I sometimes joke that the right is "NIMBY" but the left is "NIYBY" (not in your backyard).
Yeah, it was definitely the "progressive left" that spent years and cost the Christchurch council millions to fix the broken cathedral. Not right-leaning old people at all.
> They demand more deference be given to traditional tribespeople over and above the progression of cities.
I think you mean "they think that Maori shouldn't be fucked over by the government more than they already have been".
> No one stands in the way of housing more than the left in this country.
Frankly, housing in NZ is not a political issue, it's an economic one. Regardless of your politics, no one in the middle class is willing to fix the housing crisis, because it will mean a lot of economic pain.
Also, as much as I would like to see housing sorted in NZ, I also don't want it to ruin what's good about this country. If you want an example of how to ruin an area with building, look at Queenstown.
I recall a specific article complaining about "leftist opposition" from residents of a gated community in a Republican-run city.
People look at the world and see their preconceptions.
In context these are the people the original article is talking about.
I think in this article, Noah is referring specifically to this far left. For much of the article, he references Current Affairs, for example, which is a far left magazine. In the replies to his tweets about this, folks also mentioned Sunrise, which is a far left environmental org.
Regarding your original point, re: the progressive left in Seattle, I think the far left is more in coalition with YIMBYs, while the business-oriented politicians are in coalition with the NIMBYs. This isn't to say there aren't NIMBY leftists, just that they don't really have a lot of power at the moment, because they have to work with the YIMBYs.
As far as actual conservatives in Seattle politics, there are very few (maybe none?) remaining.
> They demand the preservation of architecture at all costs.
I assume this is a reference to the Wellington Spatial Plan and efforts by Wellington land owners to prevent old homes being converted into apartments or larger dwellings.
I agree this is a very harmful position for them to take. It's people acting in concert to drive up their land value. Whether this somehow ties into the Left-NIMBY Canon argued above though, I'm not sure. Are the land owners progressive lefties? Do they even live there?
> They demand the preservation of a single decades-old tree over housing.
This is a reference to the Macrocarpa tree in Avondale. What you fail to add is that this listed tree (i.e. with legal protections) on public land is blocking the development of 1 out of 6 large adjacent apartment buildings. Are people blocking the development of the other 5? No. Could the developer have planned their development to accommodate the listed tree, but choose not to? Yes. And this is an urban area with some of the lowest greenspace covereage in the city, with a long history of under-investment.
Meanwhile, the right leaning inner suburbs effectively implemented a town belt through leveraging power during the development of the Auckland unitary plan. If densification is being objected to in left-leaning areas, it's partly because right-leaning areas already ensured that they wouldn't have to at all! Case in point: Kelmarna Ave in Herne bay is getting a small supermarket because the community, via applying soft influence, made the planned development of apartments at the location politically infeasible.
Oh, and did I mention successive right-wing city councillors of the 80s and 90s running infrastructure into the ground so that good urban development was just that much harder for everyone?
> They demand more deference be given to traditional tribespeople over and above the progression of cities and housing the homeless.
Well, the extremely very obvious context here is contention over stolen land in sensitive areas. If you're talking about Ihuamatoa - "deference" was only granted after a long occupation of the land by extremely dedicated group of individuals. Of course, we wouldn't need to develop culturally significant land in remote parts of our city if we could intensify the places where prodominantly white, wealthy residents lived, without outcries from the politically powerful!
But on your last point, I am much more inclined to agree. Indigenous people are not a mere tree, and dealing with the whole imperialism/colonialism(/genocide?) thing is an entirely different level of ethical consideration.
I'm way more hesitant about anything impacting actual people or reinforcing past stealing of indigenous land than I am about nostalgia about some tree or building.