The Atlantic Magazine's Citylab web page ran an interview with Joel Kotkin today. Kotkin seems to think we need more of something called "localism", stating: "Growth of state control has become pretty extreme in California, and I think we’re going to see more of that in the country in general, … [Read more...]
NIMBYism as an Argument Against Urbanism
In his new book The Human City, Joel Kotkin tries to use NIMBYism as an argument against urbanism. He cites numerous examples of NIMBYism in wealthy city neighborhoods, and suggests that these examples rebut "the largely unsupported notion that ever more people want to move 'back to the city'." … [Read more...]
Shut Out: How Land-Use Regulations Hurt the Poor
People sometimes support regulations, often with the best of intentions, but these wind up creating outcomes they don’t like. Land-use regulations are a prime example.My colleague Emily Washington and I are reviewing the literature on how land-use regulations disproportionately raise the cost of … [Read more...]
Can Housing Quotas Affect Demand For Housing?
Economist Nick Rowe at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative has a provocative piece asking whether housing demand curves might actually slope up. He puts his argument in abstract mathematical terms (again, he’s an economist), but the germ of the idea is that “everybody wants to live near everyone else, … [Read more...]
Middle Aged NIMBYs, Young YIMBYs
Today, CNU Nextgen, a group of younger members of the Congress for New Urbanism, retweeted a New York Times story about the evils of NIMBYism in Boulder.Why did I find this noteworthy? Because on the Pro-Urb listserv, dominated by middle-aged CNUers, a very different conventional wisdom … [Read more...]
ReasonTV on SF’s YIMBY Movement
Last week, Reason.tv (the multimedia outlet of Reason Magazine) published a video about San Francisco's YIMBY movement. The video describes the decades of underdevelopment in San Francisco as the result of community activism intended to limit the supply of new construction. As a result, San … [Read more...]
Shell Games in NIMBYism
Yesterday the Cato Institute hosted an event featuring William Fischel's discussion of his new book Zoning Rules! with commentary by Mark Calabria, Matt Yglesias, and Robert Dietz. Fischel explained his theory that zoning was an effective tool for minimizing nuisances between land uses through the … [Read more...]
Death and life in a changing neighborhood
A controversy in DC's Columbia Heights neighborhood exemplifies the common clash between NIMBYism and the achievement of Jane Jacob's ideals. Some residents are opposed to a new proposed diner, Margot's Chair, that would be open 24 hours a day. The owners already have three well-loved restaurants in … [Read more...]