Nuclear power plants are dangerous? I thought people might be NIMBY about coal power plants which kill more people each year than do nuclear plants.
Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs
21–30 of 95 posts
Re: Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs
#22Nuclear power plants are dangerous? I thought people might be NIMBY about coal power plants which kill more people each year than do nuclear plants.
It's more about property values and image than livability. A grisly murder in a house 30 years ago ("haunted house" effect) doesn't make a difference to people who live there now, but in many states you're required to disclose that detail (because of its effect on resale value).
Re: Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow that's luck - just when I was browsing around I found the perfect analysis on overcoming bias : senior voters and their healtcare - paid for by the majority, but since seniors vote more, they favour the candidate serving their interest - at the expanse of the majority http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/09/us-politics-of-medicin... Very interesting indeed- it seems to be the simplest pitfall of democracy : when th…
Having a society where the elderly are not just left to wither and die benefits everyone, even those who are not (yet) elderly.
[citation needed]
Re: Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs
#24I read the whole article, but stopped taking it seriously at: "a vicious collection of roadblocks" I think it's fine for people to desire quieter neighborhoods in this era of high population density. I don't think that the people in all of those examples were pursuing change for the financial gain.
> I think it's fine for people to desire quieter neighborhoods in this era of high population density. I don't think that the people in all of those examples were pursuing change for the financial gain.
It's fine for people to desire see things (either quiet ,increased property values, or both), but the point of the article as I see it is that they don't necessarily deserve to have them when it comes at the expense of even a mild cost to lots of people.
Re: Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs
#25I read the whole article, but stopped taking it seriously at: "a vicious collection of roadblocks" I think it's fine for people to desire quieter neighborhoods in this era of high population density. I don't think that the people in all of those examples were pursuing change for the financial gain.
Roadblocks make one part of a neighborhood quieter at the expense of another part. They also make traffic worse, which increases wasted time and pollution. If enough of those policies get implemented, people will find it too hard to get to downtown Palo Alto, and the shops that make it attractive to live there in the first place will suffer.
Policymaking based on parochial interests without regard to the effect those policies have on the rest of a city tends to be a bad strategy. Unfortunately, this is the status quo in many cities.
Re: Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Neighborhood pubs/bars of the sort that are attended primarily by people in the neighborhood are actually beneficial to neighborhood security and quality of life. Anything that gets the people who actually live there out on the street, particularly in the nighttime hours, increases security. Our modern, sterile "city planning" where everything is separated and zoned off into their own areas is a huge factor in the de…
Jacobs analysis doesn't extend to public drunkenness.
Actually, it does.
She argues that people are less likely to engage in any type of antisocial behavior when they're in their own neighborhoods, where people know them.
Re: Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs
#27Ah, I'd always wondered what was with all the blocked off roads in California. This explains it.
Re: Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs
#28I read the whole article, but stopped taking it seriously at: "a vicious collection of roadblocks" I think it's fine for people to desire quieter neighborhoods in this era of high population density. I don't think that the people in all of those examples were pursuing change for the financial gain.
I know I run into them a lot trying to drive around Berkeley. It's a huge pain in the ass to cars trying to navigate through. Obviously home owners must love them, though. "How would you like if we blocked off your road to traffic so it becomes a quiet cul-de-sac?" "Yes, please!" Forget about hurting everyone else coming through.
Re: Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs
#29High house prices are a moral and economic disaster, as the post-2008 recession has shown us. The problem at the root of NIMBY is that real estate prices and behaviors have a few positive-feedback loops:
1. Because real estate "always goes up", and because Americans are delusional in general and seem to have a housing fetish, people have the deluded belief that they aren't paying for housing but investing in something that will always appreciate. This mentality creates bubbles. By the way, we're still in a real estate bubble-- just in a valley of one, and the "star" locations have barely dipped (yet).
2. Because people have absurd quantities (often over 30% of income and 80% of wealth) of their resources invested in housing, they have strong economic incentives toward NIMBYism. If I were going to lose 50c/dollar on 90% of my net worth (assuming I had any, but that's another story... don't work for shitty startups, kids) because of a speed limit change, I'd be pretty pissed too. The real problem is not locational change (necessary) but overinvestment in an asset that is highly sensitive to such change. It's simply not wise to invest 90% of your wealth in an asset whose value can plummet because some piece of shit decides to clear-cut a nearby hill and ruin your view... but some people have no other choice because housing is so stupidly expensive.
3. NIMBYism actually forces property values to stay high. Housing should be worth about $100-125 per square-foot, with about a 50-100% premium for top locations (urban areas) due to increased construction costs and reduced transportation costs (proximity to desirable places). Housing over $250/ft^2 would be an extreme anomaly were it not for outright regulatory corruption (read: NIMBY). However, due to the extreme price inelasticity of housing, even slight scarcities (1-2 percent) cause huge upward movements in prices. Hence the price levels observed in Manhattan and Silicon Valley.
The end result of all this is that NIMBYism creates scarcity (due to transportation inefficiency and by retarding new development) that makes houses expensive, and that causes people to be economically extremely sensitive to real estate changes (which are out of their control) which causes more NIMBYism. It's also yet another generational fuck-over of which we're on the losing side, the assholes pulled the ladder up behind them.
People also tend to inappropriately overvalue land, given how easily its value can be reduced to near-zero by nearby goings-on over which one has no control. For most land-- a very small set of trophy locations being excepted-- the value is a function of proximity and the fair value can be determined from transportation costs for an average working person in that area, and land would be pretty close to free (in comparison to the construction costs for the house itself) except for the artificial scarcity imposed by NIMBYism.
It ends very badly. Bubbles, cultural rot, and urban decay. People associate expensive real estate with success, but the most expensive city (real estate wise) is Luanda, where more than half of the residents are in poverty. Moscow and Sao Paulo aren't cheap, either, even though those cities have massive poverty problems.
Re: Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs
#30I've been on both sides of public project hearings, representing proponents who want to build or expand a project, and project opponents who want to block or reduce the expansion of a project. NIMBYism is very real, from folks who may just oppose a project on principle unrelated to actual negative effects (I see this a lot on transit projects from folks who are just opposed to public transportation) to folks who may be uninformed. It can be extremely frustrating when I have the facts on my side (and even the experts on the other side agree with me), but there is still opposition based based on "feelings."
That said, the public process in general (aside from NIMBYs) is necessary and useful. The most prominent example from my experience is the public opposition marshaled by Cambridge MA against the original "Scheme Z" Charles River crossing plan for the Big Dig. From an engineering point-of-view, it made perfect sense, but it would have been a hideous monstrosity that the city would have been stuck with for 50 years. The opposition made the project go back to the drawing board and resulted in the iconic Zakim bridge. The public process worked.
In my own direct experience, there have been times when me or my team missed something on an analysis (we may have mistaken a home for a garage for example) and the public process makes us aware of that so we can properly account for impacts. It works. Yet the process can be hijacked by NIMBY's and if those opponents know who to work the politics, it can cause real problems.
The problem is trying to separate the NIMBYs from the legitimate concerns. Planners and public staff have been trying to deal with this for decades with no real progress. If you eliminate the public process, you get the original Boston Central Artery where the state came in, bulldozed entire neighborhoods at pennies on the dollar, and constructed an eyesore that divided the city for decades. With the process, you get the Big Dig where a whole bunch of interests use Section 4(f), NEPA, MEPA, and Army Corp of Engineer regulations to blackmail the project into funding dozens of pet projects.
This is definitely an area in need of disruption. If you have ideas, get them out there.