Nimby/Yimby thread

Mark Palko and Joseph Delaney share their Nimby/Yimby thread:

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2021

Yes, YIMBYs can be worse than NIMBYs — the opening round of the West Coast Stat Views cage match

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2021

Yes, YIMBYs can be worse than NIMBYs Part II — Peeing in the River

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2021

The cage match goes wild [JAC]

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

Krugman then told how the ring of mountains almost kept the Challenger Expedition from finding the lost city of Los Angeles

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2021

Cage match continues on development [JAC]

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2021

Yes, YIMBYs can be worse than NIMBYs Part III — When an overly appealing narrative hooks up with fatally misaligned market forces, the results are always ugly.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2021

Did the NIMBYs of San Francisco and Santa Monica improve the California housing crisis?

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2021

A primer for New Yorkers who want to explain California housing to Californians

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2021

A couple of curious things about Fresno

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2021

Does building where the prices are highest always reduce average commute times?

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2021

Housing costs [JAC]

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2021

Urbanism [JAC]

MONDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2021

Either this is interesting or I’m doing something wrong

And a study we’ll want to come back to:

A spatiotemporal analysis of transit accessibility to low-wage jobs in Miami-Dade County

Also:

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

The NYT weighs in again on California housing and it goes even worse than expected

I’m no expert on this topic. I have Yimby sympathies—a few years ago I recall seeing some leaflets opposing the building of a new tower in the neighborhood, and I think I wrote a letter to our city councilmember saying they shouldn’t be swayed by the obstructionists—but I’m open to some of the arguments listed above. Palko and Delaney are pushing against conventional narratives that are often unthinkingly presented in the news media.

38 thoughts on “Nimby/Yimby thread

  1. 2. All reasonable people agree on the need to build more housing (and productive conversations don’t spend time on the fringes). To paraphrase Shaw, we’ve established that; now we’re just haggling over the locations.

    Palko and Delaney are pushing against conventional narratives that are often unthinkingly presented in the news media.

    I’m pretty surprised by the notion that everyone agrees that we need more building. I’ve seen a NY state politician (forget which one) claim that “we cannot build our way out of a housing crisis.” Pretty much anyone over 50 I’ve ever met reflexively opposes new construction anywhere in their general metropolitan area, and a decent chunk of younger people as well. I don’t know any poll numbers off the top of my head though. The opposition seems to me to come from all over the political spectrum. The general thrust of conservative opposition is the belief that there’s actually plenty of housing, vacant shelters, vacant apartment buildings, and homeless people prefer to not occupy them because they want to do drugs. (I actually had an adult man claim to my face as we drove past the tent city on the tracks by the the Berkeley marina that the bay has a large homeless population primarily because it’s trendy and countercultural to be homeless.) The general thrust of liberal-left-leaning opposition is that construction only serves big business and developers, that the real answer is more rent control, and that high income white collar workers have a personal moral imperative to not move into blue collar neighborhoods. I do see the libertarian view of “let the market build” from time to time

    (good podcast episode plug https://www.econtalk.org/alain-bertaud-on-cities-planning-and-order-without-design/)

    and some left-wing advocacy for more state-owned affordable housing projects, but broadly I don’t think there’s anything close to an overwhelming consensus that there needs to be more construction.

    https://observationalepidemiology.blogspot.com/2021/09/a-primer-for-new-yorkers-who-want-to.html

    3. (or maybe 2… I’ll stop now) San Francisco is not adjacent to or even particularly near Silicon Valley. Instead it’s around fifty miles away. There are people who live in SF and commute to SV but it’s a wasteful and completely unnecessary practice. San Jose is nearer and cheaper.

    Palko’s level of passion for this point is pretty mystifying to me. I am empathetic to annoyance at San Francisco being made into a representative of California and, to the right-wing nationwide, serving as a punching bag for the supposed problems with left-wing governance. But whether or not San Francisco is part of Silicon Valley is not a question with a hard yes/no answer like Palko pretends it is. Silicon Valley is a vague concept. From wikipedia:

    “As more high-tech companies were established across San Jose and the Santa Clara Valley, and then north towards the Bay Area’s two other major cities, San Francisco and Oakland, the term “Silicon Valley” came to have two definitions: a narrower geographic one, referring to Santa Clara County and southeastern San Mateo County, and a metonymical definition referring to high-tech businesses in the entire Bay Area. ”

    When I worked at a tech company in San Francisco (FiDi, by Powell St Station), I and other employees referred to it as a “Silicon Valley company”, and nobody ever corrected us. Plenty of other companies did the same. I also feel like Palko is understating the level of mixing in the labor pool. People commuting from San Francisco to Menlo Park/Mountain View or the other way around is by no means a rarity. When I was interviewing at a firm in San Jose, they offered in-house real estate agents to provide relocation options with an accompanying shuttle service to take employees to work, and plenty of eligible locations were in San Francisco (yes, profoundly wasteful). San Francisco tech companies and “Silicon Valley” proper both pull from the same Stanford/Berkeley feeder schools. A common Friday or Saturday night activity for young folk based in Palo Alto is to take the Caltrain to hang out in San Francisco. So when someone suggests the San Francisco is part of Silicon Valley, I don’t think they’re really wrong.

    • >> San Francisco is not adjacent to or even particularly near Silicon Valley. Instead it’s around fifty miles away. There are people who live in SF and commute to SV but it’s a wasteful and completely unnecessary practice. San Jose is nearer and cheaper.

      > Palko’s level of passion for this point is pretty mystifying to me.

      I agree! According to Google maps this is the driving distance from San Francisco to different points in Silicon Valley (from Market / Van Ness, which happens to be next to Twitter’s HQ; it would be a few miles less from the city limits):

      – Oracle in Redwood City: 22 miles

      – Facebook in Menlo Park: 30 miles

      – HP in Palo Alto: 33 miles

      – Stanford University: 35 miles

      – Google in Mountain View: 35 miles

      – Intel in Santa Clara: 43 miles

      – Apple in Cupertino: 45 miles

      – San Jose: 48 miles

      It’s not an East Coast thing to put all of the places listed above in Silicon Valley if the LA Times also does it.

      The cities in the region claim to be in Silicon Valley. For example, according to the website of Readwood City it is “a San Francisco Bay Area community located in the heart of Silicon Valley, the technology-rich region extending from the San Francisco Peninsula to the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains.”

      According to the website of Stanford University: “Located 35 miles south of San Francisco and 20 miles north of San Jose, Stanford University is in the heart of Northern California’s dynamic “Silicon Valley,” home to Yahoo!, Google, Hewlett-Packard, and many other cutting-edge companies that were started by and continue to be led by Stanford alumni and faculty.” They could definitely refresh the list of companies but I don’t think that they would remove the Silicon Valley reference.

  2. I don’t get it. It feels like Mark Palko is engaged in a bid of strawmanning of YIMBYism. YIMBY writers focus on SF, LA, NY, DC because a) they live there and b) they are especially clear examples of how building would lower the prices for market rate housing. Mark claims that the real places we should be densifying are elsewhere: Oakland, San Jose, parts of the country outside the coasts. I can’t think of a YIMBY alive who would disagree with that statement. YIMBYs want moar density everywhere where prices are high.

    • I also have never heard of a YIMBY who objected to building in San Jose. But the reason YIMBYs focus on SF instead is because it’s more expensive. People want to live there, but the laws restrict building, so the price goes up. Mark may fear that SF will be underwater, but the people buying oceanside property in SF clearly don’t. And if developers are too reckless about flooding, the source is likely the subsidized flood insurance the government provides (not just in SF or other places YIMBYs focus on).

    • I agree. YIMBYs are generally in favor of building in all cities and neighborhoods.

      SF may seem small but that’s not about land area, it is a choice about density. Relatedly, it also is silly to talk about how small San Francisco is, as though big density improvements wouldn’t make a difference. San Francisco has one tenth the density of Manhattan. If SF doubled their population density (to that of Berkeley!) many more people could live there than currently live in San Jose. If SF had Manhattan population density it would have the population of all of NYC.

  3. I will admit to being put off by this whole exchange. I’ve read pieces of the posts, but I keep getting frustrated by what seems like too many extreme views stated too strongly to make sense. I’m not even sure what the opposing viewpoints really represent. Housing costs are a major issue – not just in California, but a particular problem there. The constraints on supply are real – and the policy impediments are very real, especially in California (but not uniquely so). The NIMBY camp does adopt stances that stress environmental and social concerns, but often as a convenient way to protect property values. The opposing camp generally overstates these points, to the exclusion of recognizing that environmental and social factors do matter. So, both sides tend to talk past each other. And I find these posts to be especially unproductive. Also missing seems to be any recognition that there is a world outside of North America. European cities look and feel different than American ones. Housing policies are more restrictive in Europe (I haven’t verified that factually, but it is my impression), but density is also higher – the restrictions appear to be on factors other than solely density. The biggest difference I see is the availability of quality public transport in Europe and much greater walking and biking options. It is hard to ignore these factors when looking at the housing markets, as they tend to evolve together.

    I just haven’t found the NIMBY/YIMBY thread insightful – and, as I said in the prior post, the point about Krugman and East Coast comments on California seem irrelevant and distracting to me. These are smart people and I think they are capable of a more substantive discussion.

    • Excellent post, Dale. More heat, but no more light. I’m still looking for the first “serious solution” (Palko’s words) on affordable housing in highly desirable areas.

      • The idea that there will be “affordable housing” in “highly desirable” areas is a flat-earth idea. There will never be any serious solution to it.

        • Chimpunk:

          You may be right going forward, but when I was growing up, there was affordable housing in highly desirable areas. Buying or renting housing just costs a lot more than it used to. So “flat-earth” doesn’t seem like the appropriate term. Maybe “an unrealistic hope” in your opinion?

    • I appreciate Dale’s distaste for extremism. Reality and non-reality are two extremes. Only one of them offers significant benefits to humans.

      “to the exclusion of recognizing that environmental and social factors do matter. ”

      What factors and to whom? The US created a prosperous society primarily through property rights. When people have the right to use their property as they see fit – instead of having it or its value subject to social confiscation – they have a strong tendency to provide a diverse array of goods and services. Consumers then select the most valuable of those goods and services, which ultimately maximizes the benefit to society.

      We already know this works!!! It’s not some fantasy. How did Thatcher revitalize the UK? By returning the UK to market economy. Reagan to the same thing for the US: he rescued it from creeping Government Control of Everything.

      Imposing regulations on private property for any reason is, in effect, confiscating some proportion of the value of that property. The more restrictions, the less the value and the fewer options will be available to consumers. The situation in many major cities is that city governments have increasingly restricted the ability of free markets to operate, though environmental regulation, housing regulation, construction regulation, employment regulation, wage regulation, transportation regulation, taxes and wealth redistribution schemes.

      The only solution is to peel back the regulation, take the choosing power away from the Central Committee and return it to the citizens. This is not “extremism”, any more that asserting that f=ma is true is “extremism” about physics. It’s just plain irrefutable knowledge.

      • What you write sounds like the Economics 101 textbook. I do appreciate the truth in what you say – and many people do not appreciate what markets can accomplish. However, that does not excuse ignoring completely the issues associated with externalities. My neighbors can do some pretty harmful things on their private property if we follow your advice. Personally, I believe current restrictions are both overdone and underdone! We restrict some things we should not while failing to restrict many things that need some regulation. While we can (and should) debate which these things are, I find no reason to simply say people should be able to do anything they want on “their” property.

        • “What you write sounds like the Economics 101 textbook. ”

          Sure does. That’s because the most fundamental facts about economics are presented in an Economics 101 textbook. I’ll accept that from time to time “mythical facts” are presented in introductory textbooks. However, the overall picture introductory textbooks present is mostly sound and certainly the fact that market economies are highly beneficial and command economies are highly deleterious to human welfare has been demonstrated over and over – most recently with horrendous effects in Venezueala.

          “However, that does not excuse ignoring completely the issues associated with externalities.”

          Nor do I advocate “ignoring completely” that some sensible regulations can be adopted for private property and/or markets – but many major cities have gone *far* beyond “sensible” and that’s clearly reflected in the rising homelessness, crime, and cost of housing in many major cities. You can hardly argue that the problems facing major cities result from too much market freedom in those cities!

          The picture in big cities is pretty simple: social regulations and environmental regulations are driving the cost of housing through the roof. Social regulations with respect to the rights of housing providers to charge market rents and evict degenerate tenants; and environmental regulations with respect especially to transportation infrastructure and energy.

          It would be hard to argue against this – it’s100% intentional. Biden said it himself: the price of oil needs to go up, supposedly to save the planet. What Joe and his supporters are missing is that increasing regulations are more likely to prevent solutions than create them, and probably already have done so (ahem nuclear power ahem).

        • chipmunk:
          I refuse to argue with the libertarian view you present. I was trained as an economist so I understand it well – and I find trying to argue with it frustrating in the extreme. While I might find I agree with most of your criticisms of regulations gone awry, the one point I think you fail to realize is that these regulations are society’s attempt to deal with shared problems and creation of a civil society. The failures to do so are not a reason to defend “free” markets – they merely point to the difficulties humans face in creating institutions that can cope with the problems that we collectively create. You may see this as a reason to turn your back on regulation – I see it as a challenge to figure out how we can do better. I hold little hope that free markets will end the threats of war, address species’ extinctions, effectively deal with climate change, address increasing violence, or promote mental well-being. Please don’t drag out the tired libertarian view of how these problems are solved by free markets. I don’t buy it.

        • Nor do I advocate “ignoring completely” that some sensible regulations can be adopted for private property and/or markets

          If you write something and every person who reads it comes away with the wrong impression about what mean, then maybe you are failing to communicate effectively.

          The picture in big cities is pretty simple: social regulations and environmental regulations are driving the cost of housing through the roof. Social regulations with respect to the rights of housing providers to charge market rents and evict degenerate tenants; and environmental regulations with respect especially to transportation infrastructure and energy.

          It’s pretty amazing that you harp on about regulation in the context of housing prices, then leave out zoning restrictions and costs to new construction and harp on about evictions and, of all things, gas prices. Not everything is about partisan politics. The economics 101 textbook might suggest that supply has something to do with it.

        • “every person misreads it”

          You, Dale and Andrew? That’s “every person”? :)

          “you harp on about regulation in the context of housing prices, then leave out zoning restrictions and costs to new construction”

          Are you serious? Zoning restrictions are regulations, no? Much of the rising cost of new construction is driven also by regulations isn’t it? Increasing property taxes? Wage regulations? Fuel taxes? Logging regulations? Transportation taxes?

        • I agree that regulations are a big problem and that zoning restrictions are regulations. My point is that you claim to give “the big picture” on housing prices, then leave out all the most important pieces, instead talking about things that are of secondary or tangential importance. A “big picture view” of urban housing shortages that doesn’t talk about zoning but does talk about Joe Biden and petroleum prices is a terrible picture.

        • And yeah, that encompasses every person that replied to you. There is no positive evidence to indicate that anyone understood what you meant.

        • Dale,

          I don’t think I claimed markets could stop war. I’m pretty sure I’ve never claimed it, because I dont believe it. As for the other points its unfortunate that you refuse to debate them because you’re on shaky ground:

          1) There is already a market solution to climate change in nuclear power, but it has been regulated out of existence.

          2/3) It’s a safe bet that markets reduce social violence and mental health by providing opportunities for people to better their circumstances. You can hardly point to the last two years as evidence to the contrary, were draconian regulation in the form of forced business closures destroyed people’s lives, the compensating infusion of cash is driving prices through the roof, and both have created massive social instability.

          4) There is no threat to humanity from species extinction. The claim is bizarre. Humanity has been driving species to extinction for 35,000 years with no significant ill effects and indeed today humanity is better off than ever.

          You’re missing the fundamental basis for human well-being: Julian Simon won the bet because, unlike Ehrlich, he understood that human well-being is a function of market-driven technical innovation.

        • Somebody said: ” A “big picture view” of urban housing shortages that doesn’t talk about zoning but does talk about Joe Biden and petroleum prices is a terrible picture.”

          I can’t vouch for what you read into my statement.

          I wrote what I did for a reason. We’ve lived successfully with zoning for over a century, so it obviously isn’t the immediate problem, even if it is a contributing factor. Today in many big cities we have massive new regulations on housing providers that are driving up housing prices especially in rental markets, and these are a major problem, since they disincentivize housing construction. Across my area there is a shitload of new public housing, as public housing agencies buy up apartments to protect them from rent increases – which in turn prevents the jobs that would come from upgrading them. And strangely none of this is curing homelessness or stopping the rise in housing costs.

          Beyond that, however, a major tactic of the last few decades in Progressives’ effort to attack the oil industry is to stop the expansion of private transportation infrastructure – i.e., roads. This is a major factor in the cost of housing, because it prevents people from moving to outlying areas where housing is more affordable. The intention is to kill private transportation and drive high density development. It’s no secret. Various species of advocate openly discuss it. I refer to Biden’s statement about the price of oil because it shows the bare intention so clearly and it’s quick to hand but it’s hardly unusual or surprising, and it’s obviously intended to impact housing markets. The only unexpected part of the plan is the unexpected skyrocketing of housing costs and the appearance of massive numbers of homeless people. That takes us back to the zoning, but then we find that people who might vote against freeways still want to keep their single family zoning.

        • There is no threat to humanity from species extinction. The claim is bizarre. Humanity has been driving species to extinction for 35,000 years with no significant ill effects

          A Chinese campaign to eliminate the sparrow population created a boom in the bed bug and locust population, exacerbating the Great Chinese famine and eventually forcing the Chinese government to import hundreds of thousands of sparrows from the Soviet Union. Overfishing has increased parasite population and infection rate, increased jellyfish populations, reduced total fish yield, and causes starvation in tribal economics that depend on local fisheries for food supply. No ill effects—except when there are.

          We’ve lived successfully with zoning for over a century, so it obviously isn’t the immediate problem

          This is an obviously stupid argument.

          “Your house is about to be underwater.”

          “I lived in this house on the shoreline for over a century, so it obviously isn’t the immediate problem.”

          There are more people there now; the shoreline moves.

          No, I don’t think public housing is the answer. There’s plenty of empty public housing and long ass waitlists in major cities around the United States because the government is bureaucratically incompetent. Yes, I think environmental impact statements, traffic study requirements, and all kinds of regulatory nonsense raise the cost of construction, and that’s a big problem. The fact that you call “roads” “private transportation infrastructure” is obviously just an error. Roads are public infrastructure; it’s just you like roads and you like private and dislike public. But

          1. Trains also expand the effective land supply, and are obviously more efficient per person*mile in high density areas. Surprise surprise, no trains are being built either, because the lack of public infrastructure projects isn’t some kind of single party obstructionist conspiracy, it’s a systemic failure.

          2. There are low density areas and vacant lots in suburban areas with train and road service next to major metropolitan areas already. It’s expensive there too. See, the above posts, or just take a glance at a Long Island housing price timeseries on zillow. If there are roads from cities to half empty neighborhoods, and the half empty neighborhoods are expensive already, more roads to more empty areas will not fix it. You need to be build in those empty areas, so construction is of a primary importance in this discussion either way.

          3. Rich young people are moving into the inner cities on purpose, they’re not trying the suburbs and missing because there aren’t enough highways.

          https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-28/u-s-millennials-really-do-prefer-cities

          Hell, they don’t want to drive at all

          https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nascar/2021/08/04/kids-and-cars-todays-teens-in-no-rush-to-start-driving/48148523/

          Broadly speaking, I agree that regulation affecting cost and speed of construction are the problem. But your initial “big picture story” did not mention those; you instead want to focus on things of secondary relevance with long causal chains of hypotheticals, without any kind of empirical support, because you want to focus on partisan politics. Sometimes, the reason why things are bad is not because the Bad Party is causing it.

        • Rereading this, I now see that you mean “private transportation” infrastructure and not private “transportation infrastructure, which is my mistake.

        • chipmunk
          Your misunderstanding of what I said reveals why continuing this “discussion” is not worthwhile. My concern about species extinction has nothing to do with human welfare – it is the species I am referring to. It has everything to do with their extinction. Obviously you care little about them, except in cases where you (or other humans) value their existence. That is precisely my point – markets respond well to what humans want, not to what other species may want (or have a right to). I know where this discussion is headed if you respond – so this is my last post on the subject. There is no point arguing about whether species have a right to exist or whether human values are the only kind that an economic system can or should respond to – I’ll accept the fact that my world view is very different than yours. Where you see undeniable progress, I see progress in some dimensions coupled with deterioration in others (and that these are inescapably linked). Where you see mental health issues as caused by regulation, I see mental health issues as intimately tied to economic growth as we currently measure it. Where you see nuclear power as an obvious solution to climate change, I see it as a Faustian Bargain (though perhaps one worth taking, but with attendant problems that still bother me). We just see the world differently and I know I won’t change your views so I’ll stop.

        • “My concern about species extinction has nothing to do with human welfare – it is the species I am referring to.”

          The idea that other organisms can have intrinsic value is entirely incomprehensible to someone who holds the views that chipmunk expressed. It would be like trying to explain color to someone born blind.

          Chipmunk wrote:

          “…human well-being is a function of market-driven technical innovation”

          This definition of human well-being does not even overlap with mine. Pretty much every written account left by early explorers who encountered primitive societies contain expressions of surprise at how happy the people were.

        • Somebody said

          “A Chinese campaign to eliminate the sparrow population…” bla bla bla

          Shrug. I’m not advocating campaigns to eliminate species. But we know that the great famine wasn’t caused by missing sparrows, right? Whatever the case, indoor farming is here, making this point moot.

          Regarding the term “private transportation infrastructure”:

          OK, sure. That’s a misnomer. Call it public infrastructure for private transportation. It’s clearly different than public infrastructure for public transportation.

          “This is an obviously stupid argument.”

          It is? :) The fact that people don’t want to drive isn’t relevant. They *do* want to have single family homes and the number of those in most major cities is effectively maxed. OK, so “rich young people are moving into the inner cities on purpose” – but they are displacing the less rich people who used to live there, so those people have to go somewhere, which is to the relatively cheap housing in the burbs.

          Tragically for your rich young people, our city recently passed a law preventing them from tearing down and replacing older usually smaller homes with homes that “don’t fit” the neighborhood or are “property line to property line” mansions. So whatever they may want they may not be able to get it.

          cheers!

        • Dale said:

          “Obviously you care little about them…:”

          How do you extract that from what I wrote? How many birds on your life list? Though I’ve hardly been south of the 47th parallel since I started birding, I have over 350 birds on my life list. I scanned the entire “Birders Handbook”, converted and edited the text and data and uploaded it into a relational database and built the front end with Access forms. I worked in the outdoors a good share of my life and have come face to face with everything from antelope to grizzly bears. I taught outdoor classes at a kid’s camp, where I taught several classes on various animals that I developed myself that the kids loved. I have tens of thousands of photos of wildflowers.

          But this isn’t about what I personally value. It’s about what’s best for society and humanity as a whole. And this question does relate to this thread, because as “somebody” implicitly noted, the pile of regulations built up over generations is clearly having a deleterious impact on people now, whatever the proximal causes.

          So the question you should be asking yourself is not an abstract question about species’ right to exist or their “intrinsic value”. What you should be asking is this the practical question: how valuable is that extra spot on a chipmunk’s back compared to the well-being of people?

        • Chipmunk
          Please read more carefully. “Obviously you care little about them,” was followed by “except in cases where you (or other humans) value their existence.” I am not questioning whether you care about other species, I am questioning whether your beliefs allow for other species to have rights of their own. You say that

          “What you should be asking is this the practical question: how valuable is that extra spot on a chipmunk’s back compared to the well-being of people?”

          I would agree that this is a relevant question – but it is not the complete question. The “well-being of people” is not the only thing I believe should be considered. I find that view narrow and limiting. It is akin to saying that we are biologically programmed to only consider our own species and therefore we can exclude anything else. I think one ability of humans (and perhaps a few other species) is to go beyond our biologically programming – that we possess something you might call “free will” that permits us to ask questions other than how things impact the “well-being of people.”

          Your utilitarian calculus is certainly important and relevant. But I find it inadequate. The issue of species’ rights to exist is only one example, and perhaps a fairly extreme one. But it is the same issue that arises when thinking about regulations such as zoning restrictions. A utilitarian calculus can easily be used to argue that much (if not all) zoning restrictions are bad – and I think that calculus is important. But I believe it is also important to recognize the other motivations for zoning regulations that derive from the fundamental issues of scarcity of land and conflicting values. Eliminating zoning will not eliminate these concerns, even if it improves social welfare (measured in traditional ways). Markets are very good at resolving some issues of scarcity and competing claims – but only some. I would argue that human advances in technology and standards of living make the areas where markets fall short increasingly important.

      • Chipmunk:

        You are offering a politically extreme opinion. To say that an opinion is extreme does not mean that it is wrong; it’s just extreme relative to the distribution of opinions in the population. Lots of voters, economists, policymakers, etc., disagree with you, but that doesn’t mean you’re wrong, you just need to accept that you live in a society where lots of people support environmental regulations.

        I guess my views on science reform are pretty extreme too. I think I’m right; that doesn’t make my views less extreme, although I do hope that as time goes forward, the scientific and journalistic community will catch up to me.

        • “You are offering a politically extreme opinion.”

          Possibly. But I make no claim about where my views lie on the *political* spectrum. My claim is to where they lie on the *knowledge* spectrum.

      • “There need to be fewer regulations” is not extremism. “There need to be no regulations” is extremism. You may not be saying the latter, but it seems everyone is taking it that way, so it’s worth considering if your text is accurately conveying what you mean.

        In case you really are an anti regulation nut, do you really think I should be able to, as a homeowner, buy industrial quantities of lye and dump them into my backyard because I prefer to have no flora or fauna on my property, or buy 1000 fluorescent light bulbs and drop them into my front yard from a second story window for the pleasure of hearing them shatter? In a suburban neighborhood, social convention is to walk your dog on the patch of grass between the sidewalk and the road. Every so often, neighbors get it in their head to leave rat poison there because they‘re displeased with the dog’s noise or pee. Should that be allowed? If angry neighbors can poison my dog because it’s their property, my freedom to walk my dog or even own a dog in some neighborhoods is decreased. In the 2010s, you couldn’t go outside without a gas mask in cities like Mexico City and Beijing. Do you think it’s more freedom and more choices to be able to pollute as much as you like from your car, but not be able to walk around outside?

        Imposing regulations on private property for any reason is, in effect, confiscating some proportion of the value of that property. The more restrictions, the less the value and the fewer options will be available to consumers.

        This statement doesn’t even approach a natural law. It’s just not always true. Traffic laws are a regulation on private property (your car). But with no traffic laws, the streets would be more blocked up and more dangerous; in an urban setting you likely couldn’t drive your car at all! The car would actually be less valuable that way, the regulations are creating more value.

        I say all this as someone who thinks regulations on buildings are terrible. Faux environmental impact statements and traffic studies are strangling the youth of the United States. Your claims, as written, just are extreme.

        • “In case you really are an anti regulation nut, do you really think…of hearing them shatter? ”

          If someone wanted to do something so stupid as shatter thousands of fluorescent bulbs, why would a regulation stop them? In my and most neighboring cities and counties all fireworks are illegal. Yet several of my neighbors still blow them off for everything from New Years to sports victories. Maybe they pay fines, I have no idea, but it doesn’t stop them. I’m sure most of our neighbors don’t like it. I’ve never complained. It’s really not that big of a deal.

          There are general regulations that things that are broadly irritating, like loud music late at night.

          “Traffic laws are a regulation on private property (your car).”

          Fair enough. I should have specified that by “private property” I meant land holdings.

        • Fluorescent light bulbs are full of mercury vapor, so improper disposal is a public health hazard, especially to neighborhood children

      • Matt said:

        “The idea that other organisms can have intrinsic value is entirely incomprehensible to someone who holds the views that chipmunk expressed. ”

        Someone that holds the views that I hold accurately recognizes that protecting every species from extinction isn’t necessary for humanity to succeed or thrive and that there is no “diversity crisis”. I didn’t make any statement about the “intrinsic value” or lack of it for any species.

        “This definition of human well-being does not even overlap with mine. ”

        ?? :) Dude you’d never make it without Lucky Charms. Just admit it.

      • I didn’t say you were. But you SAID, “no ill effects.”

        Yes, the displaced folks should be able to move somewhere, and so transportation is necessary, but there aren’t a bunch of affordable vacant houses in the outlying areas waiting to be filled. There are already places with transportation access and vacant lots, and the vacant lots aren’t becoming affordable homes. There’s no way around it, even if you build roads (or trains, since cars are not a realistic solution for some cities), you have to also build homes by those new roads, and then you’re back where you started in the city. Homeowners in the burbs also don’t more, smaller, more affordable homes built in their neighborhoods. Why would they? In the short term, they only stand to lose quality of life and net worth. So they use community review boards and even more aggressive zoning (no attached single family homes, no townhouses, required yard space) to strike them down, same as the city.

        Broadly speaking, I agree with you on most stuff here. We need free entry into the housing market. Regulation is stopping it. Public housing can’t fix it. I probably don’t totally share your values, but I agree that humans are of primary importance, and if I could house everyone by driving a species of bird to extinction, and I could be somehow guaranteed it wouldn’t cause problems, I would. But you constantly make false statements with complete confidence, then go “whatever, details” when they’re shown to be wrong.

    • That also struck me. I also don’t like the framing of the YIMBY perspective as being an elite, coastal, large-city position. The authors confuse YIMBYs doing what they can in the highest pressure areas, with YIMBY arguments being provincial at their core.

  4. I’m curious about the the Journal of Transportation Geography article Andrew included in the post. I happen to know one of the authors. I publish in that journal.

    I won’t wade into the regulation/libertarian quagmire, but I did appreciate the blog authors’ discussion of access and how its has changed over time. I grew up in Vancouver, Canada, which has many geographic constraints (water and mountains). I also worked for their transport planning agency for a summer as an undergrad. It’s similar to the SF bay area in that everyone wants to live in the trendy central city, but as a practical matter, it makes a lot more sense to pursue mid density in many places throughout the metro. They’ve done a reasonably good job of it, but it’s still one of the most expensive markets in Canada (and even compared with US cities).

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