Comment by RajT88 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RajT88 | Hacker News Reader

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That's one flavor of NIMBY anyways.

There's also the topically focused ones, like with a focus on crime or property values. (I have had a lot more experience with the latter)

Case in point, Naperville, IL (quite wealthy suburb of Chicago) had a cell coverage problem in the late 90's. The NIMBY's shot down any proposal of putting up "ugly" cell towers because it could mar the view and impact property values. (I would love to know the overlap between the people complaining about cell coverage and property values)

The compromise the city came up with was designing a commemorative bell tower which sneakily could house cellular equipment. This old article describes, conveniently, that the tower was designed to hold cellular networking equipment, and by total coincidence they found a cell company interested in paying to put equipment there:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1999-12-23-991223...

The project, initially termed "The Millenium Bell Tower" (later "The Carillon"), become known locally as "The Millenium Cell Tower".

"Property values" are a cop out objection. They're almost impossible to prove one way or another, but they are a dog whistle for people who object to change in general.

It's almost impossible to tell what buyers will think of any particular change to a neighbourhood, and buyers are the ones who determine property value not the owners. But owners hear "property values" and they see their nest egg evaporating away and so of course they join in the objection.

It makes more sense when you read it as "people values".

They don't want the blue collar or lesser crowd moving in.

I originally had bit in the post about classism and racism about how people moved out to the suburbs to escape higher density housing but deleted it because I thought it would be too contentious.

Plus, that's more the "crime rates" crowd, which is often thinly veiled racism.

> Plus, that's more the "crime rates" crowd, which is often thinly veiled racism.

There's a lot of that in Naperville as well. It is that kind of place.

In my city, which for the last five years has been in the top ten in the country for year-over-year increases (as a percentage), at least 10, up to 15% property value increases, a proposal, "Missing Middle" was introduced, to help increase middle-density housing availability.

A study was requisitioned by the city, and found that "worst case, the effect on property value would be to reduce the -increase- over the next ten years to be 7-9% year-over-year".

Holy hell, you'd have thought they were executing people's grandmothers in the streets. All of a sudden what I assumed were just people's homes were their "investment in the future" with some hitherto unknown to me guaranteed access to double digit home value increases. People who lived on dead end streets that would not have been rezoned (access to transit and arterials was a consideration) screamed that there'd be "constant traffic through their neighborhood", etc.

Property values generally go up with bike lanes?

https://www.icebike.org/property-prices/

I get that article is probably biased, maybe you can find the opposite "proof"?

I'm kind of addicted to "Not Just Bikes" (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A) and he claims studies show massive increases in property prices with more bikable / walkable areas.

Sure, but they only need to find one exception to force you to end that line of reasoning.

There is a ton of evidence from urban planning that proximity to transport hubs (metro / subway / light rail stations), bike infrastructure, small parks, street design, neighborhood cafes / retail, etc., and overall "walkability" boosts property values significantly.

It's called "Locational Advantage" and there's a few decent studies here:

- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10527001.2021.2... - https://www.redfin.com/news/how-much-does-walkability-increa... - https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/walking_the_walk_cortright.pdf - https://www.housingwire.com/articles/better-walkability-mean... - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02642... - http://www.reconnectingamerica.org/assets/Uploads/2009Walkab... - https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...

Etc.

But it doesnt go up during the 5-10 years of construction time when roads are blocked and jackhammers are operating. People today want to sell/flip thier house long before any newly-started improvement will be complete.

That's an argument for opposing metros or light rail (though I'm not sure it's true even there). But a bike lane takes weeks, not years.

If bike lane or cycleway takes 5-10 years of construction time then something is deeply wrong.

That's the point of the OP. For a variety of reasons, projects sometimes take exponentially longer than expected. It might only take a few days to paint some lines, to convert a car lane to a bike lake. But if the project instead means either making the sidewalk smaller, or expanding the road overall to accommodate the new lane, then timelines start growing. And, of course, a bunch of other improvements and maintenance are layered atop the project. Generally speaking, the road is brought also up to whatever safety standards have been changed. That might mean new sidewalk bits and pieces, new electronic signage or streetlights. Before you know it you are staring at traffic cones for years, mostly as the project waits for one or another subcontractor to do X or Y before Z can begin.

Their excuse at that point typically becomes "crime"

This article has a photo: https://www.positivelynaperville.com/2020/09/04/2020-carillo...

I suppose it is vaguely terrifying.

Ah, I've seen that one before! It's from Lord of the Rings, isn't it? Thought it was destroyed by the flooding those environmental activists caused...

We got that issue here to mixed in with a bit of anti-5G.

It pisses me because I can barely get LTE signal. For some reason, most carriers except version are dead where I live, which is odd because I live inbetween suburbs and a busy road. It's not like I'm in the middle of nowhere. Even with version the signal strength is crap.

Version? I assume you got attacked by auto-correct and really meant Verizon.

Yes, sorry, that would be correct.

Hey, welcome to Germany.

And it's a hideous brutalist thing that towers over the park it is in, frightening the children. It looks like something out of a futuristic Lord of the Rings reboot.

Brutalism‽ Won't somebody think of the children‽

I think we don’t have ENOUGH frightening architecture. Where are all the gargoyles? The Dark Arcos?

I’m talking about REAL character, here, the stuff children will remember the rest of their lives and tell their grandchildren.

You must not have attended Catholic school as a child.

The return of investment on bicycle infrastructure is estimated to be 8 Euros for every 1 Euro spent. This includes property values.

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