this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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No such thing as suburbia doesn't have the density necessary to allow for public transit (with sane frequencies) or to be walkable. Living in there will always mean taking a car to fetch groceries, to get to school, to get to kindergarten, to go to the doctor, to go to the hair stylist, to go anywhere.
Meanwhile you're forcing people to live in accommodations which are absurdly large and expensive because batshit zoning codes make building anything that's not a gigantic house on a humongous plot illegal. I don't want to fucking upkeep a house.
...and I also don't want to finance the sky-high per-inhabitant infrastructure costs that suburbs bring with them. They're the leading cause of municipal bankruptcies in North America.
"forcing", yes that's it. These people hate living in the suburbs and we are "forcing" it on them. Did you ever stop to wonder why suburban houses sell for 2-3x or more of the cost of condos? I'll give you a hint: it's not because people hate single family homes. The anti-car urban zealots don't have a clue that there are people out there that live in pleasant green communities, and yes, have to take the car to the grocery store.
I lived in NYC - an ultra-dense city with incredible transit. I had to walk or take transit to get groceries. Now I live in a suburb, the store is the same distance away, and it takes 1/4 the amount of time to get groceries. Someone save me from these awful car-centric troubles.
You know that there's options besides concrete box in the sky and suburbia, don't you?
With a couple of row houses, multiplexes and small apartment buildings -- think three, maximally five storeys suburbia could be densed up to support public transit. It could support supermarkets in walkable distance, schools, the whole shebang.
But that's illegal in the US.
And guess what? The rare places in the US that have that style of mixed development, places that pre-date the suburbia zoning codes, are the ones with the absolutely highest home prices. Because they're legitimately nice places to live, not because they'd be expensive to build, they're actually very economical.
I've lived in multiplexes and small apartment buildings. For decades at this point. I fucking hate it and I know this is not an uncommon viewpoint. If people hated suburban homes, they would be selling at a discount, which is clearly not the case. You have to pay a premium to live in a less densely populated place and the lack of density is what makes those places expensive and desirable
They'd be even more expensive if not cross-financed by inner city taxes.
But that's not really the point I want to make: You might hate living in a multiplex and really want your detached home. There's nothing wrong with that. Noone's stopping you. Maybe you want space for a shed so you can set up a hobby machine shop or whatever, you do you. What people are pissed about is that it's either that, or the box in the sky. And now be honest: Would you NIMBY a couple of multiplexes three-story apartment complex flanked by some commercial space and a tram stop in your suburb? A plaza, cafes, restaurants, bars, doctors, no car parking, it's serving your suburb, you can bike there, there's ample of bike parking. Would you support repealing laws that make such developments illegal.
From what I heard from the states such places are very popular -- modulo the no car parking thing. They're called open air malls, you have to drive to them and walk through an asphalt desert of a gigantic parking lot and can't, if you so choose, live in an apartment above a store because that's illegal... why?
I should really give up on collecting downvotes by arguing with people who are incapable of considering my arguments, but it's worth making this point: "NIMBY" as a term has been overused and misused to the point of meaninglessness. Let me give an example:
There are people in cities and suburbs across the US right now trying to shut down small airports. Ostensibly they want the airport converted into "low cost housing" or a park, but the real underlying reason always seems to be that they hate airplane noise and the value of their house would increase if the airport were to disappear. The wrinkle is these airports existence predates ownership of their house, predates the construction of their house, predates their housing development, and in the majority of cases the airports are older than 99% of people in the area. Nevertheless, they are succeeding in shutting down these airports, which arguably have more right to be there than they do. They knew there was an airport there when they moved in. The developer knew there was an airport there when they built the house. In many cases, the airport was actually busier in the past than it is in the present.
These people could accurately be called NIMBYs, but it's becoming increasingly clear that the term NIMBY is most often wielded as a pejorative for anyone who opposes anything you don't like. It has lost its descriptive power because people who want to conserve the status quo are NIMBYs, and people who want to change the status quo are equally NIMBYs.
Do you oppose development? NIMBY!
Do you support development? NIMBY!
Do you have any opinion about anything in your community? Believe it or not, also a NIMBY.
I think it's bullshit. I think opposing change to preserve the status quo happens to be more valid in most cases. I'm sick of democracy being used as a weapon where an influx of outsiders can move into an area, become a majority, and vote to change its character. There are rural areas across the US that are being invaded by people from wealthier, populous states - namely CA and TX - as a result of remote work. The effect this has is that people who have lived there for generations are priced out, and then the local character is forced to change by these newcomers who now outnumber the original locals. If being opposed to that change is being a "NIMBY", I think the NIMBYs are morally in the right - and I think the term being used as an insult is nonsense.
That was a lot of text to complain about the term NIMBY while I could've just as well said "oppose" without any change in meaning.
Fair enough, you're a conservative. Others err in the other direction and want change for change's sake. Some people like to preserve, some like to innovate. In both scenarios, we should add the word "good" to make it a sensible position.
And there's a very specific developmental scenario I painted, and that is to put a tram line into the suburb together with some medium-density development so the station and line has enough people living there to actually see use, see at least a tram each direction every 20 minutes during the day, every 60 or so in the night.
One other alternative? Let me paint a nightmare scenario for you (or rather your wallet): New federal regulations forbid subsidising low density zones with the land taxes from high density zones, from now on you'll have to pay for your own sewage system, streets, electricity lines, etc, the inner city isn't footing the bill any more. Your land tax is suddenly 3-5x higher, if renting, no the landlord isn't going to cover it for you. Tons and tons of people get priced out. Alternatively, your infrastructure rots until it is gone.
Which of those scenarios is a good one, which a bad one? All are changes from the status quo, which, as I said, is suburbia getting subsidised -- a bad scenario, at least in my book, especially given that suburbanites don't exactly tend to be poor.
Last, but not least: Mixed medium-density development is the conservative option. It's how cities have been built for millennia. Suburbia is an invention of post-war North America, driven by car manufactures and redlining. The most expensive places in North America are places old enough to still have that mixed medium-density structure (google "streetcar suburb"), which is the norm everywhere else in the world.