Hacker News Reader

Comment by Lammy | Hacker News Reader

Remember to read "protecting the environment" as "protecting our segregation" when anyone opposes constructing housing or transportation of any kind. From the summary of the linked slides:

> "Recommendations: Halt work on sites for Benicia and Vacaville-Fairfield. Develop plans which better serve the majority of residents along the Capitol Corridor Route"

Now, I wonder what "the majority of residents" in Benicia might want? (or, might not want?)

https://belonging.berkeley.edu/racial-segregation-san-franci...

"Rio Vista and Benicia are the two most segregated, and heavily white cities of Solano County."

View on HN

NIMBYism is just Conservatism bereft of any kind of principles or values.

I thought the bay area is very liberal? Japan which is a very conservative country, both in absolute terms and as a general philosophy, has very lax zoning rules and many trains running literally thorough people back yards. So I wouldn't say it is related.

The Bay Area is many things to many different types of people. Unfortunately it is also very segregated: http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?bayarea

From what I've experienced, the majority of the Bay Area is very liberal up until the point it actually costs them something - then it quickly becomes a conservative paradise.

People will shout and scream and boycott to make sure you can use whatever bathroom you choose. Or make sure that everyone respects your choice of pronouns.

But ask those same people to build more housing and provide ample public transit? Ask those same people to close all private schools and force people to use public school lottery systems that mingle rich, middle-class, and poor?

Absolutely never. They isolate into their communities and tell the folks trying to get in that their town is now full.

You’re definitely correct that NIMBYism is a form of conservatism (in the classic sense of the word), but what I find really interesting is how effectively NIMBYism crosses party lines. I’ve noticed both very liberal and very conservative people will both be anti-development, but their rationales will change. The conservative will raise objections around things like “neighborhood character” and “small businesses”, while liberals will raise objections around “the environment” or “displacing disadvantaged communities”. Either way, the resultant viewpoint is the same: everything is perfect the way it is right now and nothing should ever change.

In support of your point, Margaret Atwood (the author of The Handmaid's Tale) is famously NIMBY [0].

[0] https://globalnews.ca/news/3707723/margaret-atwood-condo-con...

On the other hand the article calls "8-storey 16-unit building" a "modest condo development". I'm not NIMBY, and I would be opposed to that.

Well then you are NIMBY, just for some things and not others, like every other person.

OK, where should those people live instead?

When you're a NIMBY, depending on your political persuasion they might say:

* I don't care, just not here

* One of the housing developments in other towns, which I don't oppose

* Working from home is the future, why do people need to move here anyway?

* Further out, served by improved public transport infrastructure.

* Homelessness is really more of a mental health services problem. So the real solution here is healthcare reform.

* The problem is billion-dollar corporations all centralising in one place for no good reason. We should spread the jobs out.

* Who says the population has to grow at all? Capitalism is the problem, the endless growth it demands isn't possible.

* The solution is a bay-area-wide master plan to deliver an integrated response, addressing our current and future needs for jobs, homes, schools, equality, desegregation, mass transit, homeless and mental health services, and a response to the climate crisis.

Needless to say, these are well beyond the power of someone building a few condos. But the NIMBY's alternative is only to assuage their conscience, so realism isn't important.

If only these meetings included the kids who don't know their parents because mom and dad have commutes where they leave at 6 AM and get home at 8 PM. But the problem with "consulting with the community" is it doesn't give a voice to the people who might _like_ to live in Berkeley, but are stuck commuting from Stockton because they're not millionaires.

Yep won’t some please think of the children.

There's also a whole range of possibilities between "people don't have a place to live" and "oh, let's build sixteen 8-storey buildings".

> these are well beyond the power of someone building a few condos.

They are probably within the power, but they really don't care. It's cheaper and faster to build a few apartment blocks in a limited space (usually putting a strain on existing infrastructure — from water and sewage to roads to kindergartens and schools) than to invest in building out.

Unfortunately, as I see it in trends around the world, this is what's happening in almost every country. Why create a "master plan to deliver an integrated response" when you can plop down a few apartment buildings and be don with it.

> They are probably within the power, but they really don't care. It's cheaper and faster to build a few apartment blocks in a limited space (usually putting a strain on existing infrastructure — from water and sewage to roads to kindergartens and schools) than to invest in building out.

The reason we have gotten to this point is building out instead of up, sprawl instead of vertical expansion. Surely the solution is not more sprawl.

There's definitely a sweet spot in between.

It’s a chicken and egg problem: why build infrastructure that is not currently needed. And if try to attach the infrastructure construction to the housing construction, it complicates the process. This reduces supply.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

> And if try to attach the infrastructure construction to the housing construction, it complicates the process.

That's how you end up with public transport overwhelmed, electric grid strained, local schools and kindergartens overflown. Because instead of "attaching infrastructure construction to the housing construction" you just build housing. Lots of it.

And then there will be a unified voice to fix those issues, versus the reality today where all those things already happen, just only to the poorest and least-represented.

> And then there will be a unified voice to fix those issues

By then it will already be too late, and you would have to tear down half or more of what has been built just to fix the issues.

> "oh, let's build sixteen 8-storey buildings"

I'm pretty sure an "8-storey 16-unit building" means "a single building, with 16 apartments spread over 8 floors" - not 16 buildings.

Ah, thank you. Got confused by that. It doesn't sound too bad (but can't say for sure without seeing the actual plan, of course)

There's a whole range between "sixteen 8-storey buildings" and "people don't have where to live"

The line that NIMBYism doesn't cross is the property owner / renter line.

That even depends. In San Francisco, where there is extensive rent control, I've noticed even renters tend to also be extreme NIMBYs, because any change to the neighborhood might result in them losing their $500/month legacy rent-controlled unit.

What changes to the neighborhood could cause that?

I believe one possible sequence would go something like this:

1. The area that contains your rental unit is rezoned, allowing higher density

2. The current owner of the building you rent in is now able to sell the property to a developer interested in demolishing the building in favor of a taller, denser one

3. You get kicked out, and have to find an apartment at market rate (Your building being demolished is one of the few ways you can kick a tenant out in San Francisco IIRC)

When people have lived in a place for long enough their memories and to a certain extent their identity are bound up with that area. Development, especially low density to high density development can feel a bit like too much change too fast and irrational or not it feels like part of your home and your past are being destroyed.

People will come up with any number of reasons to oppose it as you suggest, but the core reason I think is simply people don't want their homes and neighbourhoods to change dramatically, they find comfort from them remaining roughly the same over time.

It’s not always about that kind of diffuse NIMBY objections. At 2% growth a county takes 35 years for the population to double. However, that growth is rarely spread evenly.

The difference between living next to farmers and having a giant subdivision, 5,000 kid summer camp, or an airport next door are huge. We rarely see direct compensation for the negative impacts of such change so people have little reason to support change that negatively impacts themselves.

Portland, OR is famous for hating both sprawl and density. NIMBYism is something all Americans can get behind.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com