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Comment by robotrout | Hacker News Reader

A large influx of people into your area is almost guaranteed to lower your quality of life, either by increased crime, or just by increased congestion, increased noise, decreased property values, and possible demographic shifts that marginalize your culture.

To minimize these concerns in the way you do seems non-productive and can only lead to more polarization.

These types of initiatives stem from Agenda 21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21 proponents that, while advocating many admirable things, tend to completely ignore the feelings of the populations they are intent on engineering a radically different future for.

I am saddened that the dream we all shared of allowing small towns to once again flourish, because knowledge workers could be located anywhere on the planet, are being quickly forgotten in favor of ultra-dense citiscapes.

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If you're worried infill will cause cultural degradation, then perhaps your culture is not well suited to centralisation. That is, not suited to city living. Why else use Tokyo as an example of the success of infill? Japan is famous for it's low (petty at least) crime rate

The point of decreased property values is even mentioned in the article as desirable and here you are saying it isn't. The objective here is to make housing affordable, not the preservation of wealth centres.

This is the definition of "vaguely racist": "increased crime... and possible demographic shifts that marginalize your culture"

Don't want none of them other demographics moving here to increase the crime, and marginalize the culture.

If you look at any crime heat map of a city, you will note, hopefully with no surprise, that crime rate is inversely proportional to income distribution. If low income housing enters an area, the crime will go up. You may be fine with that, but you have to imagine that the already established residents of that area might not wish their crime rate to increase. Calling those concerns selfish is just name calling.

Yeah, You'll notice I called what you said racist, specifically because your statement didn't tie what you were saying to income, but instead to "demographics".

“Demographics can refer to any subdivision of a population, it’s not a synonym for “race”.

Is that bad? If someone lives in a community that is 90% their race, with their neighbors listening to their kind of music, engaging in their kind of activities, going to the same kind of events, not wanting to become a 10% minority? It would be like a Chinese person not wanting to move to India or vice versa.

. . . It wasn't, though? He could easily be talking about Midwesterners moving there, too. He never brought up race, and thinking "Increased crime rates!? Demographic shifts by [Anything can go here, try "Neoconservatives" or "Neoliberals" or "Social Conservatives" or "Fiscally Conservative Liberals"]??!? HE MUST BE THINKING ABOUT [RACE]!"

I think they're not the racist one here.

They could've been, but they weren't.

I wasn't calling it "explicitly racist", I was calling it "vaguely racist" because, while we all new what they were implying, They didn't come out and say it. Ergo "vaguely racist".

Nobody is talking about "neoconservative demographic shifts" causing problems in cities in this article. The demographic referred to is "poor people".

But please continue being intentionally obtuse for the purpose of calling me a racist.

> They could've been, but they weren't.

> I wasn't calling it "explicitly racist", I was calling it "vaguely racist" because, while we all new what they were implying, They didn't come out and say it. Ergo "vaguely racist".

You're saying that "poor people" can't include Caucasians and Asians, then?

Midwesterners are quite notable for being both neoconservatives and poor, along with (generally) being majority-white. He could have easily been referring to them. What made you associate "Poor people" and "Racist"? Poor people are a demographic.

> Midwesterners are quite notable for being both neoconservatives and poor

No, they aren't, especially the former.

They very much are - Reagan's loved and Cheney even moreso in the Midwest. Both of which are notable neocons. [0]

And economically, they're on average more poor than a lot of areas. See "County Level Poverty." [1] And if you're comparing wages between the two, Midwesterners make significantly less on average than those on the West Coast.

Although I was moreout giving an example and sticking with it for the sake of the main argument to begin with.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism

[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rur...

Thanks, those obvious points really needed references. And come on... SF is the last place a Midwestern neocon would consider!

I actually thought of rich ultra-competitive types (or "techies") pushing out locals.

Yeah, except that the quality of tech jobs is such that it does the opposite of those things.

This person is not describing gentrification, in fact, they're describing being avidly opposed to the opposite of gentrification.

Your critics are correct that you have failed in your attempt to read my mind. You should not have needed to, so let me be more clear.

Demographic shifts forced on an area by an unelected bureaucracy are almost guaranteed to be detrimental to the lifestyle the residents enjoyed prior to the shift. Whether that is gentrification pushing up property tax, low income housing pushing up crime rate, large influx of practitioners of non-tolerant religions who verbally and physically assault resident women dressed to western standards, or even large influx of young western professionals who don't respect the religion that was previously dominant in the area before.

Neighborhoods are a sum of their parts, and those who choose to live in them, choose them because they like them the way they are.

Overriding the wishes of those people to push your own agenda can be necessary for a city, perhaps, but should never be dismissive to the point of blaming and shaming the original residents to assuage your own guilt.

>This person is not describing gentrification

Are you sure?

> A large influx of people into your area is almost guaranteed to [lead to] possible demographic shifts that marginalize your culture.

Gentrification sure sounds like an instance of that, and I've been hearing about techies pushing out hippies and artists for about as long as I've been old enough to pay attention. The fear of cultural change in SF is a constant enough thread in SF that a knee-jerk reaction that it's racial seems like an uncharitable reading.

> I am saddened that the dream we all shared of allowing small towns to once again flourish, because knowledge workers could be located anywhere on the planet, are being quickly forgotten in favor of ultra-dense citiscapes.

It was always a futile dream, mostly propagated by people who themselves enjoy small towns and certainly not "shared by all". It turns out that many knowledge workers actually like big cities for the leisure options, health services, people and neighbourhood diversity, much bigger selection of potential life partners, and high availability of jobs.

Circular? Remote workers means, there aren't more jobs just because you're in a city. As for neighborhoods, an expanding cityscape of just more apartment blocks means no neighborhoods at all.

As for leisure options, a beach shared by 1M other people is not much of an option. Living in Colorado has orders of magnitude more leisure options for instance.

Isn’t that why Colorado cities are some of the hottest markets to be in right now? I’ve heard a lot of complaining from people in Denver, Boulder, Aspen, etc.

If the lot your house sits on in rezoned to allow for taller buildings your property’s value will very likely go up.

It is definitely less conveneient to have to move out of your house and wait for something bigger to be built.

Cities are built on network effects. It's the suburbs specifically that are conceived and designed such that growth and diversity destroys value.

> A large influx of people into your area is almost guaranteed to lower your quality of life

Speak for yourself. My quality of life has been very positively correlated with population density. It's why I'm settling down on the east side of San Francisco, and I'm eagerly awaiting the new development there.

...guaranteed to lower your quality of life...

This is why many people (not me!) support draconian immigration restrictions.

I assume you are talking about Japan and Israels immigration restrictions. I support their right to them, personally, but I know there are many Americans who riot and march because those countries restrict their immigration so carefully.

No, I was thinking of an American politician who has been in the news quite a bit, who is a big opponent of immigration. He really represents the values of his NIMBY supporters.

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