Anonymous
04/15/2023 15:32
Subject: Why do “YIMBY” urban planners, bloggers & activists constantly cite what they believe are
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: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.
I think it is a little disingenuous to blame inadequate housing supply on YIMBY policies, like these policies are happening without any objection.
But I do ask -- is there an alternative out there that CAN produce adequate supply?
No one is going to agree on 'adequate supply' and what that means for a given city or community. My unpopular opinion is that no one needs or deserves to live in a particular zip code or community, regardless of their place of employment.
Huh. My unpopular opinion is that land use & housing policies should be for the benefit of everybody, not just people with more money who want to be able to exclude people with less money from living in certain zip codes or communities.
Missing middle housing will forever be unpopular because it’s a stupid idea. Just build density in properly zoned areas. Additional areas can be zoned for density and current owners could be compensated properly, commercial zones can be changed to mixed. If people would drop the upzoning scam you’d get a lot more support for additional housing and transportation infrastructure. As it stands, people are forced to hate it all because MMH is a part of the package. Upzoning is a poison pill that will make other changes very expensive and time consuming. We can all lawyer up and re-fight the purple line fight again, I guess.
"properly zones areas" to NIMBYs like you means somewhere else, not here. Even if "here" is a low density neighborhood that is on top of a metro station - so in other words, the region invested billions of dollars in metro and you want the convenience of a single family house at the exclusion of others. So here we are.
There are only 2 metro stations in our entire region that have not already been up zoned within the a half mile with high density. The first one is Takoma and the second one is Forest Glen. As a result, it’s so bizarre to me that you are fixated on Bethesda and Chevy Chase when the ultimate Big Boss NIMBYs in Montgomery County are in Takoma Park and Silver Spring and you have absolutely nothing to say about them. It’s just bizarre. The only people against TOD in this county are your neighborhoods. Go argue with them. In the meantime and back in the real world, upzoning car dependent areas without transit access is the surest way to undermine investment in transit.
Hans Riemer and Casey Anderson both opposed the only bill that would have upzoned SF neighborhoods within a mile of metro stations. Somehow both have retained YIMBY support. Could it be that they didn’t want their big developer clients to face competition from small landlords? Could it be that most so-called YIMBYs are ok with that approach?
You might want to look into where both live to figure out why they were opposed. Riemer is in a SFH within a mile of the Takoma Metro and Anderson is in a SFH across the street from a park near the Silver Spring metro. Those dudes are the archetype NIMBYs in that they literally want development everywhere else but their direct back yards where they used their power to fight it. Riemer even successfully opposed and thwarted development of the Takoma Metro parking lot for the last 15 years even though it’s in DC and not MD.
Anonymous
04/15/2023 13:13
Subject: Why do “YIMBY” urban planners, bloggers & activists constantly cite what they believe are
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: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.
I think it is a little disingenuous to blame inadequate housing supply on YIMBY policies, like these policies are happening without any objection.
But I do ask -- is there an alternative out there that CAN produce adequate supply?
No one is going to agree on 'adequate supply' and what that means for a given city or community. My unpopular opinion is that no one needs or deserves to live in a particular zip code or community, regardless of their place of employment.
Huh. My unpopular opinion is that land use & housing policies should be for the benefit of everybody, not just people with more money who want to be able to exclude people with less money from living in certain zip codes or communities.
Missing middle housing will forever be unpopular because it’s a stupid idea. Just build density in properly zoned areas. Additional areas can be zoned for density and current owners could be compensated properly, commercial zones can be changed to mixed. If people would drop the upzoning scam you’d get a lot more support for additional housing and transportation infrastructure. As it stands, people are forced to hate it all because MMH is a part of the package. Upzoning is a poison pill that will make other changes very expensive and time consuming. We can all lawyer up and re-fight the purple line fight again, I guess.
"properly zones areas" to NIMBYs like you means somewhere else, not here. Even if "here" is a low density neighborhood that is on top of a metro station - so in other words, the region invested billions of dollars in metro and you want the convenience of a single family house at the exclusion of others. So here we are.
There are only 2 metro stations in our entire region that have not already been up zoned within the a half mile with high density. The first one is Takoma and the second one is Forest Glen. As a result, it’s so bizarre to me that you are fixated on Bethesda and Chevy Chase when the ultimate Big Boss NIMBYs in Montgomery County are in Takoma Park and Silver Spring and you have absolutely nothing to say about them. It’s just bizarre. The only people against TOD in this county are your neighborhoods. Go argue with them. In the meantime and back in the real world, upzoning car dependent areas without transit access is the surest way to undermine investment in transit.
Hans Riemer and Casey Anderson both opposed the only bill that would have upzoned SF neighborhoods within a mile of metro stations. Somehow both have retained YIMBY support. Could it be that they didn’t want their big developer clients to face competition from small landlords? Could it be that most so-called YIMBYs are ok with that approach?
Anonymous
04/15/2023 10:03
Subject: Why do “YIMBY” urban planners, bloggers & activists constantly cite what they believe are
I always find it curious that the most ardent YIMBYs never clamor for upzoning in their own neighborhoods. Instead, they push projects for neighborhoods they don't live in and never will.
I know YIYBY doesn't roll off the tongue, but Yes In Your Back Yard is a more apt title for them.
I know YIYBY doesn't roll off the tongue, but Yes In Your Back Yard is a more apt title for them.
Anonymous
04/15/2023 10:00
Subject: Why do “YIMBY” urban planners, bloggers & activists constantly cite what they believe are
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: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.
I think it is a little disingenuous to blame inadequate housing supply on YIMBY policies, like these policies are happening without any objection.
But I do ask -- is there an alternative out there that CAN produce adequate supply?
No one is going to agree on 'adequate supply' and what that means for a given city or community. My unpopular opinion is that no one needs or deserves to live in a particular zip code or community, regardless of their place of employment.
Huh. My unpopular opinion is that land use & housing policies should be for the benefit of everybody, not just people with more money who want to be able to exclude people with less money from living in certain zip codes or communities.
Missing middle housing will forever be unpopular because it’s a stupid idea. Just build density in properly zoned areas. Additional areas can be zoned for density and current owners could be compensated properly, commercial zones can be changed to mixed. If people would drop the upzoning scam you’d get a lot more support for additional housing and transportation infrastructure. As it stands, people are forced to hate it all because MMH is a part of the package. Upzoning is a poison pill that will make other changes very expensive and time consuming. We can all lawyer up and re-fight the purple line fight again, I guess.
"properly zones areas" to NIMBYs like you means somewhere else, not here. Even if "here" is a low density neighborhood that is on top of a metro station - so in other words, the region invested billions of dollars in metro and you want the convenience of a single family house at the exclusion of others. So here we are.
There are only 2 metro stations in our entire region that have not already been up zoned within the a half mile with high density. The first one is Takoma and the second one is Forest Glen. As a result, it’s so bizarre to me that you are fixated on Bethesda and Chevy Chase when the ultimate Big Boss NIMBYs in Montgomery County are in Takoma Park and Silver Spring and you have absolutely nothing to say about them. It’s just bizarre. The only people against TOD in this county are your neighborhoods. Go argue with them. In the meantime and back in the real world, upzoning car dependent areas without transit access is the surest way to undermine investment in transit.
Anonymous
04/15/2023 08:43
Subject: Why do “YIMBY” urban planners, bloggers & activists constantly cite what they believe are
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: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.
I think it is a little disingenuous to blame inadequate housing supply on YIMBY policies, like these policies are happening without any objection.
But I do ask -- is there an alternative out there that CAN produce adequate supply?
No one is going to agree on 'adequate supply' and what that means for a given city or community. My unpopular opinion is that no one needs or deserves to live in a particular zip code or community, regardless of their place of employment.
Huh. My unpopular opinion is that land use & housing policies should be for the benefit of everybody, not just people with more money who want to be able to exclude people with less money from living in certain zip codes or communities.
Missing middle housing will forever be unpopular because it’s a stupid idea. Just build density in properly zoned areas. Additional areas can be zoned for density and current owners could be compensated properly, commercial zones can be changed to mixed. If people would drop the upzoning scam you’d get a lot more support for additional housing and transportation infrastructure. As it stands, people are forced to hate it all because MMH is a part of the package. Upzoning is a poison pill that will make other changes very expensive and time consuming. We can all lawyer up and re-fight the purple line fight again, I guess.
"properly zones areas" to NIMBYs like you means somewhere else, not here. Even if "here" is a low density neighborhood that is on top of a metro station - so in other words, the region invested billions of dollars in metro and you want the convenience of a single family house at the exclusion of others. So here we are.
Yes, I agree with you that this general strategy of density near public transit is path forward for YIMBY planners. It means that people like the OP Will simply avoid these locations and seek car dependent exurbs and suburbs to be away from the high density urban experience.
Anonymous
04/15/2023 08:43
Subject: Why do “YIMBY” urban planners, bloggers & activists constantly cite what they believe are
Anonymous wrote:lAnonymous 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: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.
I think it is a little disingenuous to blame inadequate housing supply on YIMBY policies, like these policies are happening without any objection.
But I do ask -- is there an alternative out there that CAN produce adequate supply?
Here’s the alternative: reduce regulation and review when developers want to build. Increase costs for developers who delay, underutilize land, or warehouse units. We have to change the math of building vs. not building because the strongest dynamic in the rental market right now is rent seeking on the part of developers. That’s what’s causing the housing shortage.
YIMBYs are part of the problem, especially planner YIMBYs, because they’re overly deferential to developers (who love shortages) and YIMBY planners have every interest in preserving the status quo and resisting reforms that would put them out of jobs or reduce employment opportunities. Moreover, their policy recommendations have focused too much on developers’ profit margins as the immediate outcome and not enough on affordability as a first-order goal.
Thoughtful answer for the top, thank you. Though do you know many YIMBYs that are arguing for more regulation that encourages delays?
No but they’re not fighting planning bloat either, and for many of them their livelihood is connected to maintaining planning bloat.
Anonymous
04/15/2023 07:45
Subject: Why do “YIMBY” urban planners, bloggers & activists constantly cite what they believe are
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: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.
I think it is a little disingenuous to blame inadequate housing supply on YIMBY policies, like these policies are happening without any objection.
But I do ask -- is there an alternative out there that CAN produce adequate supply?
No one is going to agree on 'adequate supply' and what that means for a given city or community. My unpopular opinion is that no one needs or deserves to live in a particular zip code or community, regardless of their place of employment.
Huh. My unpopular opinion is that land use & housing policies should be for the benefit of everybody, not just people with more money who want to be able to exclude people with less money from living in certain zip codes or communities.
Missing middle housing will forever be unpopular because it’s a stupid idea. Just build density in properly zoned areas. Additional areas can be zoned for density and current owners could be compensated properly, commercial zones can be changed to mixed. If people would drop the upzoning scam you’d get a lot more support for additional housing and transportation infrastructure. As it stands, people are forced to hate it all because MMH is a part of the package. Upzoning is a poison pill that will make other changes very expensive and time consuming. We can all lawyer up and re-fight the purple line fight again, I guess.
"properly zones areas" to NIMBYs like you means somewhere else, not here. Even if "here" is a low density neighborhood that is on top of a metro station - so in other words, the region invested billions of dollars in metro and you want the convenience of a single family house at the exclusion of others. So here we are.
Anonymous
04/15/2023 07:44
Subject: Why do “YIMBY” urban planners, bloggers & activists constantly cite what they believe are
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: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.
I think it is a little disingenuous to blame inadequate housing supply on YIMBY policies, like these policies are happening without any objection.
But I do ask -- is there an alternative out there that CAN produce adequate supply?
Here’s the alternative: reduce regulation and review when developers want to build. Increase costs for developers who delay, underutilize land, or warehouse units. We have to change the math of building vs. not building because the strongest dynamic in the rental market right now is rent seeking on the part of developers. That’s what’s causing the housing shortage.
YIMBYs are part of the problem, especially planner YIMBYs, because they’re overly deferential to developers (who love shortages) and YIMBY planners have every interest in preserving the status quo and resisting reforms that would put them out of jobs or reduce employment opportunities. Moreover, their policy recommendations have focused too much on developers’ profit margins as the immediate outcome and not enough on affordability as a first-order goal.
Thoughtful answer for the top, thank you. Though do you know many YIMBYs that are arguing for more regulation that encourages delays?
Actually, YIMBYs are arguing for things llike loosening the zoning that was created under the racist Euler court case; YIMBYs are trying to make it easier for new development, and concentrating more people around transit corridors, train stations and metro station.
Anonymous
04/15/2023 07:09
Subject: Why do “YIMBY” urban planners, bloggers & activists constantly cite what they believe are
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: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.
I think it is a little disingenuous to blame inadequate housing supply on YIMBY policies, like these policies are happening without any objection.
But I do ask -- is there an alternative out there that CAN produce adequate supply?
No one is going to agree on 'adequate supply' and what that means for a given city or community. My unpopular opinion is that no one needs or deserves to live in a particular zip code or community, regardless of their place of employment.
Huh. My unpopular opinion is that land use & housing policies should be for the benefit of everybody, not just people with more money who want to be able to exclude people with less money from living in certain zip codes or communities.
Missing middle housing will forever be unpopular because it’s a stupid idea. Just build density in properly zoned areas. Additional areas can be zoned for density and current owners could be compensated properly, commercial zones can be changed to mixed. If people would drop the upzoning scam you’d get a lot more support for additional housing and transportation infrastructure. As it stands, people are forced to hate it all because MMH is a part of the package. Upzoning is a poison pill that will make other changes very expensive and time consuming. We can all lawyer up and re-fight the purple line fight again, I guess.
Anonymous
04/15/2023 06:35
Subject: Why do “YIMBY” urban planners, bloggers & activists constantly cite what they believe are
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: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.
I think it is a little disingenuous to blame inadequate housing supply on YIMBY policies, like these policies are happening without any objection.
But I do ask -- is there an alternative out there that CAN produce adequate supply?
Here’s the alternative: reduce regulation and review when developers want to build. Increase costs for developers who delay, underutilize land, or warehouse units. We have to change the math of building vs. not building because the strongest dynamic in the rental market right now is rent seeking on the part of developers. That’s what’s causing the housing shortage.
YIMBYs are part of the problem, especially planner YIMBYs, because they’re overly deferential to developers (who love shortages) and YIMBY planners have every interest in preserving the status quo and resisting reforms that would put them out of jobs or reduce employment opportunities. Moreover, their policy recommendations have focused too much on developers’ profit margins as the immediate outcome and not enough on affordability as a first-order goal.
Thoughtful answer for the top, thank you. Though do you know many YIMBYs that are arguing for more regulation that encourages delays?
Anonymous
04/15/2023 01:47
Subject: Why do “YIMBY” urban planners, bloggers & activists constantly cite what they believe are
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:The very nature of real estate ownership is exclusionary. That’s the whole point of property rights.
The whole point of property rights is to exclude everyone from the property except the owner? That's interesting.
It’s actually not interesting. It’s incredibly banal. The fact that you find it interesting says a lot about your and your level of education.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_right#Property
Wikipedia?
"Exclusive right" is not the same as excluding people. And it's certainly not the same as excluding people from property you don't even own.
It absolutely does mean that. E.g. You are not allowed in my house unless I invite you. You are therefore excluded. Exclusive rights to property can be both freehold and leasehold, therefore ownership is not required to exclude people. Plus and here’s the biggest catch of all, all of these rights are enforced under the force of all and state violence. If you violate my exclusive rights, both myself and the state can exact legal physical harm against you.
Anonymous
04/14/2023 23:39
Subject: Why do “YIMBY” urban planners, bloggers & activists constantly cite what they believe are
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:The very nature of real estate ownership is exclusionary. That’s the whole point of property rights.
The whole point of property rights is to exclude everyone from the property except the owner? That's interesting.
It’s actually not interesting. It’s incredibly banal. The fact that you find it interesting says a lot about your and your level of education.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_right#Property
Wikipedia?
"Exclusive right" is not the same as excluding people. And it's certainly not the same as excluding people from property you don't even own.
This is what happens when someone memorizes some words and has no idea what those words mean.
Anonymous
04/14/2023 23:24
Subject: Why do “YIMBY” urban planners, bloggers & activists constantly cite what they believe are
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:The very nature of real estate ownership is exclusionary. That’s the whole point of property rights.
The whole point of property rights is to exclude everyone from the property except the owner? That's interesting.
It’s actually not interesting. It’s incredibly banal. The fact that you find it interesting says a lot about your and your level of education.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_right#Property
Wikipedia?
"Exclusive right" is not the same as excluding people. And it's certainly not the same as excluding people from property you don't even own.
Anonymous
04/14/2023 23:09
Subject: Why do “YIMBY” urban planners, bloggers & activists constantly cite what they believe are
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:The very nature of real estate ownership is exclusionary. That’s the whole point of property rights.
The whole point of property rights is to exclude everyone from the property except the owner? That's interesting.
It’s actually not interesting. It’s incredibly banal. The fact that you find it interesting says a lot about your and your level of education.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_right#Property