What Worse Than A NIMBY? A Successful NIMBY

Posted by: Brenda Meyer

20 October 2005 - 5:00am

Nimbyism is gaining quite a following in Toronto -- leaving some detractors to worry that the movement is strangling all growth in the area.

"The message behind all the attention is that NIMBYism is dangerous. It reflects thoughtless, knee-jerk reactions that go against the common good. A NIMBYist group is like a cell that has grown too quickly and become a cancer, threatening the entire organism.

...'It does beg the question as to how a city is supposed to proceed with any agenda, either positive or negative, when communities have the ability to stop what's meant to happen,' says Mark Guslits, chief development officer for Toronto Community Housing and the former manager of the city's affordable housing file.

But what if the opposite is true? Could NIMBYism be good for our city?"

Full Story: The power of Nimbyism

Source: The Toronto Star, October 19, 2005

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New Urbanists and Smart

Submitted by Robert Cote on Thu, 10/20/2005 - 06:07.

New Urbanists and Smart Growthers tell you what you MUST build, NIMBYs
tell you what you CANNOT build. There is no discernable difference in
either intent or result except NIMBYism respects the wishes of the
existing redidents. Which then is the worse?

Remember also "NIMBYism" is magically transformed into "grassroots
community activism" to protect the environment and quality of life when
the reporter of the moment agrees with them. Thus even the phrase is
used as an insult else it would apply in both instances.

People are not necessarily "afraid" of change they far more likely just
don't want change. Think about NIMBY with a some compassion for their
perspective. People search the nation, find the nicest home with the
qualities they value and make the single largest financial commitment
of their lives and tie their futures to a material object. Implicit in
any attempts to reorient around transit or any other land use
modification carries with it a value judgment that they picked the
wrong lifestyle and it needs to be changed. Human nature will bristle
at the very suggestion.

The second comment is more general and about NIMBY's. It -is- their
backyard, they are the most impacted, they are more familiar with the
local conditions, etc. The trend of late has been to equate NIMBY =
wrong. Sure they'll lie/exagerate or lack technical expertise that
others may have but the metric seems to have changed. NIMBY's are
increasingly required to -prove- they are right. Likewise related
zoning changes seem to become an assumed right of landowners. "If you
don't allow 20 DU/acre on my 4 DU/acre property I'll sue for loss of
value." These are supposed to be community decisions not development
agreements between builders and government.

Introducing with the full force of government a change in land use with
transportation enhancements is a slap in the face of existing
residents. You are in effect telling them they made a mistake in their
choice of home and the area is going to be changed regardless of their
personal investment or wishes.

----

Lone Mountain Compact:
http://www.i2i.org/Publications/IB/Growth/LoneMountainCompact.htm

1. ... people should be allowed to live and work where and how they like.
2. Prescriptive, centralized plans ... avoided.
3. Densities and land uses should be market driven, not plan driven.
5. Decisions ... should be decentralized as far as possible.
9. The rights of present residents should not supersede those of future
residents.
10. Planning decisions should be based upon facts, not perceptions.

I disagree with #9. I assumes "future residents" have community rights
in a community they don't live in.

Rather than trying to "fix" the places that aren't broken the
anti-suburbanists should be fixing the places that are broken; "If
environmentalists were leading the way, they would be doing more
advocacy work in our urban centers, marching for new buildings.
Instead, they have been leading the NIMBY wars." - James Howard
Kunzler,
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/oo/curmudgeon/index_Kunstler.html

There is an interesting economic class distinction in exurban NIMBY
activism that I find disturbing. When people get in a financial
situation where they can afford the single largest purchase of their
lives, they invest in the suburbs. Just like nearly every other
private investment decision. Even sports stadia get located in the
exburbs when the money is private. The only entity continuing pour
money into cities is govt. Regional planning is just a cover to let
OPACs (Obsolete Pre Automotive Cities) tap the wallets of the escapees.

While here are desirable characteristics to New Urbanism, I think it
important to remember that the results are -urban- and not
rural/suburban/exurban in nature. That leads to inevitable conflict.
While a nearby suburban development won't suck the life from a
functioning urban area; the introduction of an urban enclave next to
existing suburban residential zone will certain change the nature of
that neighborhood. We like to call local opposition NIMBY but those
locals have made the single largest social and financial choice of
their lives based on criteria that New Urbanists want to change. Od
particular concern is the rise of the Specialized Land Use Urban
Transit advocates (SLUUTS) who want to change the character of an area
to make it socially different from the kind of place people have chosen
to invest and live in. There is very little rationale for
expanding/introducing transit to areas that don't need it. This is just
social engineering disguised as congestion relief or urban renewal.
The biggest complaints are exactly those impacts transit advocates cite
as benefits. There will be new construction/investment there will be a
higher tax base and density will go up. Explain to the current
residents why this is good for them and don't forget the sociological
side effects of the increasing population density. Things like higher
crime rates for instance. The criminals may not come in on transit but
the FBI is unequivocal that they will come and there will be more
crime. Building houses on a greenfield will increase numerical crime
and generally increases crime rates. People are not crime rate
adverse, they are crime adverse. (At very low and very high densities
the numbers start to break down a bit.) For the clean slate greenfield
development, no one complains because no one actually is there to make
the NIMBY complaint. No people, no community review. This is why
developers hate to do brownfields. There are too many stakeholders
with agendas to promote.

The current crop of planning fads are nothing more than the same old
imposition of urban characteristics on a portion of the suburban
population. This would be No Big deal as long as it is voluntary and
unsubsidized. A Very Big Deal unfortunately BECAUSE every single one
I've ever seen requires involuntary land use modifcation and subsidized
intervention.

Don't even get me start on the morally reprehensible practice of using
a nonexistent housing affordablity crisis used to force stakeholders
into giving up their rights.

I don't know where to begin here...

Submitted by Michael Lewyn on Thu, 10/20/2005 - 11:49.

Cote's basic assumption is that if you buy a house, you have an absolute right to prevent nearby landowners from doing anything with their property - in his words, that land use is, in his words, "a community decision". He must have forgotten that when you buy a house, you pay for ONE house- not two, not twelve, not every house within several miles. So what makes you a "stakeholder" with dictatorial rights? If Mr. Cote had written the Constitution's Takings Clause, it would probably read something like: "Government may not take property for public use without just compensation, UNLESS THE NEIGHBORS WANT GOVERNMENT TO DO SO."

Cote's claim that the "housing affordability crisis" is "nonexistent" is true for some parts of America, but certainly not for others. silly. In Washington, D.C., where I live, 1 bedroom condos are selling for $200-300K, and single-family houses for twice that much. California is even more expensive. Is this not an affordability crisis?

His claim that people who can afford to buy homes inevitably choose the suburbs is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The NIMBYs who he champions choke off the supply of housing in cities and established suburbs, thus increasing prices. So people who are priced out of the "close in" market invest in outer suburbs because THEY CAN'T AFFORD TO INVEST ANYWHERE ELSE.

Moreover, his claim that cities are "obsolete" contradicts his defense of NIMBYism. If cities were so "obsolete" there wouldn't be any NIMBYism to speak of (except in a few suburbs) because the only residents of urban neighborhoods would be poor people who would be too busy fighting for survival to engage in zoning disputes. But in affluent city neighborhoods, city residents are as eager as suburbanites to restrict development. Why? Because they have expensive, desirable property just like suburbanites - and just like suburbanites, they understandably want their property to stay expensive by making it scarce. In short, NIMBYism (whether in cities or in suburbs) is usually in the interests of the NIMBY- but is not always consistent with other public interests, such as protecting property rights, increasing housing affordability, encouraging infill development, etc.

The claim that higher density inevitably brings crime is simplistic. To be sure, cities usually have more crime than less-dense suburbs- but only because cities are typically packed with poverty to a greater extent than suburbs. Where dense areas are not poverty-packed, they are often less crime-ridden than less-dense cities and suburbs. For example, Lakewood, an inner-ring suburb of Cleveland, has 10,000 people per square mile- but has far less crime than Cleveland (which has about 6000 people per square mile).

But I don't like Mr. Cote is all that interested in crime and suburbs and so forth. His major point seems to be that existing residents should have an absolute right to keep new residents out.

So if population grows, where do all the new people and the new households go? Should they live on the streets? Should they live in greenfields and have 50-mile commutes?

Begin Somewhere and Spin Until Dizzy

Submitted by Robert Cote on Thu, 10/20/2005 - 12:31.

A lot of angst could be spared if we all read what what written rather than assigning existing pidegon holes to any comment. Nothing in what I said even comes close to implying anything resembling "absolute rights."

While "lewyn" is correct that residentail location outcomes are in part self fullfilling he forgets that this is supposed to be part of the process of free choice and best practice. Were decisions involving most families' single largest investment merely random the outcomes would be far worse.

"Lewyn" is additionally advised to look up the the actual definition of obsolete rather than jump to conclusions. Near any 2 year old computer is obsolete, not because it is broken or ineffectual but because it cannot be replicated today. Big deal, it and OPACs still work but the difference is that no one proposes an 80386 computer with 256Kb for any price.

As to crime, read again. More people in closer proximity brings more crime. People are not crime rate adverse they are crime nearby adverse.

As to my views which were not mentioned in my post but attacked in the reply regardless;

Everyone -can- live in a pleasant exurban community. We just cannot all
live in the -same- community. We know what happens when we allow infill at
the city level; San Fernando Valley. Infill, of course, being a central
tenet if Smart Growth. We'd have none of the problems if the "cities" (urban nodes)
in the SFV had remained discreet. When they all grew together into a vast
continuous urbanscape the inevitable congestion and inability to provide
new, adequate infrastructure became obvious.

The recent attacks on NIMBY are not based on any indepth consideration of the issues.