Somehow we've gotten into a cultural state where everyone expects the place they live to stay exactly as it is for their lifetime. It's totally implausible and destructive, but people fight for it anyways, even when it isn't in their financial interest.
> Somehow we've gotten into a cultural state where everyone expects the place they live to stay exactly as it is for their lifetime.
I think this is just human nature.
> It's totally implausible and destructive, but people fight for it anyways, even when it isn't in their financial interest.
I disagree. Simply look at Europe or historical districts in the US. Its definitely not implausible, and only destructive to new citizens who want to live there (that don't have an existing vested interest in the area).
All politics is local, as they say. If local citizens want to keep their neighborhood the same, that's up to them, and its their choice.
Probably, but I suspect we can trace the triumph of NIMBYism to the baby-boom reaching the "get off my lawn" age.
>I disagree. Simply look at Europe or historical districts in the US. Its definitely not implausible, and only destructive to new citizens who want to live there (that don't have an existing vested interest in the area).
If the area being "preserved" was limited in some way, then sure. But the reality is that new housing is simply illegal in every positive population growth city in the country. You cannot live in a city as a young person without displacing someone else because we've legislated it that way, and that's insane.
Las Vegas? To name one. High population growth. A lot of building.
Doubtful. The majority of people hate change, and that has probably always been true. A large population influx inevitably causes change, both because of the number of people and because they are always culturally different to some extent. A lot of this used to get wrapped up in nationalism/racism. See US history of prejudice against the Irish, Italians, Poles, etc etc etc. Heck, we even had legal immigration caps on Chinese people.
The Boomers might just be the first to resist changes via zoning and regulation rather than more direct action.
> the reality is that new housing is simply illegal in every positive population growth city in the country
is just not true. There's plenty of greenfield building going on in the metropolitan areas of Denver, Boise, Salt Lake City, Vegas, St. George, Phoenix, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Northern Virginia, Raleigh, Atlanta, and South Florida. These are areas that have all shown positive population growth.
I am trying to find a polite way to indicate that I find this to be a completely absurd reversal of the historical trend. Only within the last few generations, certainly within the last century, has it become so common to relocate far and/or frequently instead of most men living the whole of their lives within a day or two’s ride of their childhood home.
Read Albion's Seed -- the Borderers/Scotch-Irish were poor and exiled, following the model you describe, but the Cavaliers were both downwardly-mobile and eager to create ideological utopias, and the Puritans and Quakers were just looking for places to build utopia -- they were doing well enough economically back in England.