Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs

i.stanford.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 95 posts

Re: Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs

#41

Post by EricDeb »

luser001 wrote: post #35

I actually support "vicious" speedbumps. People regularly drive 40 mph on my road which has official speed limit of 25 mph. Instead of spending money policing main streets, I support draconian camera-driven enforcement on side streets. Make unmarked google-maps-like cars with high quality cameras and software. Park it on streets and watch for traffic. Send tickets remotely to speeders (equivalent to running a red lig…

I will only support this when we are all required to use self-driven cars that can go twice the normal speed limit safely :)

Re: Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs

#42

Post by balloot »

jamieb wrote: post #34
natrius wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

On the other hand, I live at the bottom of a hill, 100ft from a traffic light. A new development opened up at the top of the hill, and now SUVs barrel down the hill at >50mph, see the green light, and accelerate . The speed limit is 25mph. So when I hear about communities in Palo Alto "viscously" blocking traffic, I wonder if perhaps they are simply attempting to return traffic levels that were present when they boug…

Perfect example of NIMBY-ism. You bought a house at the bottom of a hill. You got a price that likely had this negative quality priced in, because cars drive fast downhill. Now, you act like people just started driving fast downhill in the last few years, and that this problem needs to be resolved immediately to suit you.

Re: Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs

#43

Post by gammarator »

rflrob wrote: post #24
ff0066mote wrote: post #17

I 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 o…

"they don't necessarily deserve to have them when it comes at the expense of even a mild cost to lots of people."

That argument has been used to justify demolishing inner-city neighborhoods to make way for overhead freeways benefiting suburban commuters.

Re: Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs

#44

Post by TDL »

stuaxo wrote: post #38
TDL wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speed bumps are great up until you need an ambulance or fire truck to get to you quickly.

Here (UK) we have speed bumps that are narrow - cars hit the bump, buses ambulances and trucks hit the bump ... though cars in the US are pretty big, so not sure this would work.

The speed bumps that I've encountered in the U.S. typically take up as much of the street as possible. The UK example is interesting, but I think you are right about the cars here in the U.S.

Re: Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs

#45

Post by aes256 »

michaelochurch wrote: post #29

High 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 somethin…

> 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.

This is so unbelievably true of the UK at the moment. In fact, we have the problem even worse given the higher population density (almost ten times that of the US).

Here the baby boomer generation got rich by sitting on the property ladder. Now we have a generation who simply can't afford to get on the ladder. Average prices are 20 times average wages in parts of the country.

Existing homeowners are paying down their mortgages with record low interest rates, while there are no mortgages available for first-time buyers, so the wealth gap is just getting larger.

Oh well. Here's to a lifetime of living with the parents while we cruise towards a pensions disaster...

Edit: By way of example, this is what £90,000 ($145,000) gets you in London these days: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2210436/

Re: Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs

#46

Post by dmckeon »

TDL wrote: post #36
luser001 wrote: post #35

I actually support "vicious" speedbumps. People regularly drive 40 mph on my road which has official speed limit of 25 mph. Instead of spending money policing main streets, I support draconian camera-driven enforcement on side streets. Make unmarked google-maps-like cars with high quality cameras and software. Park it on streets and watch for traffic. Send tickets remotely to speeders (equivalent to running a red lig…

Speed bumps are great up until you need an ambulance or fire truck to get to you quickly.

If you have lower back issues, each speed bump is painful, no matter how slow you cross it. Also, barriers can make a neighbourhood arms race - street A gets speed bumps; traffic diverts to B & C, who get roundabouts; traffic diverts to D & E, which get pinch points; traffic diverts again, streets F, G, H & I become one-way; wash, rinse, repeat.

Re: Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs

#47

Post by blahedo »

dkasper wrote: post #32
michaelochurch wrote: post #29

High 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 somethin…

>> 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) How'd you arrive at this number? Citation needed?

I'd be curious to hear this as well. There are many parts of the country (a vast majority by area, and a not-insignificant minority by population) where housing is way less than $100/sqft. In the (small) city I just moved from, $30-40/sqft was more like it, and that was higher than the entire surrounding area.

Re: Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs

#48

Post by 1veteran »

I love this HTML.* If only all the web could follow this simple way to convey information. CONTENT. Heck, that's what makes HN interesting. It's the lack of web developer fluff. Just text. CONTENT.

*But why the reference to tags.js? Javascript is not used.

Re: Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs

#49

Post by forensic »

Anechoic wrote: post #30

I'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…

Thanks for your comment. One thing I take away from what you said is that the solution to problems like this is BETTER government, not ZERO government.

All the libertarians want to use any government problem as an excuse to just scrap the whole government. But you make it clear that the problem is not ALL government, the problem is BAD government, and government CAN be improved.

Re: Attack of the Fifty-Foot NIMBYs

#50

Post by Anechoic »

forensic wrote: post #49
Anechoic wrote: post #30

I'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…

Thanks for your comment. One thing I take away from what you said is that the solution to problems like this is BETTER government, not ZERO government. All the libertarians want to use any government problem as an excuse to just scrap the whole government. But you make it clear that the problem is not ALL government, the problem is BAD government, and government CAN be improved.

Yes, I would choose "better government" over "zero government" (although the libertarian response would be "we're not calling for no government, just minimal government). That said - I don't really see the path to "better" government. We have so many competing interests, even at the city level, that it's very difficult to develop reasonable regulations that are effective yet fair. That's one of the big problems with environmental regulations and the public process.

One response would be to push as much of the decision-making process as possible down to the local level, but that creates its own problem, as well as inefficiencies.

Obviously, it's a hard problem; if it wasn't, it would have been solved by now.

Post reply on HN