When the city is surrounded by suburbs that make new development even harder, that can make those undertakings more attractive.

Once investment is forced back into the city, NIMBYism continues to serve a useful purpose, keeping property values high, providing the city with higher tax revenues that can be invested into schools and improvements. One problem cities like St. Louis or Akron have is that their homes aren’t valuable enough for banks to lend money to the owners and produce very little in tax revenue. Detroit has one of the highest tax rates in the country.

Makes the strange argument that NIMBYism in the suburbs should lead to YIMBYism in the cities, creating a “green belt” around cities. Interesting theory, but I see no evidence that there’s really a YIMBY trend in cities.
2022-06-01: And YIMBYs are extremely ineffective because they pretend.

The notion that resistance to development is driven by rich white people is absurd on its face. It’s a joke, a farce. It’s just not true. YIMBYs have to decide if they want to be an authentic political force, which means accepting complexity and the inevitability of moderation and compromise, or if they’d rather just keep flinging shit on the internet. The latter is certainly more fun. But we desperately need a mature, goal-oriented YIMBY movement. We’re in a housing crisis, and while “just build!” has always been an inadequate philosophy, we must build and build a lot to get out of this housing hell. To do that YIMBYs have to be willing to look working-class Black and brown NIMBYs in the eye and, when appropriate, say “your objection to this project is misguided and wrong.” That’s less fun than dunking on Twitter. But it’s a necessary next stage of their project, if it’s to succeed.

• Uncategorized