Learning by Listening 

Yimbys started out with a straightforward diagnosis of the housing crisis in California. They said, “…housing prices are high because there’s not enough housing and if we want lower prices, we need more housing”. And they were, of course, completely right…at least with regards to the specific problem-space defined by supply, demand, and the long run.

San Francisco, the birthplace of Yimby activism

As Yimby’s started coalition building, though, they began recognizing related, but fundamentally different concerns. For anti-displacement activists, the problem was not defined by long-run aggregate prices. It was instead all about the immediate plight of economically vulnerable communities. Increasing supply was not an attractive proposal because of the long time horizons (years, decades) and ambiguous benefit for their specific constituencies. 

Yimbyism as Practical Politics

Leaders in the Yimby movement could have thrown up their hands and walked away. But they didn’t. Instead they listened and developed a yes and approach. The Yimby platform still embraces the idea that, long run, we need to build more housing, but it now also supports measures to protect those who’ll fall off the housing ladder tomorrow without a helping hand today.

Scott Weiner’s SB50 is a great example of this attitude in action. If passed, the bill will reduce restrictions on housing construction across the state. It targets transit and job rich areas and builds in eviction protections to guard against displacement. At a high level, it sets up the playing field so that renters in a four story apartment next to BART don’t get evicted to make way for twelve stories of condos. But it still incentivizes homeowners next to the station (or, awesomely, just in Cupertino) to cash out by selling to a developer who’ll put in a triplex.

The strategic direction California Yimbys have taken, as exemplified by SB 50, makes all the sense in the world. Even if you take issue with the policy specifics, you have to admit it makes for great politics. This is politically viable legislation that opens the door to building more housing where we need it most.

Making a Big Tent Bigger

My co-contributor Nolan Gray has written about the growing bi-partisan nature of Yimbyism. And, in noting the tension between left and right oriented activists within the movement, has called out the challenge this represents for future coalition building.

If I’m reading him correctly, Nolan is noting that there’ll be work here, not necessarily making a prediction about future failure or success. I’ll stick my neck out, though, and say that the Yimbys will overcome the challenges posed by ideological tension. My general read is that the real action is still at the state level and that there’s limited need for inter-state coordination. There are still things to be gained from sharing best practices and lessons learned, but Yimby’s separated by state lines are operationally independent. Also, Yimby leaders have historically valued cooperation on practical politics over fights on questions of ideological purity. It’s been a healthy impulse in the past and I believe it will continue to serve Yimby activists well in the future.

I see the last five years of Yimby activism as one of the great policy success stories of our lifetime. I have every expectation that we’ll see the unwinding of a century’s worth of terrible policy in California and elsewhere across the country. And even the initial progress to date should give us hope that institutional inertia is not absolute and that positive change is everywhere still a possibility. 

The post Yimbyism: The Evolution of an Idea appeared first on Market Urbanism.

And here’s one other reason to be on Cap’n Transit’s side: no new bill means no federal regulation of rapid transit.

Right now, the federal government only has the power to regulate safety on rail lines that feed into the national mainline network, and could therefore, at least in theory, run into a freight train. This includes all intercity trains (Amtrak and possibly All Aboard Florida), commuter trains (Metro-North, Caltrain, etc.), and the occasional light rail line using an older right-of-way that’s still connected to the national network (e.g., New Jersey’s River Line). Self-contained “rapid transit” networks – subways, elevated trains, and new light rail and streetcar lines – are beyond the feds’ reach.

To many legislators, the Fort Totten crash on DC’s Red Line in 2009, operated by WMATA, was evidence that federal regulation is needed. (WMATA’s MetroRail is actually one of the most technologically advanced systems in America – or at least it was, until after the crash when they turned the ATO off, which drives the train while the operator opens and closes the doors.) There was a big outcry about it right after the crash and a few times since then, and the debate seems to be coming up again.

But despite the liberal leanings of most transit enthusiasts, you’d be hard pressed to find one who thinks that federal regulation will do WMATA – an admittedly heinous agency that needs to be reined in – any good. The main reason to be suspicious is the incredibly poor job that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has done in overseeing mainline rail safety, which has been in its regulatory portfolio for decades.

In the words of Eric McCaughrin, the FRA is “regulating passenger rail out of existence” with its insistence that trains be bulked up to survive crashes. Instead, he suggests that instead safety regulators should focus on preventing crashes with technology like they do in Europe and Asia – for example by installing automatic train protection and operation systems, which, at least outside of DC, have very good safety records. The FRA’s idea of safety, he contends, drives up costs, power consumption, and track wear-and-tear, while driving down reliability and performance (namely, acceleration and deceleration).

The FRA (or whatever body would be charged with the new regulatory tasks) may not make exactly the same mistakes with subways as they did with mainline trains, but many are fearful that they’ll screw up in some other way, such as not keeping up with future technological advances.

Democrats are likely to follow the president’s lead on the matter, who proposed expanding federal oversight to rapid transit and light rail back in 2009. Most Republicans are against giving more regulatory authority on this matter to the feds, though their opposition seems to be based in ideology. I would love to be proven wrong, but I doubt any of them are actually aware of the FRA’s regulatory misdeeds.

In any case, the issue is tied up with the larger highway bill which is of course mired in its own controversies. So luckily for those leery of federal oversight in this matter, Politico says we probably won’t see the feds regulating rapid transit this year:

But with House and Senate negotiators still far apart on the bill, many are predicting another extension of current policy. That would mean no changes in the transit safety structure.

I do have to take issue with Politico’s headline, though: “Transit safety still lags.” It’s not safety that lags – in fact, rapid transit has an impecable safety record, even taking into account the deaths at the hands of the the fools at WMATA. Rather, it’s federal regulation over safety that’s lagging. The Democrats argue that the two are the same thing, but most Republicans and transit advocates clearly don’t see it that way.

The post Transpo bill gridlock staves off federal transit regulation appeared first on Market Urbanism.

Pretty interesting article in the NYT today about the Gotham West development that recently broke ground on Manhattan‘s far west side. But I think the part about affordable housing could use some context:

But the bulk of the project will be affordable units, 682 of them, or more than half the total homes….

The post New York’s Funny Definition Of ‘Moderate- and Middle-Income’ Housing appeared first on Market Urbanism.

To the eyes of us all at Koryo Tours it looks like Renzo Piano has been copying Pyongyang…

(Note the following is not 100% accurate – but close!…

The post The North Korean Origins Of Renzo Piano’s Shard Tower appeared first on Market Urbanism.

The recipe that the Antitrust Authority has chosen for taxi liberalization will double the number of licenses, but with each driver receiving a second one as compensation….

The post Italy’s Austerity Plan Spurs Transport Deregulation appeared first on Market Urbanism.

Scrapping viaducts like this would make California HSR cheaper, faster to build, and easier to maintain, without a loss in quality

The recent peer review report recommending that California delay construction on the first segment of its high-speed rail project has caused a bit of consternation in the transit twittosphere. Blogger The Overhead Wire wrote, “Sorry, but defunding HSR won’t make local agencies $10b richer.” I replied, “But it might start a long-overdo convo on costs,” and he responded (and many agreed): “and then nothing will get done in my lifetime and costs won’t matter….

The post Cutting Costs On California HSR Doesn’t Have To Add Delays appeared first on Market Urbanism.

Enormous viaducts like this are one reason for the project's ballooning cost estimates

Well, the other shoe has finally dropped: the California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group is recommending that the state legislature not authorize the issue of $2.7 billion in bonds to begin paying for the state’s planned $98.5 billion high-speed rail line….

The post California HSR Review Panel Recommends Against $2.7 Billion Bond Issue appeared first on Market Urbanism.

The post A Roosevelt Island Campus To Make Le Corbusier Proud appeared first on Market Urbanism.