality of life and groups living in the city.
I’m from the perfect “ NIMBY” suburb. ( Upper Arlington Ohio.) An aging, upper middle class, low density, etc. ) They’re in the process of tearing down an old retail strip plaza, and building a high rise of residential/ commercial properties. No low income units. Kinda sad.
Interesting thing Josh mentioned that gets missed alot is that home owners benefit from looser zoning, since their land is worth more if you can build more on it, but condo owners lose out since they are nearly a pure play against housing scarcity.
I have wondered if you see different voting patterns on these issues in cities that are high density renters, vs high density owners, given the incentives at that point are totally flipped.
Freddie is doing a thing that I find deeply annoying and that is saying "well X is true at the median so X must explain Y". Wage growth has been weak at the median (which I don't think is necessarily true) so those financial conatraints must explain NIMBYism. But NIMBYism is based on preserving policies put onto place in the 60's and 70's - when economic inequality was at its nadir. It's clearly not about protecting wealth. Add in the fact that some of the most deeply NIMBY cities are places with high renter populations - what economic reason do the 60%+ of households in SF who rent have to be a NIMBY?
People who have a materialist worldview struggle to accept not everything is about wages/wealth.
Nimbyism becomes popular for a lot of reasons once a certain level of density is reached. People dislike sitting in traffic or having a lot of traffic. They want easy parking. They also suffer from loss aversion in wealth communities. And then you have some regional specific things like existing homeowners wanting to maintain their view of the Bay from the window (I live in SF). Along with the pernicious influence of the population bomb ideology.
Property values are a component of nimbyism but they aren't everything and people like Freddie overstate em.
I’ve said it once, but it bears repeating: I have very strong suspicions that much NIMBY-ism is at least partly predicated on how devastatingly ugly and poorly designed almost all medium density housing is. Hell, I am extremely pro housing and even I would object to a developer building the standard mid-century-modern-revival stacked box/ hardyplank/peel and stick brick dreck that is the standard for new construction from Scarsdale to San Leandro. Quality matters.
Strongly disagree on both the importance of aesthetics in driving nimbyism and whether broade aesthetics analysis are a legitimate concern of land use policy.
Most people don't care about aesthetics. If you disagree look at the way the average person dresses. They concern medium density ugly because they consider medium density buildings to large for the neighborhoods that build them
I would question your premise that “most people don’t care about aesthetics” when it comes to housing and neighborhood character, especially since aesthetic concerns are typically near the top of the list of reasons that customers choose one home or neighborhood over the other. And of course evidence that homeowners care a LOT about the attractiveness of their neighbors’ houses can be found in the myriad regulations enacted by homeowner associations and complaints in community meetings/online forums.
After all, one can wear tattered off-brand athleisure to the supermarket and still feel passionately about a neighbor’s new standing seam roof.
HOA are dominated by busybodies while the majority who don't care about aesthetics are mainly a silent majority.
And again if people cared about aesthetics it would show up in places outside housing. They don't. People wear disposable fashion and fell to stay up on current cultural preferences. The joke about guys over 30 dressing in the same style for decades exists for a reason.
And of course there is the problem that even if you accept your premise that people have high values on aesthetics, there isn't much of a consensus.
I hate victorians and love brick. Others love victorians and hate brick.
Even if we accept people value aesthetics the best thing to is have very limited aesthetic regulation rather than allow architecture censors to dictate proper building aesthetics. Because if you allow very strict aesthetic regulations you're going to end up with enormous class biases in the regulation of an art form.
And that is not a public good.
💯 They’ll deny it because it sounds snobby. And you’re totally right on some of the new construction. We have some new apartments and hotels going up that are just awful. The “ industrial look” taken to far looks cartoonish.
Lots of old buildings are ugly. This is a random street in the City I live in SF.
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7999926,-122.4141545,3a,75y,350.32h,87.62t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sP2rrCqpxj1sCLKOpBOqZ0A!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
Most of the old buildings are quite ugly by my taste. And unlike the ugly new buildings they mostly don't comply with ADA regulations
I think the biggest misconception many cities have is that the big strip malls are actually financially better long term for them than denser walkable developments and some places are coming to this realization. Car infrastructure is a net loss to cities, every road and parking lot is a liability.
Part of the reason for financial woes of many sprawly cities is that it costs are more to provide services to low density housing, and it would be to find services to higher than city development. It would actually be in cities best interest to build answer developments in order to have a more sustainable balance sheet.
In addition, dense developments provide far more tax revenue per sqft to cities and are much more livable to the people around them. There’s a reason the most expensive places in the country places are more walkable and have denser developments.
Josh I think you should look at chatting with Chuck Marohn from Strong Towns
I'm surprised to read this idea that cities think they can generate more income from more new retail spaces vs more income from additional people who will shop at existing stores.
I think Austin just passed some major YIMBY reforms to. I will say I am both surprised and impressed with the relative quickness that Democrats have turned on zoning. Getting over the biases of more regulation is good and the complaints from Malthusian environmentalists is no easy task.
I think it really does help that YIMBYs are right on the merits and positive sum. While there are places (Long Island) where the existing politics make YIMBY hard, lowering rents and creating jobs are slam-dunks politically almost everywhere else.
Obviously we all have different political preferences, but I don’t see particularly good evidence that a policy that being right on the merits and net positive makes the policy popular or drives politicians to adopt it.
Really? I think this is availability bias. Most policies in place are so obviously correct it doesn’t even occur to you to think about them having been implemented.
I would appreciate a full post from Josh on his status quo policy default preference.
Disagree. When you look at the developed world by and large similar policies are adopted everywhere. Every country has a mixed market economy with a welfare state.
The battles between the Right and Left in the US, while extremely important, are mainly fought in very narrow ranges by historic comparison
they didn't pass them yet, I think it just got out of comittee
This reads like a developer’s cheer squad wrote it. Please. Understand that rezoning and density are the kibble electeds scatter to get the political donations and IE committees to support them. I’m a classical urbanist and I ate the bait for decades. Then I realized it was political corruption. If you’ve seen what these policies are doing to Seattle you might get it. Building townhouses for onesies and their dogs is stupid. Townhouse floor plans are a joke. Building nearly all the units for one person is another joke. That’s not density, that’s anti-family, anti-couple, anti wfh. Like all you need to do is work, get a latte and hit the gym and your favorite watering hole. Wash, rinse, repeat. Gross. Meanwhile the rich live well in enclaves and suburbs. It’s disgusting. I have nothing against the rich or suburbs btw. Even Richard Florida admits cities need families and suburbs and rural areas lend awesomeness in terms of lifestyle diversity. I live in my owner-occupied shared house with 6 others and it’s cheap. No one is crowded. Room for gardens and hobbies and trees. Meanwhile tenant-favored legislation makes like small landlords are evil. Stop the insanity. If people were salmon or orcas, we’d be fixing their habitat instead of making it unbearable.
Did Paul R. Ehrlich write this?
I also live in Seattle, and property developers have done infinitely more to make my life better then every Malthusian hippie put together, in so far as property developers created more spaces humans can live in, while the hippies actively promoted scarcity and had a purely negative impact on the city.
I'm still unclear why so many of these commenters I usually find on the Seattle Times site think that Caddyshack was a documentary and property developers are literally Satan. Luckily no one I have meet under 50 seems to share the delusion, so we can hopefully wait them out.
Also as a post-script small landlords are the worst since they are by definition amateurs who can't use scale to have actual professionals handle issues. Renting for 5 years downtown from a large company, any issue I did have got fixed quickly (<2 hours when the toilet had issues). If small landlords can't meet the same city regulations, that's a reason to not have small landlords, not to compromise on the safety and comfort of tenants.
Great piece that is well-articulated. Something I'd like all of us to do more of us stop acting like we're entitled to or able to stop change. I find both anti-gentrification efforts and NIMBY efforts are based on the false premise that things should never change.
I mean sure, but we’re not entitled to change either. Usually the status quo is correct (my most conservative view) so it’s fine that people take some convincing to favor change. But they should be open to change, too.
100% - change is neither automatically good nor bad, but stubborn resistance to change is not something people who live near other people are signing up for.
An interesting and sad thing about SF is that while the built environment has changed little in the last few decades in most of the city, the people living in certain areas and the communities have changed dramatically. In large part due to previous people being priced out due to shortage of housing supply to accommodate all the new people moving out.
So the resistance to changes to the physical aesthetic of the city has in fact led to massive changes in quality of life and groups living in the city.
Yup. But the painted ladies are so charming!
I'm kidding, but man oh man is SF a microcosm of NIMBYism run amok. Trying to preserve single family homes has run most of the families out.
I’m from the perfect “ NIMBY” suburb. ( Upper Arlington Ohio.) An aging, upper middle class, low density, etc. ) They’re in the process of tearing down an old retail strip plaza, and building a high rise of residential/ commercial properties. No low income units. Kinda sad.
Interesting thing Josh mentioned that gets missed alot is that home owners benefit from looser zoning, since their land is worth more if you can build more on it, but condo owners lose out since they are nearly a pure play against housing scarcity.
I have wondered if you see different voting patterns on these issues in cities that are high density renters, vs high density owners, given the incentives at that point are totally flipped.
Look at Josh giving Gavin Newsom a little praise (sorry, couldn’t resist). 😁