Reply to What do you think of YIMBYs?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I ofter disagree with YIMBYs but I understand their point of view.  It's the YIYBYs - the Yes, in your back yard! types - who are insufferable.  They're the so-called smart growthers who want height and density everywhere, except in their own back yard.  A case in point is the new chairman of the Woodley Park-Cleveland Park ANC, who has been a big cheerleader for up-zoning the area, even though much to it lies in two historic districts, and effectively ending single family zoning.  Yet he resides most of the time not in DC, but in the single family home he purchased in Calvert County, MD.  And while this "Absentee Neighborhood Commissioner" pushes density on the  DC neighborhood he purports to represent, along with an ex-ANC commissioner he has opposed proposed infill development that might affect the view from his apartment rental in DC.  A real YIYBY indeed.[/quote]
Reminds me that the founder of GGW lives in townhome on a historically protected block in DuPont Circle. His life is totally impervious to everything that he advocates. I find that this is a common feature. [/quote]

he lives what he espouses, an urban lifestyle with better housing and transportation options[/quote]
By his own choice (which I don’t disagree with), he is personally insulated from the policies that he espouses regarding development. His whole street is NIMBYism by regulation. So no, he does not live what he espouses. [/quote]

Ummm he was a vocal proponent of a project across the street from his home and even wrote about it:

https://ggwash.org/view/38823/neighborhood-commission-catches-height-itis-on-a-dupont-circle-church-and-condo-project

Someday I'll get my head around the irrational hatred on here for GGW but in the meantime you don't get to make stuff up.[/quote]
Your description of what he is supporting is highly motivated. He is supporting turning a burned out church that s a blight on his neighborhood on the corner of a major thoroughfare into something usable. It does not affect any of the SFH low rise development on his street and in fact the development itself is low rise (5 floors) and does not go higher than the original height of the church. So this is nonsense, absolute nonsense.[/quote]

Given that many in the neighborhood preferred the burned out shell of the church for the past 40 years, then yes, that is an improvement. And if you don't like that it was only 5 stories, then blame zoning and preservation. I am pretty confident the neighbor in question would have been fine with 15-20 or whatever stories.[/quote]
No he wouldn't. In the article he never defines what he thinks an acceptable height is and he does not have to because he is protected from that by the zoning and housing regulations of the community that he chose to make his home. That is why he chose to live there, the low density aesthetics that are protected by the zoning and housing regulations. He says himself that he highly values aesthetic qualities in statements that GGW would typically warp to make anyone else seem like a NIMBY racist ("other neighbors are adding a fourth story to their row house, which I will be able to see from my upstairs windows, but it’s set back so you can’t see it from the sidewalk (and, honestly, I’d be fine with it even if they didn’t have to set it so far back, since the design looks very well done").

Look, this is a boring back and forth. Choosing to live in a neighborhood due to the aesthetic qualities of being historically protected, living under those historic preservation regulations and then not just promoting other parts of the city to accept more density and development but actively mocking those who don't live under historic preservation regulations who want to keep their neighborhoods the same is pretty interesting, to be polite.

His neighborhood is almost 80% white and 7% black and which is historically protected.

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