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Comment by Gimpei | Hacker News Reader

Indeed. And in fact, from what I hear Stanford would like to expand its student body. Guess what’s stopping it? Yep, Palo Alto NIMBYs.

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Stanford is its own city, it could just move entirely somewhere more favorable.

The Stanford campus is not exactly space-constrained

AKA, the community.

Not the community. A small subset of the wealthiest people in the local area. And keep in mind that if the people in the local area have successfully excluded others, they may have dispersed people with interests elsewhere.

There’s basically no reason they should have a say at all about what someone else wants to do with their own property.

I have trouble sympathizing with either side here. I’m not dialed into the issue, but I imagine that the homeowners in the area are property-tax paying members of the community with just as much voice as anyone else in the community.

It’s also not like there’s nowhere else on earth to put a school campus either. They’d hardly be the first school with multiple campuses that are separated if they didn’t insist on building it where they currently are.

“Insist on building it where they currently are” - telling them they can’t doesn’t mean “oh go build it somewhere else”. It means they have to sell that land, go buy other land (which could take decades), and then have the same fight.

Telling people what they could use their land for (within building code) is only legal in the US because the SCOTUS said it was legal to in order to keep Black people out of neighborhoods. It should be unconstitutional, and would be if not for racism!

I wonder what would happen if they started making plans to move. I know farmer/developers just outside of Des Moines who own several thousand acres they farm now but plan to turn into a suburb in 10 years - they would be glad to sign a 5 year option to buy contract on a large campus for cheap (you can even tell them there is a 99% chance they won't buy, they are going to farm it for a few years and then sell it so they are happy to take a tiny sum). I would be shocked if there were not similar situations a lot closer to their campus.

The idea is to put pressure on the locals - if you don't shape up we will move. A significant number probably like the college nearby overall.

Those other neighbors would say no too. The end.

If the locals don't like the college moving is an option. Not cheap, but you can sell the old campus to get a lot back.

That’s insane. It should not be possible for neighbors to force someone to move their business.

The Silicon Valley tech community.

Sometimes the community is wrong, and needs to be overridden. An example of this is California, New York, and Illinois enacting state laws to prevent local communities from blocking local renewable generation projects (wind and solar), because the justifications were frequently falsehoods and aesthetics reasons. Feelings are not a justification to inhibit responsible, community compatible development and improvements.

Stanford benefits the entire nation, so their community is the entire nation, not just their neighbors.

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