In my neighborhood there is an abandoned supermarket that's been empty and blighted for 9 or 10 years and yard signs all over protesting the owner's plan to build a mixed use apartment building. As if the abandoned, blighted supermarket and parking lot is an improvement! I often wonder if the apartment had been there and a crazy developer had announced plans to tear down the apartment building to build a blighted parking lot, whether the same people would have put up signs protesting THAT.
Yep. There's a certain self-awareness I think a lot of NIMBYs lack. Some have actually bad reasons but a lot of normal people who don't like change could ask themselves these questions.
There are people in my town who oppose a certain housing plan because "it's in a flood plain." This is technically true, but what's currently in that part of the flood plain is A PARKING LOT, the literal worst stormwater management system ever conceived, and also nobody is allowed to park there anyway.
Apparently the people building the housing, the people buying the housing, and the sophisticated corporations insuring the housing based on actual data just aren't as equipped to make risk assessments as their busybody neighbors who just want to preserve the historic parking lot!
This piece along with a proposed MD sate law (Housing Expansion and Affordability Act of 2024) have me thinking about how people react to change. There are some elements of what I call "toxic nostalgia" for days gone by, but I think it's a more fundamental counterintuitive issue of allowing incremental change. The NIMBY-YIMBY argument always sets up to be binary; nothing or large scale change. I don't think either extreme is healthy for places. If we allow easy smaller change it will be more incremental and easier to accept, but you have to allow that. The question is how to implement this? This is an area that I have some cognitive dissonance with the bottoms up approach as that often bogs down with the NIMBY arguments. But then again the other end of the spectrum by imposing affordable housing anywhere (the proposed MD law) is a top down blunt instrument that will likely have unintended consequences. I keep coming back to making as much incremental stuff by right so that there is very low friction for both implementation and resistance. But residents and our legislators have a huge disdain for by right development and even when there is development that is by right, there are multiple required input sessions that bog things down. Ultimately, I like how you framed this, basically just take a deep breath and relax, the world won't come to an end. Maybe another way to put it is "pearl clutchers go home!" ;-)
Yeah. In theory I agree with the incremental approach - a little bit everywhere all the time. But both because of NIMBYism and financing and some building code stuff and parking, development is just sort of set up to be big. I think ratcheting down the scale of things is a huge part of good urbanism. But I also recognize that within the current system, it *is* big or nothing, and I don't like the idea of doing nothing until the rules are all just right. I think the legal and regulatory reform is picking up steam, which is good, and along with that I really think persuasion is important. There are so many people out there who've never given a thought to any of this.
Periodically I chime in to suggest that YIMBY-NIMBY dynamics can differ widely across the country. What's true of the I-95 corridor or the Bay Area might not always be true of smaller places in the interior. In my hometown tons of classic mid-century architecture that people treasured has been demolished in recent years to build generic glass boxes that have been a loss for everyone in the community except developers, while the former buildings remain fondly remembered. I agree that the changes on the photos you posted from Twitter are for the better, but a significant chunk of the time these projects can be about replacing something charming and historic with the parking lots and generic low-slung stores.
I don't favor all new development as a matter of doctrine, but I'm talking about a subset of developments. We had this in my town, where a historic hotel almost crumbled because people insisted it had to be exactly the way it was and stymied any proposal that would actually pencil in today's economy. There are reasons why historic old buildings are expensive or difficult to restore (including zoning rules and parking requirements) and I'd deal with those too. But yeah, I take your point.
There's definitely no shortage anywhere of sticks-in-the-mud who just want to complain! And many of them will be sentimental about the new construction if you just give them a couple of decades...
Well, highways are different also because the state actually builds those. So the idea of minding your own business and letting people develop private properties doesn't apply. But of course I do also think you should judge things on the merits, and highway expansion at this point is generally going to be without merit in my view.
Love this post (and the development)
In my neighborhood there is an abandoned supermarket that's been empty and blighted for 9 or 10 years and yard signs all over protesting the owner's plan to build a mixed use apartment building. As if the abandoned, blighted supermarket and parking lot is an improvement! I often wonder if the apartment had been there and a crazy developer had announced plans to tear down the apartment building to build a blighted parking lot, whether the same people would have put up signs protesting THAT.
Yep. There's a certain self-awareness I think a lot of NIMBYs lack. Some have actually bad reasons but a lot of normal people who don't like change could ask themselves these questions.
There are people in my town who oppose a certain housing plan because "it's in a flood plain." This is technically true, but what's currently in that part of the flood plain is A PARKING LOT, the literal worst stormwater management system ever conceived, and also nobody is allowed to park there anyway.
Apparently the people building the housing, the people buying the housing, and the sophisticated corporations insuring the housing based on actual data just aren't as equipped to make risk assessments as their busybody neighbors who just want to preserve the historic parking lot!
This piece along with a proposed MD sate law (Housing Expansion and Affordability Act of 2024) have me thinking about how people react to change. There are some elements of what I call "toxic nostalgia" for days gone by, but I think it's a more fundamental counterintuitive issue of allowing incremental change. The NIMBY-YIMBY argument always sets up to be binary; nothing or large scale change. I don't think either extreme is healthy for places. If we allow easy smaller change it will be more incremental and easier to accept, but you have to allow that. The question is how to implement this? This is an area that I have some cognitive dissonance with the bottoms up approach as that often bogs down with the NIMBY arguments. But then again the other end of the spectrum by imposing affordable housing anywhere (the proposed MD law) is a top down blunt instrument that will likely have unintended consequences. I keep coming back to making as much incremental stuff by right so that there is very low friction for both implementation and resistance. But residents and our legislators have a huge disdain for by right development and even when there is development that is by right, there are multiple required input sessions that bog things down. Ultimately, I like how you framed this, basically just take a deep breath and relax, the world won't come to an end. Maybe another way to put it is "pearl clutchers go home!" ;-)
Yeah. In theory I agree with the incremental approach - a little bit everywhere all the time. But both because of NIMBYism and financing and some building code stuff and parking, development is just sort of set up to be big. I think ratcheting down the scale of things is a huge part of good urbanism. But I also recognize that within the current system, it *is* big or nothing, and I don't like the idea of doing nothing until the rules are all just right. I think the legal and regulatory reform is picking up steam, which is good, and along with that I really think persuasion is important. There are so many people out there who've never given a thought to any of this.
Periodically I chime in to suggest that YIMBY-NIMBY dynamics can differ widely across the country. What's true of the I-95 corridor or the Bay Area might not always be true of smaller places in the interior. In my hometown tons of classic mid-century architecture that people treasured has been demolished in recent years to build generic glass boxes that have been a loss for everyone in the community except developers, while the former buildings remain fondly remembered. I agree that the changes on the photos you posted from Twitter are for the better, but a significant chunk of the time these projects can be about replacing something charming and historic with the parking lots and generic low-slung stores.
I don't favor all new development as a matter of doctrine, but I'm talking about a subset of developments. We had this in my town, where a historic hotel almost crumbled because people insisted it had to be exactly the way it was and stymied any proposal that would actually pencil in today's economy. There are reasons why historic old buildings are expensive or difficult to restore (including zoning rules and parking requirements) and I'd deal with those too. But yeah, I take your point.
There's definitely no shortage anywhere of sticks-in-the-mud who just want to complain! And many of them will be sentimental about the new construction if you just give them a couple of decades...
Well, highways are different also because the state actually builds those. So the idea of minding your own business and letting people develop private properties doesn't apply. But of course I do also think you should judge things on the merits, and highway expansion at this point is generally going to be without merit in my view.