Comment by munk-a
15 days ago
YIYBY is the concept of wanting it nearby to your residence but not having to suffer any of the direct consequences - imo it's a good thing to acknowledge but generally indistinguishable from NIMBYism. You want the benefits but aren't willing to pay the costs.
> YIYBY is the concept of wanting it nearby to your residence but not having to suffer any of the direct consequences
How does that work exactly?
It's like a thirty minute city. You want those services nearish to you but never so close that they'd effect property value. "Nobody" wants to live next to a high school - your house might be TP'd, but you want a good school within bus range, "Nobody" wants to live next to a super market, they have large parking lots and are "undesirable" but you want to be able to drive half a dozen blocks to it.
I've never thought of the B in NIMBY as literally meaning backyard - it figuratively means "near enough to effect me" but people still want it within reach - so the ultimate NIMBY dream would likely be to live in an island of placid suburbia surround by a ring of vital services that are just far away enough that you don't need to see them every day.
(There's also, I think, a separate environmental NIMBYism but that's a really strange concept and usually more of a deliberate misinterpretation by people with an agenda to push - I'm more concerned with city service NIMBYism around public transit, food availability, hospitals, etc...)
Is that what YIMBY activists do? Live exclusively in SFHs and make everyone else build apartments?
There is a large forest near your local community. You and others often walk in the forest and kids play there. Its calming and has been there forever.
The state wants your community to turn it into apartments, but obviously the community is icey about it.
Then activists from another city dozens of miles away, who have never cared for your town or really been to it, show up at Town Hall meetings and are scheduling meetings with town councilors to push for building the apartments.
Those out of town people jumping into your community to dictate change are the YIYBY people.
If the apartments are built, they'll put another feather in their cap while walking around the forest near their home.
Why would they cut down the forest to turn it into apartments? It's more economical to bulldoze existing single-family homes and do it there. The roads are already built, you'd just need to upgrade utilities and so on. There are people living in those single-family homes who would gladly take the opportunity to sell their land for higher than market value but are prevented from doing so.
It's more common for forests to be cut down because dense housing is illegal, so cities have to keep expanding outwards.
> large forest near your local community.
Who owns the forest and why do you think you get to say if people build on it or not?
11 replies →
>to pay the costs
Which costs? Driving 30 miles in heavy traffic because density is not allowed close to you? Paying excessive taxes because of huge oceans of SFHs? Having to own a car because public transportation doesn't work in low density?
There is no free lunch, only which costs you're going to pay.
Personally, I find NIMBYism completely irrational and am a dedicated urbanite - I love being able to walk to my local grocery store and have a hospital within two blocks of me. I'm definitely not the right person to advocate against your stance.