New and Old #170
Friday roundup and commentary
The YIMBY Movement Is for Conservatives, Too, National Review, Luca Gattoni-Celli, June 30, 2024
This is an important piece:
The truth is, YIMBY is not partisan, and urbanism does not require any notable ideological commitments. However, the YIMBY policy agenda boils down to deregulation. And our vision for neighborhoods with tight communities, abundant starter homes, and thriving young families is arguably small-c conservative, a return to traditional American land use.
Most individual YIMBYs and urbanists are politically progressive because cities tend to be. As the YIMBY movement emerged in San Francisco a decade ago, it caught flack from the city’s far left tenants’ rights organizers.
That last point is made in different words by a commenter, which I’m also going to quote:
What conservatives need to understand about YIMBYs’ image is that the biggest housing problems are happening in ultra blue cities where you need to bring up racism and other woke talking points to get anyone with power to pay attention. This is a tactic to attain the goal of deregulating housing, not an integral part of the movement itself. If YIMBYs were focused in conservative areas they’d be advertising how deregulating housing cuts government overreach and helps young couples start families.
This is an issue that Republicans could use to attract young, normal voters. I've been able to convince several friends who have never voted R in their lives that the anti-regulation candidate in their local election (the YIMBY) is the person that will help them own a home. These people would never vote for Trump, but I bet local and state Republicans would do a lot better in cities if they used housing deregulation to appeal to these kinds of voters. Sadly, conservatives often ally with socialists complaining about developer profits instead.
That is basically what I try to explain here: the arguments that are used to pitch pro-housing ideas to different constituencies are different, but they’re arguments. They’re not the actual substance of the policy. Would YIMBY goals help Black folks? Yes. Would they help young families? Yes. White and Black families alike? Of course! LGBT people? Yeah. Etc. etc. The number of different pitches that can be made for YIMBY suggest to me that it’s just common-sense and would basically be good for everyone.
More Luca, where he notes that YIMBYs are more likely to be romantics than policy wonks:
YIMBYs’ favorite neighborhoods are streetcar suburbs built a century or more ago. We overanalyze street cross sections, dreaming of the day that America’s kids can safely play and bike in front of their houses. And we commiserate about hoping to buy a home or start a family.
The YIMBY movement is an attempt to rebuild the American dream of a comfortable middle-class existence with a stable family life and good friends. I could call that aspiration many things, yet the first term that comes to my mind is conservative.
Read the whole thing.
While we wait for apartments to someday materialize above the local CVS store, let’s keep in mind that even in the heyday of the streetcar era, multistory mixed-use buildings were the exception and not the norm along most neighborhood Main Streets. Most residential density wasn’t found on commercial streets, but instead along the more numerous side streets where apartments, rowhouses, and detached houses mingled.
While single-story retail buildings are highly visible, they’re rare in the grand scheme of things: only 4.3% of DC’s total land area is used by commercial or mixed-use buildings of any height. Contrast that to the 23% of DC’s land area that’s zoned single-family-only, and the real opportunity to add many more housing units becomes clear.
This is an interesting historical bit following a financial analysis of these single-story chain buildings, which, Chung explains, provide very favorable leases to commercial landlords. In other words, they’re not inherently more valuable, but there’s a trickiness in mixing uses and tenant types in single structures, especially financially untested local businesses, and so the abstract high value of that piece of land is canceled out by the costs of actually accessing it.
Chung is a real estate professional, and while critics of urbanists and YIMBYs think we’re all real estate shills, the fact is we could probably use more people who really understand development, construction, and property markets.
This part of town was never exactly the height of urban design; it had long been sprawly, car-oriented, and not great for walking. But the redevelopment gave it another character entirely. Before, the businesses there were destinations you could walk to if you wanted. Now, an enormous concrete retaining wall was built outside the Chick-fil-A, closing it off from sidewalk access like a fortress to fast food capitalism. The place had become so hostile to anyone outside a car that no one was going to get in there on foot. It was not a destination, but a place meant to be driven through — which is to say, no place at all.
Bolotnikova describes growing up here, in what was then a landscape much like the ones I often write about here: older, diverse suburbs with a patchwork of aging commercial structures full of interesting, local, often immigrant-owned businesses and restaurants. Places like Rockville or Wheaton in Maryland’s D.C. suburbs, or parts of Falls Church and Arlington in Virginia. They’re plain and a little worse for wear, but they’re complex, and alive, and they’re built at a smaller, more human scale, even if they’re mostly designed for motoring.
I think the difference between that sort of place and this drive-thru hellscape is basically as dramatic as the difference between a real urban core and an aging but interesting old suburb.
Bolotnikova quotes Charles Marohn, who, unsurprisingly, dislike these mega-drive-thrus:
“Drive-throughs have been around a long time,” Charles Marohn, a former traffic engineer and well-known critic of America’s car-dependent urban planning, told me. Today, he said, “they’re becoming bigger and more obnoxious.”
This is a fun if depressing piece, and you should give it a read. But I’m going to make one related point: remember the days of drive-ins? Those old-school places where you drove to the restaurant, parked, and had someone bring your food out? And you might actually sit in your car and eat it? It was like an event, just to go eat in your car.
There’s something here like familiarity breeds contempt. We don’t realize or appreciate what a powerful, fearsome thing the car is, what an expensive thing, what a wondrous thing. And we likewise fail to appreciate the vitality of the worn-out commercial strips we sleepwalk, or sleepdrive, through behind the wheel. Like Luca sort of articulates in that first piece here, a lot of being an urbanist is being open to wonder and serendipity. And the policy comes after that.
This is the opera my wife and I saw back in May, and had mixed feelings about. Especially over this costume choice:
WNO’s Turandot also features a new Zambello production to accompany the new ending, with sets by Wilson Chin and costumes by Linda Cho that vaguely evoke various 20th-century totalitarian regimes. This led to the grim spectacle of a joyous dance by young women in drab gray clothes and red armbands, a Shostakovich-esque irony. A tangle of pipes and stairs evocative of a factory, or perhaps a prison, made up the main set, creating a closed-off feeling that only opened up when Turandot’s heart does the same in the finale.
However, the new ending to this famously unfinished opera was something we liked, and Malone drew particularly attention to its success. I don’t necessarily expect a piece of opera criticism to interest you, but it’s a very readable and specific review if it’s at all your thing.
Related Reading:
Thank you for reading! Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to help support this newsletter. You’ll get a weekly subscribers-only piece, plus full access to the archive: over 1,000 pieces and growing. And you’ll help ensure more like this!
Will the YIMBYs turn into NIMBYs when the neighborhood begins to reek and rot?
Thanks for sharing the Turandot review. That was fascinating!