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Comment by hardbass | Hacker News Reader

Agree with NIMBY's that a lot of constructions are a blight. Propose to demolish their own house, as you believe its a blight upon the place. They should agree to it after all and be proactive about it given how earnestly they believe in keeping the locality pretty.

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People buy a house with an implicit expectation that zoning regulations and building code will be relatively stable. Even if those laws are unnecessarily restrictive or nonsensical, I don’t think the NIMBYs are crazy for being upset about changes to those laws that will lower their property values. They may even want to change them but the fact of the matter is they have a financial incentive to protect the value of their property.

Implicit but unreasonable.

Successful areas change: you get a few people, then you need a store, then you get more people and all of sudden there's nowhere to walk, so you make a park and some avenues, then people like those and move in, then you need a school and a hardware store and a power plant even if the OGs were homeschoolers with donkey power and hate your guts.

Don't like it? Hold on to the land.

Dire Straits' Telegraph Road is a good documentary on the subject.

It isn't clear that upzoning reduces property values, as it increases the potential productivity of a given parcel of land.

People have all sorts of unreasonable expectations and we are not obliged to honor them.

Upzoning increases property values, because the increased flexibility for development makes the land more valuable.

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