>> Particularly frustrating is the argument that economic growth, development, and newcomers — the very things that ailing small towns desperately need — are actually the root of their problems.
One of the major complications of this argument is that for the last 50 years, the suburban development machine has meant that the primary way ailing small towns get new development is via soulless stroads, chain restaurants, and McMansions, instead of the charming Main Streets that have been zoned out of existence.
So, when they’re protecting some stupid old hotel, they’re actually grasping for the type of charming small town development that feels hopelessly out of reach.
I wish YIMBYs had more to say about aesthetics. If they could have some sort of policy answer to the fear that development will be ugly and soulless, I think they’d make more gains than they realize.
I feel like Marcus’s complaint, combined with your linked article, really just leads us into a sort of “NIMBY-22” mess:
1. The NIMBYs don’t like new buildings.
2. The buildings are built that way because of prior NIMBY complaints and regulations about stuff like massing and FAR.
3. Pacifying the NIMBYs’ latest complaint will maybe get a couple things built until the next complaint.
Something about this dynamic has to change. Because in the long run, they’re still winning. The odiously ideological/partisan conclusion I’m forced to reach here is that they’ll keep winning until we take the fight to them and stop playing their game.
I want to force every NIMBY to sit through a 5 minute presentation on why every building they supposedly fucking love is now illegal to build under their zoning regime, and how fast the original building was built vs how long it would take today.
I was watching the series Resident Alien, about an alien (from outer space; I wish I didn't have to specify that) who passes as a human is trying to figure out how to get off the planet. It's based in a small Colorado mountain town that is struggling so much they can't keep one regular primary care doctor in town. It's fun with Alan Tudyk, if not terribly logical. Then in the middle of the show lands the standard NIMBY plot of the (rather inept) mayor bringing in developers to build a resort, and everyone trying to convince the mayor's bossy wife to be anti- resort to convince her husband to stop.
Pretty standard NIMBY shit. I only mention it because it also brings in another tired trope. The protagonist is Native American, and so the ideas of community and family as rooted in stasis and never building anything new is sealed with the moral force of vague pro-indigenous sentiment.
I think there are couple features of NIMBY movies that actually provide useful lessons for us pro housing folks. One is that often the people being afflicted by the potential development aren't the owners but are renters (the classic small business being kicked out by the developers). The other is that a different classic plot is the owner is being forced to sell to the greedy developer because her small business is failing, and the help of the townfolk turn it around.
I think the lesson is that what people are unhappy with is the reality of what's profitable to invest in. People want local small business -- restaurants, bookstore, toy shops -- to be more successful than they are, and people want service provision to out of town rich people to be less profitable. And more generally people don't like that local investments need to compete with investment generally and with the interest rate.
As you say one of the recurring plot points, that someone is being "forced to sell" for lots of money, speaks to people even if the implication is that the current owner is being made materially wealthy.
"My bespoke small business should be profitable even if nobody wants to purchase my goods/services" is unfortunately doing a lot of work in folk economic thinking.
It's not just that the owner wants it to stay in business, but that everyone else does too. People are unhappy that the small business is unable to compete with Amazon or Starbucks or Walmart, even when it's they themselves that don't shop there.
I think there are two possible explanations here. One is that people want the _option_ provided by the small business but are unwilling to pay for the option value in addition to the good itself and don't understand why options have to cost money. The other is that people face a coordination problem and would like to not shop at Walmart or Amazon but need to coordinate with everyone else to do so.
My father was happy when Walmart moved to my hometown, a town of 35,000 in southeast New Mexico. He found the local hardware store was charging a significantly higher price for something he needed, and was happy about the savings.
Meanwhile, my two sisters refuse to set foot in a Walmart. Neither is wealthy, but both are ideologically anti-business, convinced that businesses steal from ordinary people all the time.
(1) I think is probably an important part of it, but (2) seems less likely. There might be a coordination problem to bring small businesses back, but you don’t need everyone else to shop at a small business to shop there yourself!
There's a YIMBY episode of "Star Trek Voyager," of all things. In the episode "11:59" there is an extended flashback to 1999 where a ancestor of Captain Janeway persuades a stubborn small bookstore owner to sell his store to a developer. It's a pretty nuanced episode, the bookstore owner is sympathetic, but he ultimately realizes that he is living in the past. Every other store owner in the area has already accepted the developer's offer and are angry at the bookstore owner because if he doesn't sell the developer will move the project elsewhere and they won't get any money.
I think the episode works for a few reasons. Since it is a flashback, we get to see positive results the developer brings to the community (Captain Janeway explains the the complex was later used as a prototype for the first Mars colony) instead of them being purely speculative. Showing the rest of the community as being on board with and excited for the development also helps. It is also implied that the bookstore owner will be able to open a new store in the developer's complex, so it isn't a total loss for the past either.
I don't think there's anything intrinsic to what makes good cinema here. Perhaps the most iconic Christmas movie of all time is a YIMBY movie – It's A Wonderful Life! George Bailey is a housing developer. The villain, Mr. Potter, wants to stop him from constructing new high-quality market rate housing in Bedfor Falls so the residents have to stay in his overpriced slum. And the scene where George and Mary welcome the Martinis to their new Bailey Park home has to be one of the most effective depictions of the highly personal and concentrated benefits of housing in the movies. I think this isn't recognized as much now because Bailey Park is a 1940s suburban tract, not a dense urban development, but it's very much a feel-good story about building valuable things to enrich your community.
"And indeed, Broockman, Elmendorf, and Kalla found that voters are often evaluating housing policies based on their associations with various symbols like “cities, tall buildings, developers, various government entities, and the groups who might live in new housing.”"
Yea, I feel like the "groups" is a big part of it. THOSE people aren't part of our community.
>> Particularly frustrating is the argument that economic growth, development, and newcomers — the very things that ailing small towns desperately need — are actually the root of their problems.
One of the major complications of this argument is that for the last 50 years, the suburban development machine has meant that the primary way ailing small towns get new development is via soulless stroads, chain restaurants, and McMansions, instead of the charming Main Streets that have been zoned out of existence.
So, when they’re protecting some stupid old hotel, they’re actually grasping for the type of charming small town development that feels hopelessly out of reach.
I wish YIMBYs had more to say about aesthetics. If they could have some sort of policy answer to the fear that development will be ugly and soulless, I think they’d make more gains than they realize.
We have! I talk about it a bit here: https://www.vox.com/22650806/gentrification-affordable-housing-low-income-housing
But also here: https://archive.ph/xOUx1
I feel like Marcus’s complaint, combined with your linked article, really just leads us into a sort of “NIMBY-22” mess:
1. The NIMBYs don’t like new buildings.
2. The buildings are built that way because of prior NIMBY complaints and regulations about stuff like massing and FAR.
3. Pacifying the NIMBYs’ latest complaint will maybe get a couple things built until the next complaint.
Something about this dynamic has to change. Because in the long run, they’re still winning. The odiously ideological/partisan conclusion I’m forced to reach here is that they’ll keep winning until we take the fight to them and stop playing their game.
I think that’s barking up the wrong tree.
I want to force every NIMBY to sit through a 5 minute presentation on why every building they supposedly fucking love is now illegal to build under their zoning regime, and how fast the original building was built vs how long it would take today.
I was watching the series Resident Alien, about an alien (from outer space; I wish I didn't have to specify that) who passes as a human is trying to figure out how to get off the planet. It's based in a small Colorado mountain town that is struggling so much they can't keep one regular primary care doctor in town. It's fun with Alan Tudyk, if not terribly logical. Then in the middle of the show lands the standard NIMBY plot of the (rather inept) mayor bringing in developers to build a resort, and everyone trying to convince the mayor's bossy wife to be anti- resort to convince her husband to stop.
Pretty standard NIMBY shit. I only mention it because it also brings in another tired trope. The protagonist is Native American, and so the ideas of community and family as rooted in stasis and never building anything new is sealed with the moral force of vague pro-indigenous sentiment.
I think there are couple features of NIMBY movies that actually provide useful lessons for us pro housing folks. One is that often the people being afflicted by the potential development aren't the owners but are renters (the classic small business being kicked out by the developers). The other is that a different classic plot is the owner is being forced to sell to the greedy developer because her small business is failing, and the help of the townfolk turn it around.
I think the lesson is that what people are unhappy with is the reality of what's profitable to invest in. People want local small business -- restaurants, bookstore, toy shops -- to be more successful than they are, and people want service provision to out of town rich people to be less profitable. And more generally people don't like that local investments need to compete with investment generally and with the interest rate.
As you say one of the recurring plot points, that someone is being "forced to sell" for lots of money, speaks to people even if the implication is that the current owner is being made materially wealthy.
"My bespoke small business should be profitable even if nobody wants to purchase my goods/services" is unfortunately doing a lot of work in folk economic thinking.
It's not just that the owner wants it to stay in business, but that everyone else does too. People are unhappy that the small business is unable to compete with Amazon or Starbucks or Walmart, even when it's they themselves that don't shop there.
I think there are two possible explanations here. One is that people want the _option_ provided by the small business but are unwilling to pay for the option value in addition to the good itself and don't understand why options have to cost money. The other is that people face a coordination problem and would like to not shop at Walmart or Amazon but need to coordinate with everyone else to do so.
My father was happy when Walmart moved to my hometown, a town of 35,000 in southeast New Mexico. He found the local hardware store was charging a significantly higher price for something he needed, and was happy about the savings.
Meanwhile, my two sisters refuse to set foot in a Walmart. Neither is wealthy, but both are ideologically anti-business, convinced that businesses steal from ordinary people all the time.
Very plausible that everyone is right here.
(1) I think is probably an important part of it, but (2) seems less likely. There might be a coordination problem to bring small businesses back, but you don’t need everyone else to shop at a small business to shop there yourself!
There's a YIMBY episode of "Star Trek Voyager," of all things. In the episode "11:59" there is an extended flashback to 1999 where a ancestor of Captain Janeway persuades a stubborn small bookstore owner to sell his store to a developer. It's a pretty nuanced episode, the bookstore owner is sympathetic, but he ultimately realizes that he is living in the past. Every other store owner in the area has already accepted the developer's offer and are angry at the bookstore owner because if he doesn't sell the developer will move the project elsewhere and they won't get any money.
I think the episode works for a few reasons. Since it is a flashback, we get to see positive results the developer brings to the community (Captain Janeway explains the the complex was later used as a prototype for the first Mars colony) instead of them being purely speculative. Showing the rest of the community as being on board with and excited for the development also helps. It is also implied that the bookstore owner will be able to open a new store in the developer's complex, so it isn't a total loss for the past either.
I don't think there's anything intrinsic to what makes good cinema here. Perhaps the most iconic Christmas movie of all time is a YIMBY movie – It's A Wonderful Life! George Bailey is a housing developer. The villain, Mr. Potter, wants to stop him from constructing new high-quality market rate housing in Bedfor Falls so the residents have to stay in his overpriced slum. And the scene where George and Mary welcome the Martinis to their new Bailey Park home has to be one of the most effective depictions of the highly personal and concentrated benefits of housing in the movies. I think this isn't recognized as much now because Bailey Park is a 1940s suburban tract, not a dense urban development, but it's very much a feel-good story about building valuable things to enrich your community.
"And indeed, Broockman, Elmendorf, and Kalla found that voters are often evaluating housing policies based on their associations with various symbols like “cities, tall buildings, developers, various government entities, and the groups who might live in new housing.”"
Yea, I feel like the "groups" is a big part of it. THOSE people aren't part of our community.