Why do “YIMBY” urban planners, bloggers & activists constantly cite what they believe are

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“disadvantages” of living in the suburbs? When in reality, they’re precisely the reasons that people CHOOSE to live in the suburbs? I for one, LIKE that my neighborhood has streets you can’t drive through, lacks sidewalks, lacks public transit, has big yards and is mostly houses with few commercial establishments. I don’t want to be able to walk to a bar or 7-eleven, and I don’t want anyone walking from those places to walk through my neighborhood.

Because they feel that the preference for the suburbs is objectively wrong, and vociferously making the case will make them feel justified in their increasingly aggressive efforts to impose their own preferences on people.

Objectively, low density, car-dependent, residential-only, cul-de-sac neighborhoods are a disaster for the environment, local government budgets, and societal well-being.

However, if that's what you prefer, that's not objectively wrong. How can a preference be objectively anything? Your feelings are your feelings.

Just because you say the word “objectively” does not make it true.

Here is a study that demonstrates that downtown Helsinki residents have more carbon intensive lifestyles than their suburban counterparts.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/3/034034/pdf

Consumption based emissions are very real and it turns out significantly more important than transportation emissions for household GHG emissions.

That study is from 2011.

I think things have changed a little since then, no?

What specifically that would make the findings untrue?

We know a lot more about building performance, and particularly the comparison of urban versus suburban where carbon and energy consumption are concerned; bottom line, urban dwellers use less energy, emit less carbon and generally are better for the environment as compared to suburban and exurban dwellers.

That doesn’t answer the question. It is just conjecture. Do you have a study or specific proof that the findings of the study no longer hold? If you do, you should probably email the authors and the journal to let them know. Until you do that, you are talking out of your *ss.

https://climateadaptationplatform.com/who-has-the-bigger-carbon-footprint-rural-or-urban-dwellers/

https://theconversation.com/suburban-living-the-worst-for-carbon-emissions-new-research-149332

and if you are really sciency: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11184-y/

Or to drive the point: https://phys.org/news/2014-01-carbon-footprint-reveal-urban-suburban.html

Researchers found a striking divide: low-carbon city centers ringed by suburbs where households are responsible for an outsize proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. In many big metropolitan areas like New York or Los Angeles, their research found, a family that lives in the urban core has about a 50 percent smaller carbon footprint than a similar-sized family in a distant suburb.


This is really not a hard concept. Thanks for playing.

None of the studies looks at consumption based emissions. Thanks for playing.

“It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt”

― Mark Twain

One of the findings of the Finland study was that suburban families fly less than their urban, downtown counterparts. They theorized that having a yard and larger family size means that people do not need to get away as much for vacations. Show me where any of the links includes differences air transport emissions or show me your clown mask. 🤡

This thread is about YIMBY planners and the built environment between urban and suburban dwellers. You are adding the whole airplane carbon thing. I would submit, more urbanists are using trains when possible to travel, which is a lot less carbon intensive.

Do you have evidence for that assertion?

Back on topic: YIMBY planners have delivered none of what they’ve promised. Compact transit-oriented development was supposed to cost less, but now we have to subsidize it. Downtown areas were supposed to have plentiful housing and prices were supposed to fall but we have anemic growth and high rents. It’s time for a rethink about whether we have this right. I want growth, but what we’ve been doing the past decade or so has not worked.

No one said prices were going to fall. But more supply mitigates the rate of increase. Do you really think the price of a Watergate Condo would ever decrease? You can't be that dumb.

This is some impressive goalpost-moving, because a whole lot of YIMBYs assert on a daily basis that simply adding more housing will make prices automatically fall. You're saying that's not true?

You all should get your story straight before trying to convince people of its merits.

YIMBYs have been backpedaling away from affordability promises. Now they talk about “more attainable” housing. But for whom? They always leave that part out because it’s just for rich people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“disadvantages” of living in the suburbs? When in reality, they’re precisely the reasons that people CHOOSE to live in the suburbs? I for one, LIKE that my neighborhood has streets you can’t drive through, lacks sidewalks, lacks public transit, has big yards and is mostly houses with few commercial establishments. I don’t want to be able to walk to a bar or 7-eleven, and I don’t want anyone walking from those places to walk through my neighborhood.

Because they feel that the preference for the suburbs is objectively wrong, and vociferously making the case will make them feel justified in their increasingly aggressive efforts to impose their own preferences on people.

Objectively, low density, car-dependent, residential-only, cul-de-sac neighborhoods are a disaster for the environment, local government budgets, and societal well-being.

However, if that's what you prefer, that's not objectively wrong. How can a preference be objectively anything? Your feelings are your feelings.

Just because you say the word “objectively” does not make it true.

Here is a study that demonstrates that downtown Helsinki residents have more carbon intensive lifestyles than their suburban counterparts.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/3/034034/pdf

Consumption based emissions are very real and it turns out significantly more important than transportation emissions for household GHG emissions.

That study is from 2011.

I think things have changed a little since then, no?

What specifically that would make the findings untrue?

We know a lot more about building performance, and particularly the comparison of urban versus suburban where carbon and energy consumption are concerned; bottom line, urban dwellers use less energy, emit less carbon and generally are better for the environment as compared to suburban and exurban dwellers.

That doesn’t answer the question. It is just conjecture. Do you have a study or specific proof that the findings of the study no longer hold? If you do, you should probably email the authors and the journal to let them know. Until you do that, you are talking out of your *ss.

https://climateadaptationplatform.com/who-has-the-bigger-carbon-footprint-rural-or-urban-dwellers/

https://theconversation.com/suburban-living-the-worst-for-carbon-emissions-new-research-149332

and if you are really sciency: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11184-y/

Or to drive the point: https://phys.org/news/2014-01-carbon-footprint-reveal-urban-suburban.html

Researchers found a striking divide: low-carbon city centers ringed by suburbs where households are responsible for an outsize proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. In many big metropolitan areas like New York or Los Angeles, their research found, a family that lives in the urban core has about a 50 percent smaller carbon footprint than a similar-sized family in a distant suburb.


This is really not a hard concept. Thanks for playing.

None of the studies looks at consumption based emissions. Thanks for playing.

“It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt”

― Mark Twain

One of the findings of the Finland study was that suburban families fly less than their urban, downtown counterparts. They theorized that having a yard and larger family size means that people do not need to get away as much for vacations. Show me where any of the links includes differences air transport emissions or show me your clown mask. 🤡

This thread is about YIMBY planners and the built environment between urban and suburban dwellers. You are adding the whole airplane carbon thing. I would submit, more urbanists are using trains when possible to travel, which is a lot less carbon intensive.

Do you have evidence for that assertion?

Back on topic: YIMBY planners have delivered none of what they’ve promised. Compact transit-oriented development was supposed to cost less, but now we have to subsidize it. Downtown areas were supposed to have plentiful housing and prices were supposed to fall but we have anemic growth and high rents. It’s time for a rethink about whether we have this right. I want growth, but what we’ve been doing the past decade or so has not worked.

No one said prices were going to fall. But more supply mitigates the rate of increase. Do you really think the price of a Watergate Condo would ever decrease? You can't be that dumb.

This is some impressive goalpost-moving, because a whole lot of YIMBYs assert on a daily basis that simply adding more housing will make prices automatically fall. You're saying that's not true?

You all should get your story straight before trying to convince people of its merits.

Do the math. Buy a place in Watergate for 2 million dollars. A new tower comes up between the Watergate and Kennedy Center. With all of those new units, does the Watergate lose value? Or as economics shows us, more buyers flood the new buildings until there is a stasis between the two. Now, with two buildings with an equal number of units, as they turn over, there is more selection thus keeping prices down. But at no point, does the Watergate LOSE value.

Please point to a place where a YIMBY said that market values would decline because of the new units, because I doubt anyone made that assertion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, planners did the indefensible and now the whole practice has changed to try to mitigate it. Learning from the past portends to a better future. What is your point?

It looks like they’re still messing up in Montgomery County unless the plan was to maximize some developers’ profits at the expense of affordable housing and the county’s property tax revenue along with skyrocketing rents and negative job growth.

The planners recommend. The elected officials decide. The elected officials are elected by the voters. Your disagreement is with the voters. You say everybody wants what you want, but the election results say otherwise. Your issue is not with the planners, it's with the voters.

If the planners aren’t making recommendations that elected officials are willing to implement then they’re doing a bad job. There’s always a path to progress but it requires reading the room and moving the ball where you can. Just thinking about the past few years, our genius planning staff has opposed the one county-wide upzoning bill that was put forward and then poured a lot of resources into duplexes only to have developers tell them that the math didn’t work in all but a few places. That’s not reading the room. That’s pursuing maximalist positions from the start and getting nothing done.

You also conveniently omit the planners’ role in development review, which is expensive and time consuming for developers. That process is terrible, runs for a long time before the matter even gets to the board, and delivers very little benefit to neighbors or developers. This process should go away but it won’t because planning uses it to justify headcount and because planners like rubbing elbows with real engineers and real economists.

Finally, the one elected official who’s openly hostile to growth has nothing to do with land use or planning, though he’d like to change that.

Uh, that is the developers, the ones most NIMBYs call evil and greedy, exerting pressure on the system, including elected officials.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, planners did the indefensible and now the whole practice has changed to try to mitigate it. Learning from the past portends to a better future. What is your point?

It looks like they’re still messing up in Montgomery County unless the plan was to maximize some developers’ profits at the expense of affordable housing and the county’s property tax revenue along with skyrocketing rents and negative job growth.

The planners recommend. The elected officials decide. The elected officials are elected by the voters. Your disagreement is with the voters. You say everybody wants what you want, but the election results say otherwise. Your issue is not with the planners, it's with the voters.

If the planners aren’t making recommendations that elected officials are willing to implement then they’re doing a bad job. There’s always a path to progress but it requires reading the room and moving the ball where you can. Just thinking about the past few years, our genius planning staff has opposed the one county-wide upzoning bill that was put forward and then poured a lot of resources into duplexes only to have developers tell them that the math didn’t work in all but a few places. That’s not reading the room. That’s pursuing maximalist positions from the start and getting nothing done.

You also conveniently omit the planners’ role in development review, which is expensive and time consuming for developers. That process is terrible, runs for a long time before the matter even gets to the board, and delivers very little benefit to neighbors or developers. This process should go away but it won’t because planning uses it to justify headcount and because planners like rubbing elbows with real engineers and real economists.

Finally, the one elected official who’s openly hostile to growth has nothing to do with land use or planning, though he’d like to change that.

Uh, that is the developers, the ones most NIMBYs call evil and greedy, exerting pressure on the system, including elected officials.

No, that was developers providing data for a housing report that planning did after putting a lot of intellectual and political capital into duplexes. Probably would have made more sense to see if the idea would pencil out before pushing for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“disadvantages” of living in the suburbs? When in reality, they’re precisely the reasons that people CHOOSE to live in the suburbs? I for one, LIKE that my neighborhood has streets you can’t drive through, lacks sidewalks, lacks public transit, has big yards and is mostly houses with few commercial establishments. I don’t want to be able to walk to a bar or 7-eleven, and I don’t want anyone walking from those places to walk through my neighborhood.

Because they feel that the preference for the suburbs is objectively wrong, and vociferously making the case will make them feel justified in their increasingly aggressive efforts to impose their own preferences on people.

Objectively, low density, car-dependent, residential-only, cul-de-sac neighborhoods are a disaster for the environment, local government budgets, and societal well-being.

However, if that's what you prefer, that's not objectively wrong. How can a preference be objectively anything? Your feelings are your feelings.

Just because you say the word “objectively” does not make it true.

Here is a study that demonstrates that downtown Helsinki residents have more carbon intensive lifestyles than their suburban counterparts.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/3/034034/pdf

Consumption based emissions are very real and it turns out significantly more important than transportation emissions for household GHG emissions.

That study is from 2011.

I think things have changed a little since then, no?

What specifically that would make the findings untrue?

We know a lot more about building performance, and particularly the comparison of urban versus suburban where carbon and energy consumption are concerned; bottom line, urban dwellers use less energy, emit less carbon and generally are better for the environment as compared to suburban and exurban dwellers.

That doesn’t answer the question. It is just conjecture. Do you have a study or specific proof that the findings of the study no longer hold? If you do, you should probably email the authors and the journal to let them know. Until you do that, you are talking out of your *ss.

https://climateadaptationplatform.com/who-has-the-bigger-carbon-footprint-rural-or-urban-dwellers/

https://theconversation.com/suburban-living-the-worst-for-carbon-emissions-new-research-149332

and if you are really sciency: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11184-y/

Or to drive the point: https://phys.org/news/2014-01-carbon-footprint-reveal-urban-suburban.html

Researchers found a striking divide: low-carbon city centers ringed by suburbs where households are responsible for an outsize proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. In many big metropolitan areas like New York or Los Angeles, their research found, a family that lives in the urban core has about a 50 percent smaller carbon footprint than a similar-sized family in a distant suburb.


This is really not a hard concept. Thanks for playing.

None of the studies looks at consumption based emissions. Thanks for playing.

“It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt”

― Mark Twain

One of the findings of the Finland study was that suburban families fly less than their urban, downtown counterparts. They theorized that having a yard and larger family size means that people do not need to get away as much for vacations. Show me where any of the links includes differences air transport emissions or show me your clown mask. 🤡

This thread is about YIMBY planners and the built environment between urban and suburban dwellers. You are adding the whole airplane carbon thing. I would submit, more urbanists are using trains when possible to travel, which is a lot less carbon intensive.

Do you have evidence for that assertion?

Back on topic: YIMBY planners have delivered none of what they’ve promised. Compact transit-oriented development was supposed to cost less, but now we have to subsidize it. Downtown areas were supposed to have plentiful housing and prices were supposed to fall but we have anemic growth and high rents. It’s time for a rethink about whether we have this right. I want growth, but what we’ve been doing the past decade or so has not worked.

No one said prices were going to fall. But more supply mitigates the rate of increase. Do you really think the price of a Watergate Condo would ever decrease? You can't be that dumb.

This is some impressive goalpost-moving, because a whole lot of YIMBYs assert on a daily basis that simply adding more housing will make prices automatically fall. You're saying that's not true?

You all should get your story straight before trying to convince people of its merits.

Do the math. Buy a place in Watergate for 2 million dollars. A new tower comes up between the Watergate and Kennedy Center. With all of those new units, does the Watergate lose value? Or as economics shows us, more buyers flood the new buildings until there is a stasis between the two. Now, with two buildings with an equal number of units, as they turn over, there is more selection thus keeping prices down. But at no point, does the Watergate LOSE value.

Please point to a place where a YIMBY said that market values would decline because of the new units, because I doubt anyone made that assertion.

Eric Saul (and retweeted by the former planning chief of staff): We forget that many renters are in single family homes are paying around $3-4k/mo. in Montgomery County. They can do so because a 2-bedroom apt. costs 3k/mo. We need more supply to lower prices across the board. And don’t forget all the promises about filtering. Turns out developers are smart enough to control supply to prevent prices from falling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“disadvantages” of living in the suburbs? When in reality, they’re precisely the reasons that people CHOOSE to live in the suburbs? I for one, LIKE that my neighborhood has streets you can’t drive through, lacks sidewalks, lacks public transit, has big yards and is mostly houses with few commercial establishments. I don’t want to be able to walk to a bar or 7-eleven, and I don’t want anyone walking from those places to walk through my neighborhood.

Because they feel that the preference for the suburbs is objectively wrong, and vociferously making the case will make them feel justified in their increasingly aggressive efforts to impose their own preferences on people.

Objectively, low density, car-dependent, residential-only, cul-de-sac neighborhoods are a disaster for the environment, local government budgets, and societal well-being.

However, if that's what you prefer, that's not objectively wrong. How can a preference be objectively anything? Your feelings are your feelings.

Just because you say the word “objectively” does not make it true.

Here is a study that demonstrates that downtown Helsinki residents have more carbon intensive lifestyles than their suburban counterparts.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/3/034034/pdf

Consumption based emissions are very real and it turns out significantly more important than transportation emissions for household GHG emissions.

That study is from 2011.

I think things have changed a little since then, no?

What specifically that would make the findings untrue?

We know a lot more about building performance, and particularly the comparison of urban versus suburban where carbon and energy consumption are concerned; bottom line, urban dwellers use less energy, emit less carbon and generally are better for the environment as compared to suburban and exurban dwellers.

That doesn’t answer the question. It is just conjecture. Do you have a study or specific proof that the findings of the study no longer hold? If you do, you should probably email the authors and the journal to let them know. Until you do that, you are talking out of your *ss.

https://climateadaptationplatform.com/who-has-the-bigger-carbon-footprint-rural-or-urban-dwellers/

https://theconversation.com/suburban-living-the-worst-for-carbon-emissions-new-research-149332

and if you are really sciency: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11184-y/

Or to drive the point: https://phys.org/news/2014-01-carbon-footprint-reveal-urban-suburban.html

Researchers found a striking divide: low-carbon city centers ringed by suburbs where households are responsible for an outsize proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. In many big metropolitan areas like New York or Los Angeles, their research found, a family that lives in the urban core has about a 50 percent smaller carbon footprint than a similar-sized family in a distant suburb.


This is really not a hard concept. Thanks for playing.

None of the studies looks at consumption based emissions. Thanks for playing.

“It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt”

― Mark Twain

One of the findings of the Finland study was that suburban families fly less than their urban, downtown counterparts. They theorized that having a yard and larger family size means that people do not need to get away as much for vacations. Show me where any of the links includes differences air transport emissions or show me your clown mask. 🤡

This thread is about YIMBY planners and the built environment between urban and suburban dwellers. You are adding the whole airplane carbon thing. I would submit, more urbanists are using trains when possible to travel, which is a lot less carbon intensive.

Do you have evidence for that assertion?

Back on topic: YIMBY planners have delivered none of what they’ve promised. Compact transit-oriented development was supposed to cost less, but now we have to subsidize it. Downtown areas were supposed to have plentiful housing and prices were supposed to fall but we have anemic growth and high rents. It’s time for a rethink about whether we have this right. I want growth, but what we’ve been doing the past decade or so has not worked.

No one said prices were going to fall. But more supply mitigates the rate of increase. Do you really think the price of a Watergate Condo would ever decrease? You can't be that dumb.

This is some impressive goalpost-moving, because a whole lot of YIMBYs assert on a daily basis that simply adding more housing will make prices automatically fall. You're saying that's not true?

You all should get your story straight before trying to convince people of its merits.

Do the math. Buy a place in Watergate for 2 million dollars. A new tower comes up between the Watergate and Kennedy Center. With all of those new units, does the Watergate lose value? Or as economics shows us, more buyers flood the new buildings until there is a stasis between the two. Now, with two buildings with an equal number of units, as they turn over, there is more selection thus keeping prices down. But at no point, does the Watergate LOSE value.

Please point to a place where a YIMBY said that market values would decline because of the new units, because I doubt anyone made that assertion.

Eric Saul (and retweeted by the former planning chief of staff): We forget that many renters are in single family homes are paying around $3-4k/mo. in Montgomery County. They can do so because a 2-bedroom apt. costs 3k/mo. We need more supply to lower prices across the board. And don’t forget all the promises about filtering. Turns out developers are smart enough to control supply to prevent prices from falling.

That is rental prices. I was referring to sales prices. There is a difference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“disadvantages” of living in the suburbs? When in reality, they’re precisely the reasons that people CHOOSE to live in the suburbs? I for one, LIKE that my neighborhood has streets you can’t drive through, lacks sidewalks, lacks public transit, has big yards and is mostly houses with few commercial establishments. I don’t want to be able to walk to a bar or 7-eleven, and I don’t want anyone walking from those places to walk through my neighborhood.

Because they feel that the preference for the suburbs is objectively wrong, and vociferously making the case will make them feel justified in their increasingly aggressive efforts to impose their own preferences on people.

Objectively, low density, car-dependent, residential-only, cul-de-sac neighborhoods are a disaster for the environment, local government budgets, and societal well-being.

However, if that's what you prefer, that's not objectively wrong. How can a preference be objectively anything? Your feelings are your feelings.

Just because you say the word “objectively” does not make it true.

Here is a study that demonstrates that downtown Helsinki residents have more carbon intensive lifestyles than their suburban counterparts.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/3/034034/pdf

Consumption based emissions are very real and it turns out significantly more important than transportation emissions for household GHG emissions.

That study is from 2011.

I think things have changed a little since then, no?

What specifically that would make the findings untrue?

We know a lot more about building performance, and particularly the comparison of urban versus suburban where carbon and energy consumption are concerned; bottom line, urban dwellers use less energy, emit less carbon and generally are better for the environment as compared to suburban and exurban dwellers.

That doesn’t answer the question. It is just conjecture. Do you have a study or specific proof that the findings of the study no longer hold? If you do, you should probably email the authors and the journal to let them know. Until you do that, you are talking out of your *ss.

https://climateadaptationplatform.com/who-has-the-bigger-carbon-footprint-rural-or-urban-dwellers/

https://theconversation.com/suburban-living-the-worst-for-carbon-emissions-new-research-149332

and if you are really sciency: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11184-y/

Or to drive the point: https://phys.org/news/2014-01-carbon-footprint-reveal-urban-suburban.html

Researchers found a striking divide: low-carbon city centers ringed by suburbs where households are responsible for an outsize proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. In many big metropolitan areas like New York or Los Angeles, their research found, a family that lives in the urban core has about a 50 percent smaller carbon footprint than a similar-sized family in a distant suburb.


This is really not a hard concept. Thanks for playing.

None of the studies looks at consumption based emissions. Thanks for playing.

“It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt”

― Mark Twain

One of the findings of the Finland study was that suburban families fly less than their urban, downtown counterparts. They theorized that having a yard and larger family size means that people do not need to get away as much for vacations. Show me where any of the links includes differences air transport emissions or show me your clown mask. 🤡

This thread is about YIMBY planners and the built environment between urban and suburban dwellers. You are adding the whole airplane carbon thing. I would submit, more urbanists are using trains when possible to travel, which is a lot less carbon intensive.

Do you have evidence for that assertion?

Back on topic: YIMBY planners have delivered none of what they’ve promised. Compact transit-oriented development was supposed to cost less, but now we have to subsidize it. Downtown areas were supposed to have plentiful housing and prices were supposed to fall but we have anemic growth and high rents. It’s time for a rethink about whether we have this right. I want growth, but what we’ve been doing the past decade or so has not worked.

No one said prices were going to fall. But more supply mitigates the rate of increase. Do you really think the price of a Watergate Condo would ever decrease? You can't be that dumb.

This is some impressive goalpost-moving, because a whole lot of YIMBYs assert on a daily basis that simply adding more housing will make prices automatically fall. You're saying that's not true?

You all should get your story straight before trying to convince people of its merits.

Do the math. Buy a place in Watergate for 2 million dollars. A new tower comes up between the Watergate and Kennedy Center. With all of those new units, does the Watergate lose value? Or as economics shows us, more buyers flood the new buildings until there is a stasis between the two. Now, with two buildings with an equal number of units, as they turn over, there is more selection thus keeping prices down. But at no point, does the Watergate LOSE value.

Please point to a place where a YIMBY said that market values would decline because of the new units, because I doubt anyone made that assertion.

Eric Saul (and retweeted by the former planning chief of staff): We forget that many renters are in single family homes are paying around $3-4k/mo. in Montgomery County. They can do so because a 2-bedroom apt. costs 3k/mo. We need more supply to lower prices across the board. And don’t forget all the promises about filtering. Turns out developers are smart enough to control supply to prevent prices from falling.

That is rental prices. I was referring to sales prices. There is a difference.

Wait you still think YIMBYism is going to lower rental prices without an oppressive regulatory intervention? That’s hilarious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“disadvantages” of living in the suburbs? When in reality, they’re precisely the reasons that people CHOOSE to live in the suburbs? I for one, LIKE that my neighborhood has streets you can’t drive through, lacks sidewalks, lacks public transit, has big yards and is mostly houses with few commercial establishments. I don’t want to be able to walk to a bar or 7-eleven, and I don’t want anyone walking from those places to walk through my neighborhood.

Because they feel that the preference for the suburbs is objectively wrong, and vociferously making the case will make them feel justified in their increasingly aggressive efforts to impose their own preferences on people.

Objectively, low density, car-dependent, residential-only, cul-de-sac neighborhoods are a disaster for the environment, local government budgets, and societal well-being.

However, if that's what you prefer, that's not objectively wrong. How can a preference be objectively anything? Your feelings are your feelings.

Just because you say the word “objectively” does not make it true.

Here is a study that demonstrates that downtown Helsinki residents have more carbon intensive lifestyles than their suburban counterparts.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/3/034034/pdf

Consumption based emissions are very real and it turns out significantly more important than transportation emissions for household GHG emissions.

That study is from 2011.

I think things have changed a little since then, no?

What specifically that would make the findings untrue?

We know a lot more about building performance, and particularly the comparison of urban versus suburban where carbon and energy consumption are concerned; bottom line, urban dwellers use less energy, emit less carbon and generally are better for the environment as compared to suburban and exurban dwellers.

That doesn’t answer the question. It is just conjecture. Do you have a study or specific proof that the findings of the study no longer hold? If you do, you should probably email the authors and the journal to let them know. Until you do that, you are talking out of your *ss.

https://climateadaptationplatform.com/who-has-the-bigger-carbon-footprint-rural-or-urban-dwellers/

https://theconversation.com/suburban-living-the-worst-for-carbon-emissions-new-research-149332

and if you are really sciency: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11184-y/

Or to drive the point: https://phys.org/news/2014-01-carbon-footprint-reveal-urban-suburban.html

Researchers found a striking divide: low-carbon city centers ringed by suburbs where households are responsible for an outsize proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. In many big metropolitan areas like New York or Los Angeles, their research found, a family that lives in the urban core has about a 50 percent smaller carbon footprint than a similar-sized family in a distant suburb.


This is really not a hard concept. Thanks for playing.

None of the studies looks at consumption based emissions. Thanks for playing.

“It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt”

― Mark Twain

One of the findings of the Finland study was that suburban families fly less than their urban, downtown counterparts. They theorized that having a yard and larger family size means that people do not need to get away as much for vacations. Show me where any of the links includes differences air transport emissions or show me your clown mask. 🤡

This thread is about YIMBY planners and the built environment between urban and suburban dwellers. You are adding the whole airplane carbon thing. I would submit, more urbanists are using trains when possible to travel, which is a lot less carbon intensive.

Do you have evidence for that assertion?

Back on topic: YIMBY planners have delivered none of what they’ve promised. Compact transit-oriented development was supposed to cost less, but now we have to subsidize it. Downtown areas were supposed to have plentiful housing and prices were supposed to fall but we have anemic growth and high rents. It’s time for a rethink about whether we have this right. I want growth, but what we’ve been doing the past decade or so has not worked.

No one said prices were going to fall. But more supply mitigates the rate of increase. Do you really think the price of a Watergate Condo would ever decrease? You can't be that dumb.

This is some impressive goalpost-moving, because a whole lot of YIMBYs assert on a daily basis that simply adding more housing will make prices automatically fall. You're saying that's not true?

You all should get your story straight before trying to convince people of its merits.

Do the math. Buy a place in Watergate for 2 million dollars. A new tower comes up between the Watergate and Kennedy Center. With all of those new units, does the Watergate lose value? Or as economics shows us, more buyers flood the new buildings until there is a stasis between the two. Now, with two buildings with an equal number of units, as they turn over, there is more selection thus keeping prices down. But at no point, does the Watergate LOSE value.

Please point to a place where a YIMBY said that market values would decline because of the new units, because I doubt anyone made that assertion.

Eric Saul (and retweeted by the former planning chief of staff): We forget that many renters are in single family homes are paying around $3-4k/mo. in Montgomery County. They can do so because a 2-bedroom apt. costs 3k/mo. We need more supply to lower prices across the board. And don’t forget all the promises about filtering. Turns out developers are smart enough to control supply to prevent prices from falling.

That is rental prices. I was referring to sales prices. There is a difference.

Wait you still think YIMBYism is going to lower rental prices without an oppressive regulatory intervention? That’s hilarious.

You need to understand what was meant by "lowering prices across the board" - but I don't think he meant in raw dollar numbers, but rather mitigating prices over the long term in a relative manner. Supply and demand suggests this is the case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“disadvantages” of living in the suburbs? When in reality, they’re precisely the reasons that people CHOOSE to live in the suburbs? I for one, LIKE that my neighborhood has streets you can’t drive through, lacks sidewalks, lacks public transit, has big yards and is mostly houses with few commercial establishments. I don’t want to be able to walk to a bar or 7-eleven, and I don’t want anyone walking from those places to walk through my neighborhood.

Because they feel that the preference for the suburbs is objectively wrong, and vociferously making the case will make them feel justified in their increasingly aggressive efforts to impose their own preferences on people.

Objectively, low density, car-dependent, residential-only, cul-de-sac neighborhoods are a disaster for the environment, local government budgets, and societal well-being.

However, if that's what you prefer, that's not objectively wrong. How can a preference be objectively anything? Your feelings are your feelings.

Just because you say the word “objectively” does not make it true.

Here is a study that demonstrates that downtown Helsinki residents have more carbon intensive lifestyles than their suburban counterparts.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/3/034034/pdf

Consumption based emissions are very real and it turns out significantly more important than transportation emissions for household GHG emissions.

That study is from 2011.

I think things have changed a little since then, no?

What specifically that would make the findings untrue?

We know a lot more about building performance, and particularly the comparison of urban versus suburban where carbon and energy consumption are concerned; bottom line, urban dwellers use less energy, emit less carbon and generally are better for the environment as compared to suburban and exurban dwellers.

That doesn’t answer the question. It is just conjecture. Do you have a study or specific proof that the findings of the study no longer hold? If you do, you should probably email the authors and the journal to let them know. Until you do that, you are talking out of your *ss.

https://climateadaptationplatform.com/who-has-the-bigger-carbon-footprint-rural-or-urban-dwellers/

https://theconversation.com/suburban-living-the-worst-for-carbon-emissions-new-research-149332

and if you are really sciency: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11184-y/

Or to drive the point: https://phys.org/news/2014-01-carbon-footprint-reveal-urban-suburban.html

Researchers found a striking divide: low-carbon city centers ringed by suburbs where households are responsible for an outsize proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. In many big metropolitan areas like New York or Los Angeles, their research found, a family that lives in the urban core has about a 50 percent smaller carbon footprint than a similar-sized family in a distant suburb.


This is really not a hard concept. Thanks for playing.

None of the studies looks at consumption based emissions. Thanks for playing.

“It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt”

― Mark Twain

One of the findings of the Finland study was that suburban families fly less than their urban, downtown counterparts. They theorized that having a yard and larger family size means that people do not need to get away as much for vacations. Show me where any of the links includes differences air transport emissions or show me your clown mask. 🤡

This thread is about YIMBY planners and the built environment between urban and suburban dwellers. You are adding the whole airplane carbon thing. I would submit, more urbanists are using trains when possible to travel, which is a lot less carbon intensive.

Do you have evidence for that assertion?

Back on topic: YIMBY planners have delivered none of what they’ve promised. Compact transit-oriented development was supposed to cost less, but now we have to subsidize it. Downtown areas were supposed to have plentiful housing and prices were supposed to fall but we have anemic growth and high rents. It’s time for a rethink about whether we have this right. I want growth, but what we’ve been doing the past decade or so has not worked.

No one said prices were going to fall. But more supply mitigates the rate of increase. Do you really think the price of a Watergate Condo would ever decrease? You can't be that dumb.

This is some impressive goalpost-moving, because a whole lot of YIMBYs assert on a daily basis that simply adding more housing will make prices automatically fall. You're saying that's not true?

You all should get your story straight before trying to convince people of its merits.

Do the math. Buy a place in Watergate for 2 million dollars. A new tower comes up between the Watergate and Kennedy Center. With all of those new units, does the Watergate lose value? Or as economics shows us, more buyers flood the new buildings until there is a stasis between the two. Now, with two buildings with an equal number of units, as they turn over, there is more selection thus keeping prices down. But at no point, does the Watergate LOSE value.

Please point to a place where a YIMBY said that market values would decline because of the new units, because I doubt anyone made that assertion.

Eric Saul (and retweeted by the former planning chief of staff): We forget that many renters are in single family homes are paying around $3-4k/mo. in Montgomery County. They can do so because a 2-bedroom apt. costs 3k/mo. We need more supply to lower prices across the board. And don’t forget all the promises about filtering. Turns out developers are smart enough to control supply to prevent prices from falling.

That is rental prices. I was referring to sales prices. There is a difference.

Wait you still think YIMBYism is going to lower rental prices without an oppressive regulatory intervention? That’s hilarious.

You need to understand what was meant by "lowering prices across the board" - but I don't think he meant in raw dollar numbers, but rather mitigating prices over the long term in a relative manner. Supply and demand suggests this is the case.

Or I could just read the words he actually used.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, planners did the indefensible and now the whole practice has changed to try to mitigate it. Learning from the past portends to a better future. What is your point?

It looks like they’re still messing up in Montgomery County unless the plan was to maximize some developers’ profits at the expense of affordable housing and the county’s property tax revenue along with skyrocketing rents and negative job growth.

The planners recommend. The elected officials decide. The elected officials are elected by the voters. Your disagreement is with the voters. You say everybody wants what you want, but the election results say otherwise. Your issue is not with the planners, it's with the voters.

If the planners aren’t making recommendations that elected officials are willing to implement then they’re doing a bad job. There’s always a path to progress but it requires reading the room and moving the ball where you can. Just thinking about the past few years, our genius planning staff has opposed the one county-wide upzoning bill that was put forward and then poured a lot of resources into duplexes only to have developers tell them that the math didn’t work in all but a few places. That’s not reading the room. That’s pursuing maximalist positions from the start and getting nothing done.

You also conveniently omit the planners’ role in development review, which is expensive and time consuming for developers. That process is terrible, runs for a long time before the matter even gets to the board, and delivers very little benefit to neighbors or developers. This process should go away but it won’t because planning uses it to justify headcount and because planners like rubbing elbows with real engineers and real economists.

Finally, the one elected official who’s openly hostile to growth has nothing to do with land use or planning, though he’d like to change that.

Uh, that is the developers, the ones most NIMBYs call evil and greedy, exerting pressure on the system, including elected officials.

No, that was developers providing data for a housing report that planning did after putting a lot of intellectual and political capital into duplexes. Probably would have made more sense to see if the idea would pencil out before pushing for it.

What is happening is that the planners are working not from a perspective of practicality or promoting economic development and improving but of ideology and self-aggrandizement. They thought they would get accolades from their peers and affirmation on Twitter if they pushed missing middle. They had even already included it in the Silver Spring and Adjacent Communities plan and were conducting public meetings about the merits of stacked fourplexes before getting pushback. Following that pushback, they were forced to actually prepare the missing middle housing report which looked at the feasibility of missing middle. The data provided by developers in that report makes it absolutely ridiculous that they were allowed to spend so much taxpayer time and political capital on something that doesn’t pencil out. And all because they were probably looking for likes and RTs on Twitter or am award from their industry association or something for pushing through a plan that has zero practicality for our community. But it certainly was all about them and not for the benefit of the community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“disadvantages” of living in the suburbs? When in reality, they’re precisely the reasons that people CHOOSE to live in the suburbs? I for one, LIKE that my neighborhood has streets you can’t drive through, lacks sidewalks, lacks public transit, has big yards and is mostly houses with few commercial establishments. I don’t want to be able to walk to a bar or 7-eleven, and I don’t want anyone walking from those places to walk through my neighborhood.

Because they feel that the preference for the suburbs is objectively wrong, and vociferously making the case will make them feel justified in their increasingly aggressive efforts to impose their own preferences on people.

Objectively, low density, car-dependent, residential-only, cul-de-sac neighborhoods are a disaster for the environment, local government budgets, and societal well-being.

However, if that's what you prefer, that's not objectively wrong. How can a preference be objectively anything? Your feelings are your feelings.

Just because you say the word “objectively” does not make it true.

Here is a study that demonstrates that downtown Helsinki residents have more carbon intensive lifestyles than their suburban counterparts.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/3/034034/pdf

Consumption based emissions are very real and it turns out significantly more important than transportation emissions for household GHG emissions.

That study is from 2011.

I think things have changed a little since then, no?

What specifically that would make the findings untrue?

We know a lot more about building performance, and particularly the comparison of urban versus suburban where carbon and energy consumption are concerned; bottom line, urban dwellers use less energy, emit less carbon and generally are better for the environment as compared to suburban and exurban dwellers.

That doesn’t answer the question. It is just conjecture. Do you have a study or specific proof that the findings of the study no longer hold? If you do, you should probably email the authors and the journal to let them know. Until you do that, you are talking out of your *ss.

https://climateadaptationplatform.com/who-has-the-bigger-carbon-footprint-rural-or-urban-dwellers/

https://theconversation.com/suburban-living-the-worst-for-carbon-emissions-new-research-149332

and if you are really sciency: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11184-y/

Or to drive the point: https://phys.org/news/2014-01-carbon-footprint-reveal-urban-suburban.html

Researchers found a striking divide: low-carbon city centers ringed by suburbs where households are responsible for an outsize proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. In many big metropolitan areas like New York or Los Angeles, their research found, a family that lives in the urban core has about a 50 percent smaller carbon footprint than a similar-sized family in a distant suburb.


This is really not a hard concept. Thanks for playing.

None of the studies looks at consumption based emissions. Thanks for playing.

“It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt”

― Mark Twain

One of the findings of the Finland study was that suburban families fly less than their urban, downtown counterparts. They theorized that having a yard and larger family size means that people do not need to get away as much for vacations. Show me where any of the links includes differences air transport emissions or show me your clown mask. 🤡

This thread is about YIMBY planners and the built environment between urban and suburban dwellers. You are adding the whole airplane carbon thing. I would submit, more urbanists are using trains when possible to travel, which is a lot less carbon intensive.

Do you have evidence for that assertion?

Back on topic: YIMBY planners have delivered none of what they’ve promised. Compact transit-oriented development was supposed to cost less, but now we have to subsidize it. Downtown areas were supposed to have plentiful housing and prices were supposed to fall but we have anemic growth and high rents. It’s time for a rethink about whether we have this right. I want growth, but what we’ve been doing the past decade or so has not worked.

No one said prices were going to fall. But more supply mitigates the rate of increase. Do you really think the price of a Watergate Condo would ever decrease? You can't be that dumb.

This is some impressive goalpost-moving, because a whole lot of YIMBYs assert on a daily basis that simply adding more housing will make prices automatically fall. You're saying that's not true?

You all should get your story straight before trying to convince people of its merits.

Do the math. Buy a place in Watergate for 2 million dollars. A new tower comes up between the Watergate and Kennedy Center. With all of those new units, does the Watergate lose value? Or as economics shows us, more buyers flood the new buildings until there is a stasis between the two. Now, with two buildings with an equal number of units, as they turn over, there is more selection thus keeping prices down. But at no point, does the Watergate LOSE value.

Please point to a place where a YIMBY said that market values would decline because of the new units, because I doubt anyone made that assertion.

No, but the dumpy, low-income apartment building across the street from the Watergate sudddenly gets more expensive, either because the owners can ask for higher rents or because the building is now so valuable that it gets sold and torn down to be replaced by -- you guessed it -- a new luxury tower.

How does that stasis between market-rate buildings help the people who used to live in the dumpy, low-income apartment building across the street but now can't afford it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“disadvantages” of living in the suburbs? When in reality, they’re precisely the reasons that people CHOOSE to live in the suburbs? I for one, LIKE that my neighborhood has streets you can’t drive through, lacks sidewalks, lacks public transit, has big yards and is mostly houses with few commercial establishments. I don’t want to be able to walk to a bar or 7-eleven, and I don’t want anyone walking from those places to walk through my neighborhood.

Because they feel that the preference for the suburbs is objectively wrong, and vociferously making the case will make them feel justified in their increasingly aggressive efforts to impose their own preferences on people.

Objectively, low density, car-dependent, residential-only, cul-de-sac neighborhoods are a disaster for the environment, local government budgets, and societal well-being.

However, if that's what you prefer, that's not objectively wrong. How can a preference be objectively anything? Your feelings are your feelings.

Just because you say the word “objectively” does not make it true.

Here is a study that demonstrates that downtown Helsinki residents have more carbon intensive lifestyles than their suburban counterparts.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/3/034034/pdf

Consumption based emissions are very real and it turns out significantly more important than transportation emissions for household GHG emissions.

That study is from 2011.

I think things have changed a little since then, no?

What specifically that would make the findings untrue?

We know a lot more about building performance, and particularly the comparison of urban versus suburban where carbon and energy consumption are concerned; bottom line, urban dwellers use less energy, emit less carbon and generally are better for the environment as compared to suburban and exurban dwellers.

That doesn’t answer the question. It is just conjecture. Do you have a study or specific proof that the findings of the study no longer hold? If you do, you should probably email the authors and the journal to let them know. Until you do that, you are talking out of your *ss.

https://climateadaptationplatform.com/who-has-the-bigger-carbon-footprint-rural-or-urban-dwellers/

https://theconversation.com/suburban-living-the-worst-for-carbon-emissions-new-research-149332

and if you are really sciency: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11184-y/

Or to drive the point: https://phys.org/news/2014-01-carbon-footprint-reveal-urban-suburban.html

Researchers found a striking divide: low-carbon city centers ringed by suburbs where households are responsible for an outsize proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. In many big metropolitan areas like New York or Los Angeles, their research found, a family that lives in the urban core has about a 50 percent smaller carbon footprint than a similar-sized family in a distant suburb.


This is really not a hard concept. Thanks for playing.

None of the studies looks at consumption based emissions. Thanks for playing.

“It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt”

― Mark Twain

One of the findings of the Finland study was that suburban families fly less than their urban, downtown counterparts. They theorized that having a yard and larger family size means that people do not need to get away as much for vacations. Show me where any of the links includes differences air transport emissions or show me your clown mask. 🤡

This thread is about YIMBY planners and the built environment between urban and suburban dwellers. You are adding the whole airplane carbon thing. I would submit, more urbanists are using trains when possible to travel, which is a lot less carbon intensive.

Do you have evidence for that assertion?

Back on topic: YIMBY planners have delivered none of what they’ve promised. Compact transit-oriented development was supposed to cost less, but now we have to subsidize it. Downtown areas were supposed to have plentiful housing and prices were supposed to fall but we have anemic growth and high rents. It’s time for a rethink about whether we have this right. I want growth, but what we’ve been doing the past decade or so has not worked.

No one said prices were going to fall. But more supply mitigates the rate of increase. Do you really think the price of a Watergate Condo would ever decrease? You can't be that dumb.

This is some impressive goalpost-moving, because a whole lot of YIMBYs assert on a daily basis that simply adding more housing will make prices automatically fall. You're saying that's not true?

You all should get your story straight before trying to convince people of its merits.

Do the math. Buy a place in Watergate for 2 million dollars. A new tower comes up between the Watergate and Kennedy Center. With all of those new units, does the Watergate lose value? Or as economics shows us, more buyers flood the new buildings until there is a stasis between the two. Now, with two buildings with an equal number of units, as they turn over, there is more selection thus keeping prices down. But at no point, does the Watergate LOSE value.

Please point to a place where a YIMBY said that market values would decline because of the new units, because I doubt anyone made that assertion.

Eric Saul (and retweeted by the former planning chief of staff): We forget that many renters are in single family homes are paying around $3-4k/mo. in Montgomery County. They can do so because a 2-bedroom apt. costs 3k/mo. We need more supply to lower prices across the board. And don’t forget all the promises about filtering. Turns out developers are smart enough to control supply to prevent prices from falling.

That is rental prices. I was referring to sales prices. There is a difference.

Wait you still think YIMBYism is going to lower rental prices without an oppressive regulatory intervention? That’s hilarious.

You need to understand what was meant by "lowering prices across the board" - but I don't think he meant in raw dollar numbers, but rather mitigating prices over the long term in a relative manner. Supply and demand suggests this is the case.

No one disagrees that supply and demand dictate pricing. The problem is that local YIMBYs are unwilling to accept that their policies have failed to produce adequate supply.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“disadvantages” of living in the suburbs? When in reality, they’re precisely the reasons that people CHOOSE to live in the suburbs? I for one, LIKE that my neighborhood has streets you can’t drive through, lacks sidewalks, lacks public transit, has big yards and is mostly houses with few commercial establishments. I don’t want to be able to walk to a bar or 7-eleven, and I don’t want anyone walking from those places to walk through my neighborhood.

Because they feel that the preference for the suburbs is objectively wrong, and vociferously making the case will make them feel justified in their increasingly aggressive efforts to impose their own preferences on people.

Objectively, low density, car-dependent, residential-only, cul-de-sac neighborhoods are a disaster for the environment, local government budgets, and societal well-being.

However, if that's what you prefer, that's not objectively wrong. How can a preference be objectively anything? Your feelings are your feelings.

Just because you say the word “objectively” does not make it true.

Here is a study that demonstrates that downtown Helsinki residents have more carbon intensive lifestyles than their suburban counterparts.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/3/034034/pdf

Consumption based emissions are very real and it turns out significantly more important than transportation emissions for household GHG emissions.

That study is from 2011.

I think things have changed a little since then, no?

What specifically that would make the findings untrue?

We know a lot more about building performance, and particularly the comparison of urban versus suburban where carbon and energy consumption are concerned; bottom line, urban dwellers use less energy, emit less carbon and generally are better for the environment as compared to suburban and exurban dwellers.

That doesn’t answer the question. It is just conjecture. Do you have a study or specific proof that the findings of the study no longer hold? If you do, you should probably email the authors and the journal to let them know. Until you do that, you are talking out of your *ss.

https://climateadaptationplatform.com/who-has-the-bigger-carbon-footprint-rural-or-urban-dwellers/

https://theconversation.com/suburban-living-the-worst-for-carbon-emissions-new-research-149332

and if you are really sciency: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11184-y/

Or to drive the point: https://phys.org/news/2014-01-carbon-footprint-reveal-urban-suburban.html

Researchers found a striking divide: low-carbon city centers ringed by suburbs where households are responsible for an outsize proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. In many big metropolitan areas like New York or Los Angeles, their research found, a family that lives in the urban core has about a 50 percent smaller carbon footprint than a similar-sized family in a distant suburb.


This is really not a hard concept. Thanks for playing.

None of the studies looks at consumption based emissions. Thanks for playing.

“It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt”

― Mark Twain

One of the findings of the Finland study was that suburban families fly less than their urban, downtown counterparts. They theorized that having a yard and larger family size means that people do not need to get away as much for vacations. Show me where any of the links includes differences air transport emissions or show me your clown mask. 🤡

This thread is about YIMBY planners and the built environment between urban and suburban dwellers. You are adding the whole airplane carbon thing. I would submit, more urbanists are using trains when possible to travel, which is a lot less carbon intensive.

Do you have evidence for that assertion?

Back on topic: YIMBY planners have delivered none of what they’ve promised. Compact transit-oriented development was supposed to cost less, but now we have to subsidize it. Downtown areas were supposed to have plentiful housing and prices were supposed to fall but we have anemic growth and high rents. It’s time for a rethink about whether we have this right. I want growth, but what we’ve been doing the past decade or so has not worked.

No one said prices were going to fall. But more supply mitigates the rate of increase. Do you really think the price of a Watergate Condo would ever decrease? You can't be that dumb.

This is some impressive goalpost-moving, because a whole lot of YIMBYs assert on a daily basis that simply adding more housing will make prices automatically fall. You're saying that's not true?

You all should get your story straight before trying to convince people of its merits.

Do the math. Buy a place in Watergate for 2 million dollars. A new tower comes up between the Watergate and Kennedy Center. With all of those new units, does the Watergate lose value? Or as economics shows us, more buyers flood the new buildings until there is a stasis between the two. Now, with two buildings with an equal number of units, as they turn over, there is more selection thus keeping prices down. But at no point, does the Watergate LOSE value.

Please point to a place where a YIMBY said that market values would decline because of the new units, because I doubt anyone made that assertion.

There’s plenty of literature showing that additional construction drives down purchase prices in immature markets. There’s also plenty of literature showing that doesn’t work in mature markets because existing inventory is a really big number so growth (as a percentage) will be a small number because of the base effect. But our YIMBY planners look at these things in very simplistic ways and just say “oh look at this place in the Sun Belt. Let’s just do that here.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, planners did the indefensible and now the whole practice has changed to try to mitigate it. Learning from the past portends to a better future. What is your point?

It looks like they’re still messing up in Montgomery County unless the plan was to maximize some developers’ profits at the expense of affordable housing and the county’s property tax revenue along with skyrocketing rents and negative job growth.

The planners recommend. The elected officials decide. The elected officials are elected by the voters. Your disagreement is with the voters. You say everybody wants what you want, but the election results say otherwise. Your issue is not with the planners, it's with the voters.

If the planners aren’t making recommendations that elected officials are willing to implement then they’re doing a bad job. There’s always a path to progress but it requires reading the room and moving the ball where you can. Just thinking about the past few years, our genius planning staff has opposed the one county-wide upzoning bill that was put forward and then poured a lot of resources into duplexes only to have developers tell them that the math didn’t work in all but a few places. That’s not reading the room. That’s pursuing maximalist positions from the start and getting nothing done.

You also conveniently omit the planners’ role in development review, which is expensive and time consuming for developers. That process is terrible, runs for a long time before the matter even gets to the board, and delivers very little benefit to neighbors or developers. This process should go away but it won’t because planning uses it to justify headcount and because planners like rubbing elbows with real engineers and real economists.

Finally, the one elected official who’s openly hostile to growth has nothing to do with land use or planning, though he’d like to change that.

Uh, that is the developers, the ones most NIMBYs call evil and greedy, exerting pressure on the system, including elected officials.

No, that was developers providing data for a housing report that planning did after putting a lot of intellectual and political capital into duplexes. Probably would have made more sense to see if the idea would pencil out before pushing for it.

What is happening is that the planners are working not from a perspective of practicality or promoting economic development and improving but of ideology and self-aggrandizement. They thought they would get accolades from their peers and affirmation on Twitter if they pushed missing middle. They had even already included it in the Silver Spring and Adjacent Communities plan and were conducting public meetings about the merits of stacked fourplexes before getting pushback. Following that pushback, they were forced to actually prepare the missing middle housing report which looked at the feasibility of missing middle. The data provided by developers in that report makes it absolutely ridiculous that they were allowed to spend so much taxpayer time and political capital on something that doesn’t pencil out. And all because they were probably looking for likes and RTs on Twitter or am award from their industry association or something for pushing through a plan that has zero practicality for our community. But it certainly was all about them and not for the benefit of the community.

This is great insight into how Planning works. It explains perfectly why our plans have been so disconnected from what the community actually needs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“disadvantages” of living in the suburbs? When in reality, they’re precisely the reasons that people CHOOSE to live in the suburbs? I for one, LIKE that my neighborhood has streets you can’t drive through, lacks sidewalks, lacks public transit, has big yards and is mostly houses with few commercial establishments. I don’t want to be able to walk to a bar or 7-eleven, and I don’t want anyone walking from those places to walk through my neighborhood.

1. They're malcontent nihilists. Almost always childless.

2. They're literally shills (and/or bots) paid directly and indirectly by think tanks, developers, lawyers and bankers to force zoning changes and subsidized housing.