I received a really interesting, insightful comment on a subscribers-only piece from a few weeks ago, on the tension between community and continuity on the one hand, and development and growth on the other.

I had mentioned in passing the right-wing meme “I will not live in a pod,” which refers to the supposed notion that liberals want to cram everyone into tiny apartment buildings, or something. A lot of NIMBYs, even those who consider themselves progressives, often end up saying basically the same thing.

Here is the comment below:

I think part of what people on the right are reacting to regarding the line about “not living in a pod” is the apparent tendency on the left to try and eliminate the layers of society between the individual and the federal government. Rhetorically, progressives tend to talk in terms of what the national-level government can do to better support individuals, while at the same time minimizing the roles that local governments and extra-governmental organizations (churches, fraternal groups, etc.) have historically had in this area.

Arguably, those local institutions were a major driver of that sense of community that you are talking about, but as they have declined so to, I feel, has our sense of community. That loss of community is something that I think many NIMBYs sense at a fundamental, almost subconscious level. And so, recognizing a problem but not its underlying cause, they lash out at new development projects in the (in my opinion) misguided belief that they are arresting a further loss of that sense of community.

I could be completely wrong, of course. This is just my synthesis of what I’ve read and heard over the years, and I couldn’t point to any credible sources for any of it!

Well, neither can I, but this supposition rings very true to me. The other day, for example, I saw this post on an old-timer Facebook group for a small town not far from where I grew up in central New Jersey:

YIMBYs laugh at the idea that you can keep a town affordable and working-class by restricting new development. The reason is that if you do that, wealthier folks bid up the price of existing housing. And most scholarship on this question supports the idea that more supply ultimately moderates prices, which is what you’d expect.

But as that comment suggests, maybe this has nothing to do with housing, per se. Complaining about new housing is the easiest immediate way to express that deeper and much more legitimate point, that an old sense of community and localism is being lost. Maybe not building enough is a reason for that, but certainly not the only reason. Maybe not building enough in other places, closer to population centers, is a bigger reason. It disperses demand out into these more remote areas and can indeed “change their character.”

As you have probably gathered if you’ve been reading this newsletter for awhile, I am pretty in favor of growth/development/housing, but at the same time I care about preserving a sense of continuity in places, and preserving a real countryside rather than creating huge penumbras of low-density sprawl.

And I also try to see the best possible motive for NIMBY sentiment, because, as that comment suggests, there might be one. And if we can agree that new housing isn’t the problem, maybe we can figure out what it is and do something about it.

Related Reading:

NIMBYism and Existence Value

Stop and Smell the Tulips

NIMBYs and Neocons

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