YIMBY

Any yimby lainons here? For those that don't know, yimby means "yes in my backyard", a play on "not in my backyard". To sum it up, yimbys are in favor of building more houses. To do this requires removing hundreds of regulations which have forced city planners to build inefficient and car-dependent North American style suburbs. Yimbys usually favor duplexes, small apartment buildings, and mixed-use zoning, as these are cheaper, are more space-efficient, are better for the economy, and bring the housing prices way down. Although some people associate this movement with socialism, there are people from all sides of politics who are down for the cause, I'm personally a libertarian and I favor this greatly in part because I believe in deregulation as a principle anyways. This video pretty much explains why you should care about the housing crisis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZxzBcxB7Zc

I wouldnt call myself a yimby but I'm generally against excessive gov regulation, including on building & zoning

You're a fascist pig and 'YIMBY' is just another way Davos and Dan Schnider an Klaus Schwab will convince you to live in the pod and be happy. HATE IT.

I'm in "the housing crisis is the everything crisis" camp. Fuarrkk regulation, fuuuuaaarrk zoning. Build empty apartments and bring down my fuarrrrrking rent.

>>31480 It's ironic that you're against YIMBY yet also fear the tiny pod apartment. You realize the reason those apartments exist is because of NIMBY regulations, right? If there wasn't a limited supply of land in which you're allowed to build houses, we wouldn't have a need to build those tiny pods. Also picrel.

Mixed zoning is okay but there is some obvious things that never should be mixed for health and safety reasons.

>>31482 It has more to do with the real estate market existing. Land gets hoarded as an asset and land is unevenly distributed by wealth.

>>31484 That's how it works in Japan. You can build whatever you want in your plot of land unless it's in a super industrial area due to pollution. Japan's housing crisis (if it even has one) is minuscule. For being one of the biggest cities in the world, Tokyo is extremely cheap. 90k yen ($850) for an apartment is a fuarrrking steal when you consider that's not nearly enough for even a tiny pod apartment in San Francisco.

>>31477 I take a "YIMBY" stance on letting people grow fruit trees in their own backyards and letting companion plants be grown in place of lawns. I also take such stance on letting people go target practicing in nearby woods. Much of the multipurpose building can lead to issues with the "living in the pod" but it has its uses. Just burn out the ghettos, support apartment ownership, build chatteau-styled buildings, and perhaps round shaped buildings to help against win. Until then, use the image shelter. On a side note, many people in the suburbs do not use their houses to the best of potential such as not installing home gyms or being held back by zoning laws about gardens.

>>31486 This. Your problem isnt lack of housing. Your problem is lots of empty houses owned by corps that wont rent you out. In us a single hedge fund gets directly pumped up by fed and bought up everything aggressively in last years. Building dog kennels for yourself isnt solving the root issue. Its just coping. Also for >>31482 authorities declared if you dont move your trailer and make it a tiny house they now count it as a building and demand you uphold building regulations which includes building permit etc.

>>31477 No offense but that sounds like commie gobbledygook

>>31493 How? Communists hate landlords and want to abolish private property. Deregulation is a capitalist/libertarian principle. The problem isn't that landlords don't want to build mixed zoning buildings, it's that it's literally illegal to build them in most of America. I don't care if you're a suburbanite, if you're really in favor of capitalism and freedom then you shouldn't be in favor of laws that tell you what you are and aren't allowed to build on your own damn piece of land.

>>31492 maybe the problem is also regulations on renting. You know how hard, how slow it can be to evict someone these days ? its ridiculous and an incredible pain, many places (most places?) you cant even do it without a judge's approval, and a slow slow process. I'm pretty sure a non neglegible part of rent costs is to pay for the damage done by the ~5% most destructive tennants. These people are likely less good about paying and landlords are prevented from easily removing them, making them instead remain on the property (possibly while not paying), and while likely further damaging it. Again, lower regulation might help solve this problem.

>>31492 >This. Your problem isnt lack of housing. Your problem is lots of empty houses owned by corps that wont rent you out. Those houses are empty because they are expensive. Suburban houses are expensive, period. The reason they're the only thing that exists in most of America isn't because the market desires them, it's because it's illegal to build anything else, and the government subsidizes those houses.

>>31496 how can you be so financially illiterate? If they wanted to sell they would lower price. The prices are inflated because fed prints money and they buy up the available stock which raises prices on the entire market. The free market is a meme. Its a manufactured artificial bubble.

>>31477 "What if zoning laws weren't retarded in the US" is always a fun question, and the fact that it's a battle we'll have to fight at the local level everywhere may seem sticky, but i think getting one's local zoning laws unfucked is one of the best political contributions available to the common citizen these days. >>31480 Take your meds kid. The NWO can only stick people in bug hives because the only alternative is the endless overprices suburban soykafscape that idiotic zoning regs have created. If you want to fuarrrk them over, start building duplexes, quadruplexes, row houses, and small shops in the burbs. The ___ fears the market hall.

It really depends on the kind of YIMBY you're talking about here. There are YIMBYs out there who love the idea of massive high-rise developments. There's a whole forum dedicated to YIMBYs tracking the luxury projects in NYC. Those kinds of YIMBYs are bad for the urban fabric and don't encourage affordable housing though. Favoring luxury developments does not fix the housing affordability crisis. It only makes it worse. The good kind of YIMBY is one that likes low-rise projects that are required to be affordable. Not appeal to luxury buyers. Ultimately, we learned what a good neighborhood looks like a long time ago. Just look at the Oldtowns of European cities, transit-centered neighborhoods of Japanese cities, or the revived 4-floors and tenements of Chicago and the northeast US. Developers and city planners just insist on building everything but that. Mainly because it does not make as much money.

>>31519 >Those kinds of YIMBYs are bad for the urban fabric and don't encourage affordable housing I'm not sure I see the logic of this. There's a lot of people with a lot of money that want to live in NYC, they want appartments there anyway and they want them in good locations, and they have the money to outbid a lot of low income people to get them. If you have a whole bunch of identical cheap non luxurious units, the riches just going to raise the prices on those by outbidding the poors. Maybe they'll also keep a nicer place a bit further out of town. Having a bit of a higher tier of appartment draws the rich appartment seekers away from the poor units, thereby reducing demand and cheapening them. Because of this, building lux appartments can be good for poors. It is only bad for them if it either takes the place of poor appartments (renovate the poor building with 500 units to make a rich building with 200 type of thing), or if it draws in new people who otherwise weren't interested in renting in the area. Is it clear that that is the case ? Personally I really don't know but I'd love to see if there's indication it is.

>>31520 That's not how it ends up working. The rich people buying a lot of the luxury units in NYC are not local-NYC-business-owner rich. They are globetrotters who buy the apartments as assets and (maybe) use them as pied-a-terres. Those luxury buildings don't act as magnets for the rich either like you say. Rich people do go after formerly affordable units and flip them. They end up either renovating them and selling for considerably more or they become landlords to people who are able to afford the rent. NYC has numerous other problems with housing as well. It's not quite as simple as only going after the luxury developments. The city passed a new law in 2019 further capping the amount rent in rent-stabilized units can increase so now landlords are keeping these units off the market and working to overturn the law in federal court. These units would be affordable if they were on the market but landlords are hoping the law gets overturned and are leaving them vacant. This further constrains the housing supply and drives up prices for non-stabilized units. There's lots of other bullshit specific to NYC that makes the housing supply worse. NIMBYs also being among them.

>>31542 Another thing is that fundamentally it doesn't cost much more to build "luxury" apartments than "affordable" ones. Therefore even if they're is massive demand for poor people housing it makes more sense for companies to build luxury condos in a gentrifying neighborhood and leave them empty until some yuppies finally move in, rather than build pretty much the same apartment building but with smaller units and less frills and market to poor people who will move in right away.

It will never be solved, the politicians will never want to implement a functional plan when the middle class home owners will punish them for crashing their housing prices.

>>31480 Literally this, not super interested in the countryside getting ruined by the same decaying apartments that plague our crumbling cityscapes.

>>31494 Friendly reminder that Adam Smith hated landlords.

>>31550 >not super interested in the countryside getting ruined You realize that suburban sprawl is a much bigger danger to your quiet countryside life, right? When cities are allowed to expand UPWARDS, they don't expand OUTWARDS as much. And, the more people walk instead of drive, the less we pollute the environment. If you love country living cause of nature, surely you'd want to protect that nature.

>>31548 Try checking a rent vs ownership chart of present time

>>31553 As a european, I honestly can't believe anyone in this world would ever defend the hell that is suburban sprawl and 20 lane highways to get anywhere, locking you into a claustrophobic prison of identical houses for a hundred miles in each direction. USA's zoning practices are draconian.

>>31554 x-commie countries in east europe are categorically higher in homeownership rates than occident'd countries like w.germany. TLDR communism is good for homeownership long term.

>removing hundreds of regulations which have forced city planners to build inefficient and car-dependent North American style suburbs This. Right here. for example, We have so much parking space that is basically useless dead space that no one can use. Literally could be used for more retail stores or residential area for employees.

Having less suburban sprawl and car-enslaved areas is better for old people, poor people, disabled people, people who don't want paralyzingly depressing landscapes, and young people. I mean, there's a reason suburbanites have some of the highest suicide rates in the US. They have a harder time meeting people, they're closer to soulless chain-stores than culture, and the places they live in look like soykaf. New urbanism is the best.

>>31556 Communist countries have high ownership rates because they just gave ownership of the housing to the people living in them when they transitioned to capitalism.

Lmao they actually made San Fransisco a real thing

>>31572 Ironically "give ownership of housing to the people living in it" is a quintessentially communist policy.

>>31573 San Francisco would be the perfect city if the NIMBYs didn't block new housing. Pedestrian friendly, good public transport, and California weather. You have to either be a billionaire or have had bought your house back in the 70s to live there.

>>31582 I know so many people who've lived in & around sanfransisco. Most werent alive in the 70s, and none are billionaires. Millionaires, sure, but not billionaires ~ >>31572 Not sure what your point is. Communism in these countries was very good for homeownership rates. I don't think you can prove that wrong. The effect is still going remarkably strong 30 years out from the decommiefication, its frankly quite impressive. ---more generally--- I do think a point being overlooked in this thread, is the fact that there's a lot of current problems in big us cities that arent just zoning laws and building regulations and HOAs. The Big City looks like an awful place to live, between druggy needles on the bus, homeless public masturbators lingering on streetcorners, and public school systems that sound miserable and unmanageable, its no wonder many people would choose to live elsewhere, or on seeking to enter a city would do so in a gentrifying fashion. In a suburb you may miss out on a lot of good offerings of city life, but you're also insulated from the rotten core that many an american city has left festering. You can't solve that by building rent controlled apartments.

>>31583 Not him but his point is likely that commie countries giving homes to who is living inside at the collapse of ussr was a onetime deal done for the transition to capitalism. Its as such neither a feature of communism nor a longterm trend. Also they didn't gift housing, they offered you to buy your home at cheap price. Country probably needed money asap and that was the root motivation. Nowadays its developing same way - my backwater village got turned into a rich people resort with 10x the pricing on land and all the original families gone, they bought it up, flattened it and rebuild their fancy mansions cause it had a nice lake and untouched nature. And home ownership in city is basically hand me downs from grandparents. Another point would be population density. You get filled up with immigrants on top of your already higher density while nobody wants to go live in siberia&co. Only natural you end up outpriced since demand outgrows supply in your location while we have the opposite trend. (our people in fact go to you adding to your housing issue while lessening our own)

>>31583 >"Its no wonder many people would choose to live elsewhere, or on seeking to enter a city would do so in a gentrifying fashion." You must live in the suburbs and not go to the city much. Maybe you watch the news too much or have had one bad experience and now it's all you talk about. None of the problems you mention are uniform throughout a city. It just gives away that you have some limited view of cities when you say stuff like that. The same issues also occur frequently in the suburbs. You've simply found some novel ways to insulate yourself and ignore them. And specifically on schools, some of the best schools in the country reside in the public systems of the largest cities because that's where the money is. Wealthy suburban education quality will be more uniformally consistent however, if you want the best, you'll often find yourself looking at city public schools. My prime example of this would be the famous Stuyvesant High School in NYC but there are plenty others.

>>31583 >The Big City looks like an awful place to live, between druggy needles on the bus, homeless public masturbators lingering on streetcorners The main problems for me in the city I live in is that it's noisy, and bike/vehicle theft is common. I've lived in a pretty mediocre part of town for about a year now, not the slums but also not the kind of place where you can let your guard down walking around late at night, most of the buildings are skyscrapers). My sister lives in San Francisco. None of the stuff you listed has happened to me or anyone I know. >and public school systems that sound miserable and unmanageable depends heavily on the specific neighborhood. Many rural public school systems are just as bad as the worst public schools.

>>31589 >You must live in the suburbs and not go to the city much Statements like this make me wonder if you have eyes. Are you the type of guy who's never found a twenty dollar bill on the ground, or only found one once, and rarely finds cash at any rate ? Anyway, I've experienced quite a few US cities both as a resident and as a visitor, ranging from fairly small to big as it gets. When I complain about public masturbation, drug use, and other degeneracy it is because I have witnessed it, with my own eyes, not once but on multiple occasions, not in one city but in several. And I'm not even talking foreign cities (not that it doesnt happen in them), but just USA. There's an archetype of person, usually a tech worker when I've met him, who lives in Silicone Valley or some such place. If you ask him how he likes the city, he starts off pretty pleasantly. Weather is fine, but its expensive, you know the drill. Mention this sort of stuff, and he pauses, thinks a moment: 'Why, I guess I have witnessed a couple of people die I suppose. Overdoses I guess, on my commute', he says, his expression darkening. Probe a little further and frequently there's a little more. Break ins, theft, the fact that half the office in chicago concealed carries because a quarter have been mugged. I'm not making this up. People who've seen murders on the streets they live on, in broad daylight. Now of course I'm not saying you'll be murdered if you live in a city, or even mugged or robbed or have your house burgled or any of that. I've lived in cities, fairly big ones even, and never had that happen to me. Maybe I'm lucky, maybe I'm careful, maybe I'm just rich enough to live in the nicer parts. My point is to convey that there's more reasons people don't want to live in cities, and might like suburbs, than that zoning laws are dumbly written--in many cases they are, but for me personally and I think for plenty of others its not (only) the price that's keeping me from wanting to live in SF or NYC. You use the word insulate, I used it too, because its an excellent description for what suburbs are. Suburbs are built as a middle ground between living and the city and not. You get to taste its fruits at your leisure, on the weekends if you like, perhaps send your kids there if they've gotten a place at a good school, perhaps have your office there. But you also get to stay out of it. Perhaps you have enough room for a car, a pleasant box in which to wall the world around you out. It is insulation, and perhaps it is precisely because of the great problems of cities that this insulation is attractive. Obviously just moving out a bit further doesn't mean there aren't public masturbators doing their thing on Manhattan, but you don't have to see them if you don't want to. Its a horrible solution but one that's emminently avaliable to many people. On the topic of public schools, you mention this stuyvesant, a school of 3k students. If your kid gets in there, then sure maybe thats a point in favour of living in NYC. But much more likely that he'll wind up one of the several hundred thousand highschoolers going to other much less glamourous places. I confess my experience with Big City Public Education almost nil, but what I have read makes many of these less glamorous institutions sound pretty miserable. And I know non big city schools in many cases have their troubles too, with these I have experience. But for a parent who wants to stick their kid in a decent place it seems a less daunting task.

>>31590 >Many rural public school systems are just as bad Around here at least rural schools have notably lower educational standards. It's quite evident when talking to people who went to them, there is a lot of basic knowledge they don't seem to have. I have relatives who worked in those places their entire lives and they can tell you, the budgets were just so low they couldn't afford decent programs. The only extra curricular activities were sports, the end. Their own kids turned out ok because they grew up in houses full of books and they made sure they got into university or something no matter how poor it kept them or which relatives (my parents in some cases) had to give them room and board in town when they went.

>>31597 Are you saying the school had no books? I thought the book scams were university or does it start earlier? Personally i had some books from 30 years ago at school. No need to replace it when basic math doesn't change. The only problem i saw occur was teacher quality vs stupid kids. Teacher gets roasted by school after parents complain their dumbfuck kids get bad grates and to avoid job issues starts gaming the system by changing to a dumbed down curriculum. So everyone suffers to give the dumbfucks a free ride.

>>31598 Outdated texts would have been a problem, yes. We had that problem too so I imagine they had it worse. Their school library would have been a lot smaller too. I wasn't talking about "scams". Basic math doesn't change but books that are carried in a backpack, tossed around and vandalized by a different child every year have a limited life expectancy. Mine were often pretty ratty but the cartoons and other commentary left by previous students were usually entertaining. The health textbooks were hilarious, especially when they talked about street drugs, and that's even when they weren't vandalized.

>>31599 meant scams as in way overpriced books noone can afford which would forbid getting new ones easily. Our books were old but in good condition. There was a rule that if the book is damaged badly when you return it you pay for it so people took care of their books. Of course didnt stop some scribbling ("was already in before") but nothing too bad.

>>31596 >There's an archetype of person, usually a tech worker when I've met him, who lives in Silicone Valley or some such place. Nice way to imply that we're all holding back. FWIW, I've seen all the stuff you've seen... in a small town of about 40k people. >My point is to convey that there's more reasons people don't want to live in cities, and might like suburbs, than that zoning laws are dumbly written--in many cases they are, but for me personally and I think for plenty of others its not (only) the price that's keeping me from wanting to live in SF or NYC. You are implying the reason is because they're *unsafe*, but I think the reason is because they're *unpleasant*.

>>31604 >Nice way to imply that we're all holding back. I don't mean to imply they're holding back, I'm just describing an archetype. I've met people extremely similar to my description several times. I've met a lot of people different from it, too. I've no idea who you are, so I don't pretend to know what you are like. For what its worth my impression is that these people aren't holding back so much as sequestering it in their memory and zoning it out as much as possible. Then again maybe I'm a poor judge. >In my 40k person city There's a frustrating fuzzyness about what constitutes a city. For the purpose of this thread maybe we ought to think about it more in the context of what the yimbys want; somewhat mixed use developments usually 2-3+ storeys, as opposed to suburbs which typically consiste of i.e. well spaced, 1-2 family homes, each with yards and space for cars, and segregated commercial office, and industrial areas. This isnt a completely encompassing definition, but clearly we can't define cities by simply population in the so often completely arbitrary borders. >You are implying the reason is because they're *unsafe* If I gave that implication it wasn't my intent. My contention is that suburbs offer insulation from the unpleasantness of the city, while still allowing their residents to partake of their fruits, and that YIMBY type projects that are trying to promote cities should consider this unpleasantness, percieved and real, in their work. There's certainly some level of unsafeness with living in a city, there's also unsafeness associated with i.e. driving your car an hour down the interstate to get to work. Both can cost you a lot of money, both can kill you. There's probably alot of nuance to figuring out which is actually more dangerous. And of course its not like suburbs are free of crime either, but the lower density, and higher median income, do offer certain protections. Sorry for starting this tangent; we should try to focus on yimbyism. Is there a yimby angle to the undesierability of city centres ? I mentioned gentrification before and think there's something to it, but it also is the type of thing that's often rallied against. I'd also ask the question of, for the information worker, how useful is the city at all these days ? Is yimbyism trying to preserve this artefact of our culture that perhaps is loosing (some of) its relevancy ?

YIMBY all day. Building these types of areas is a necessity and if we don't do it, American cities will fall further into debt trying to cling onto failed suburban sprawl. Long-term, it will bring down (but never eliminate) the number of crazy/drug addict homeless folk that NIMBYs fear by making it easier to avoid and escape homelessness, making life less depressing, improving physical health (as a result of walkable areas encouraging/forcing people out of their cars), improving mental health by lowering the amount isolation and boredom caused by suburbia, and be reinforcing a sense of community that has been greatly weakened by suburban sprawl. And if you'd rather someone die in a cardboard box on the outskirts of town or get tossed in jail for being homeless just so you don't have to get bothered for spare change or see a homeless dude shoot up every now and then, you're a pussy. >>31492 >>31496 It's both of that. Predatory real estate companies and investment firms own too much of the available housing. Car-centric zoning ordinances limit where and what housing can be built. Cheap entry level houses are rarely built because they're not as good of a return on investment as a fancy house and NIMBY pussies often strike their construction down or relegate them to the outskirts (or other undesirable areas such as high noise or high pollution areas) where living is even more infeasible for poor people due to the location furthering dependence on cars. A bit tangential, but something i want to bitch about, is that real estate firms have taken to using the "affordable housing" to pitch new developments that do the bare minimum for them to use that phrase (e.g. "here is our affordable housing plan: 95% of the new development will be high cost housing for rich people, but we'll totally, definitely build some low income housing on the last, furthest away 5% after we finish building and filling all the rich people houses") while also actively discouraging poor people from living there (e.g. by building it far from key infrastructure and jobs, implementing stricter, arbitrary lease conditions, etc). Then when people call them out for the not-so-well-hidden scam, they smear them as affordable housing hating NIMBYs to drum up outrage and pressure the city to approve their development. It's fuarrrking infuriating. >>31583 > do think a point being overlooked in this thread, is the fact that there's a lot of current problems in big us cities that arent just zoning laws and building regulations and HOAs. The Big City looks like an awful place to live, between druggy needles on the bus, homeless public masturbators lingering on streetcorners, and public school systems that sound miserable and unmanageable, its no wonder many people would choose to live elsewhere, or on seeking to enter a city would do so in a gentrifying fashion. This is a pretty common false dichotomy ive seen when people discuss this. In America, we're so used to only having the options of living in the country, living in the suburbs, or living in a big city that many of us do not even realize there is an option between suburbs and big city. Small towns can have mixed use housing that allows for pleasant areas. If you've ever had the chance to visit a town that has decently maintained its historic areas from before the 1930s, you can see this to an extent. Cutting back zoning laws so that we can build more mixed use areas isn't about allowing everyone in the suburbs to move into a big city. It's about recognizing that our current model forces people into choosing to live in the suburbs (which are a drain on city finances and force a dependence on cars) or to live in a big crowded city (for which you have listed reasonable objections) and saying "well that's fuarrrking dumb" and building the in-between option. Apolgoies for any typos, I'm a little drunk.

>>31606 I feel all your arguments overly hinge on strawmanning NIMBY as being a monolith with a hive mind single goal. It can be good or bad depending what is being objected to. It was already acknowledged earlier that you dont want to mix things that would be a hazard and I doubt you want anything that would be a nuisance in noise levels. I think you would agree with some NIMBY points and some NIMBYS would agree with you on some things. No more tribalistic thinking.

>>31611 the term "NIMBY" means someone who is opposed to *all* new development, especially public infrastructure.

There is constant chatter where I live about the cost of living, food security and supply chain issues. That's on mainstream, alternative and social media. Even the attack on Ukraine turns into a discussion about food security and that's an ocean away. Meanwhile, suburbs continue to devour some of the most valuable farmland in this country at an alarming rate year after year so young families can go into debt for the rest of their lives but at least get two cars and a garage nearly as big as the house. Food supply though? Meh. Yes, in my (metaphorical) backyard.

>>31611 You're right. In my bias, I attacked the subset of NIMBY who are specifically against affordable housing and reasonable mixed use developments and ascribed their faults to all NIMBY. This is how I usually see the term used, but as you've pointed out, it is also used for people opposed to various other projects.

>>31477 >Yimbys usually favor duplexes, small apartment buildings, and mixed-use zoning, as these are cheaper, are more space-efficient, are better for the economy, and bring the housing prices way down. >Although some people associate this movement with socialism, Building what you want people to want, instead of what people actually want, is the socialist part.

>>31630 well, I don't want to have to take my car everytime i want to go to the store. and taking my bike here is too dangerous imo. walking is too long. yet they keep building roads filled with shops next to them for cars in places that only cars can reasonably reach. I know that my message here is only my voice and none other shown here. I'm actually curious how much of the population in the US thinks somewhere around that same train of thought. To me, how everything is planned here, with that description you said, is total socialism to me. (which it isnt. this isnt a political problem. It shouldn't be at least.)

>>31631 Well the free market solution would be to do experiments building different things, with no government regulations or subsidies, and see which sells the most. And if it turns out that car centric living spaces is what people actually want and buy will you accept that or continue forcing your agenda anyway?

>>31632 >And if it turns out that car centric living spaces is what people actually want and buy will you accept that or continue forcing your agenda anyway? If it's what the people wants, then so be it. No point in trying to force it. I'm willing to accept that reality and move on with my life. If I really want to, I'd arrange a way to go live somewhere else that aligns more with what I want, but I got no need to do this now. I have better things to worry about than something I cannot solve by my own hands.

>>31630 >Building what you want people to want, instead of what people actually want, is the socialist part The system as-is is "building what you want people to want" through restrictive zoning laws and subsidies on suburban housing (which almost always cost the city money to maintain). The market value of houses in the few mixed use areas of the US and Canada tend to be higher than the market value of comparably sized suburban houses, and those areas tend to make the city profit. The capitalist approach would be to have more of the housing that doesn't drain city finances, not our current approach where cities constantly need bailouts to maintain their suburbs and roads. Also that's not what socialism is.

>>31632 As long as motorists connect a tube to their exhaust channeling it back into their lungs, not everyone else's.

>>31639 >The system as-is is "building what you want people to want" As OP says the "system" is shaped by interest groups lobbying government to make some products more profitable or easier to build than others regardless of what customers actually want. >The capitalist approach would be to have more of the housing that doesn't drain city finances I missed the part where capitalism is supposed to care about "the city". >not our current approach where cities constantly need bailouts to maintain their suburbs and roads. Unlike private companies the government does not bear the consequences of bad financial decisions. So there is never an incentive to spend public money efficiently or effectively no matter who is in charge. >Also that's not what socialism is. It is characteristic of a socialist system.

>>31640 >As long as motorists connect a tube to their exhaust channeling it back into their lungs, not everyone else's. Feel free to disconnect your house from the fossil fuel grid and live with a weak trickle of electricity that randomly starts and stops depending on a windmill somewhere. I mean if you care so much about atmospheric pollution.Didn't think so.

>>31647 >electric windmills not that eco friendly either, rare mineral mining industry is dirty af and birds get massacred cause they stupid and dont stay away from rotor blades

>>31648 dumb rightoid leftys are not affected by resource scarcity uncle marx just drops fully formed windmills and solarpanels down from heaven

>>31647 > Didn't think so. The whole system needs to reduce emissions and there are plenty of solutions at hand, they just aren't as profitable. You're not as clever as you pretend to be.

>>31651 >The whole system needs to reduce emissions Go on then. Be the change you want to see in the world. >You're not as clever as you pretend to be. If only you actually knew how short and painful life would be without fossil fuels.

>>31652 >If only you actually knew how short and painful life would be without fossil fuels. Not necessarily short or painful. Probably the most collective suffering worldwide happened during industrialization, which was also when all the dirtiest fossil fuels (low-grade coal) were being burned the most. >>31648 >birds get massacred this sounds to me like those "cats kill billions of birds" statistics. I've never seen someone link an article that goes over the methodology of how they counted it. >>31647 >what is nuclear power? >what is electric mass transit and why is it cheaper and more efficient than cars? >do electric buses require lithium batteries? >what is a bicycle? >how do I rent a car temporarily? just suggestions on stuff you should type into your google search bar on your Edge browser, if you're curious. Personally I own no car and my house does not have gas hookups. A nontrivial amount of the municipal power in my state is provided by nuclear or renewables.

I'd describe myself as a YIMBY - but I don't really do much about it. What should I do as a good YIMBY? Seems like the real question lies with if you are YIMBY if you own property - basically knowing it would drive down your wealth.

>>31652 >Be the change you want to see in the world I am. Only people who aren't even trying themselves quote that retarded proverb.

>>31477 OOOOOooooohhh YES daddy PLEASE gentrfy me HARDER just DESTROY all free space possible and CRAM all us humans into bug hives at 3X the rent PLEASE >>31480 This lol Honestly cities are bad in general for human mental health. We're not made the process information about the world around us in the way a city lays it out for us. If the powers that be want to stuff us all into SOMEthing, hobbit houses from Lord Of The Rings would be better for us. AND better for the planet. Like yeah sure "building green" by bulldozing huge swaths of forest in order to replace it all with concrete and asphalt. Shove off. I'd live in >>31488 with a librebooted PC and solar panels outside.

>>31720 >Honestly cities are bad in general for human mental health. Agreed, but the fact of the matter is that most of humanity at the moment either lives in cities or suburbs, which are almost as bad. >We're not made the process information about the world around us in the way a city lays it out for us. to be honest that's probably the worst reasoning you could have come up with. We do just fine in the forest and that's a way more complicated visual/sonic environment. Light pollution, noise pollution, general pollution, and lack of privacy are the main reasons why city life is so miserable and bad for mental health. >If the powers that be want to stuff us all into SOMEthing, hobbit houses from Lord Of The Rings would be better for us. AND better for the planet. Like yeah sure "building green" by bulldozing huge swaths of forest in order to replace it all with concrete and asphalt. Shove off. The point of YIMBYism is that we should get rid of suburbs (which are generally the least efficient use of land you can think of -- same amount of bulldozed forest for a tiny fraction of the newly created living space, plus transportation to/from urban centers) and everyone should either live in the country or in high-density cities with good infrastructure. Fact of the matter is that not everyone can live in a hobbit hole, there is simply not enough usable land for that. Big dense cities are actually considered attractive places to live for a lot of people, so without huge demand for land to be turned into low-density suburbs there would be plenty of land for your hobbit hole. It's win-win.

>To do this requires removing hundreds of regulations which have forced city planners to build inefficient and car-dependent North American style suburbs. Oh my fuarrrking God, please, kill suburbs and the ridiculous American zoning laws already. I legitimately only support the walkable cities notion because having to commute by car, from the suburbs to the inner city, for about 90 minutes both ways in the middle of traffic, is absolutely inhuman. Robert Moses, among other people, should be posthumously shot for this bullshit. Like >>31583 said, though, the problem with American cities absolutely goes way, way beyond terrible commuites and ridiculous zoning laws.

Anyone got a copy of Strong Towns books in PDF? I like the guy, but I cant afford buying his book to be honest. Audiobook version of it would be neato if available.

>>31542 >>31544 NYC has many problems but the biggest one is the incompetent government. Unilaterally saying you can't raise rent prices in a place with as high of a cost of living as NYC during inflation was never going to go well for anyone. The problem is landlords aren't just robots looking to rip people off they have to eat and sleep and pay bills when you enact bills like this you make the environment of NYC less friendly to locals. This, not YIMBYS, is what leads to more globetrotters. YIMBYS would actually help the problem of globetrotters by allowing more locals to survive and thrive in the market.

>>31477 High population density come with high criminality. It come with always having someone in your space, with never ending sound pollution. It come with it's lot of human misery not being able to find a spot and having to live in the street. It come with 10 beggars on your way to work, with security guards in every shops, with an abundance of drugs, of prostitution, of gangs who want to run the streets and all it bring. You should aim at decentralizing the activity, at having a network of human sized towns made for humans. There is no virtue in turning NYC into a 40K hive city.

>>32039 All of the things you listed are perfectly possible in low-density cities as well. They are in fact caused by lack of economic opportunity.

>>32040 Explain how the poorest 20 counties in the US (all of them in the very rural Appalachians) have no particular crime and violence problem while Chicago, the economic center of America is full of shootings. You may steal food if you are poor, but hooting the other gang to show who run the street have nothing to do with being poor. Rape have nothing to do with being poor. Assaulting people have nothing to do with being poor. Tell me, when you think of Nepal, do you think of a sheep herder in a stone house or to a Madmax style of ultraviolence? Don't blame poverty for criminality, statistics show it only a minor factor. It's like blaming road crashes on people who drive 5mph above the speed limit.

>>32048 >Chicago, the economic center of America is full of shootings. You're joking. New York runs this country and multiple states, if New York disappeared tonight this country would be in ruins. Chicago powers Illinois, that's it, and maybe still tops some list somewhere for being an economic powerhouse, but only because of how far the rest of America is behind. Poverty is the issue, it's been a problem for so long that generations teach bad ideas to the next generation so they know what to do when they fall down, and in Chicago you WILL fall down, then other people take it further or go full gangster because that's what they've been lead to believe life is for them and all it will every be for them, and many aren't wrong. Chicago is basically an active warzone with a city inside it, and that's not going to change anytime soon either, regardless of political beliefs, because Illinois has been so corrupt for so long that people just expect that the governor or other major figures will likely be arrested within their term, and absolultely nothing will get done. Same applies to the mayor. So no matter which party you choose, the candidates know that they won't have to do anything to fix anything and they've got X amount of time to do whatever they want with backroom deals, spending crazy amounts of public money on personal vehicles, etc. If the person before you was an ass but made a ton of money doing nothing, who cares if your R or D, rinse and repeat after your elected. And people are too poor to do this, they don't have time to sit down and vet every political candidate to fix this because they need to make sure there's dinner on the table tonight, regardless of what that entails. People who have no reason to believe they will ever escape poverty have no reason to try and live a life other than that, and many embrace the idea that "if things are never going to get better, why play by the rules? what is there to lose?" Poverty in Chicago is, 100%, the root cause of it's issues.

>>32049 Rich black people do 7 times more crime than poorest whites

>>32049 You forgot to explain why the poorest counties have a low criminality. You forgot to explain why Nepal isn't more violent than St Louis. It's not the 00's anymore and Chicago is more business friendly. Many corps moved their headquarters here and the price of many things are determined by Chicago's market. My point was; it's full of opportunities, yet filled with crime. Any of the gang members in this town can just apply for a job and have a normal life, but it's less boring to run the street. > go full gangster because that's what they've been lead to believe life is for them It's called MTV culture and yes, it's a factor of criminality. It have nothing to do with money or opportunities. >People who have no reason to believe they will ever escape poverty have no reason to try and live a life other than that, It would be believable if it didn't came right after 10 generations of Americans living in poverty and working to build a country. Hey, your disfranchised Americans who claim to be poor are richest that all the generations before them except the last one.

>>32039 Nice place but that church should be replaced with a shrine grove to a local deity. >>32049 The root cause of problem in Chicago is feral kneegrow DNA. Exile the ghetto scum to Liberia or Somalia. Read up on Dr. James Watson's statement on basic comprehensive intelligence and behavioral leanings and their connection to DNA. There are many types of intelligence and IQ often measures test-taking ability rather than actual intelligence but if genetics did not have any effect on basic intelligence, then we would not be worried about generational inbreeding.

>>32048 >poor rural areas have no particular crime problem Yes they absolutely do. Shasta county has as much violent crime per capita as LA county.

Keyboard warriors assemble! We are the biggest baddest gangsters on the internet and no cripz or bloodz can out-do us on our turf of the world wide web!

All countries, rich and poor, have low criminality compared to USA. No social net and guns freely available, the winning combo. Ask you the right questions.

i dont think you have the right idea of "country" unless you are talking about primative tribes, social networking is as readily available as water in nearly any "country"

>>32095 You also get away with stuff in other countries you can't get away with in the US because the cops in America are insane. Hence higher crime rates.

>>32095 Pretty much this. Take The Netherlands as an example. Dutch cities are really compact, yet they are one of the safest countries in the world, so safe that little kids are allowed to walk around all on their own unsupervised. Density has nothing to do with crime. The US gives that illusion because back in the 1920s, all the wealthy people moved away from the cities, taking their money with them, and voting to defund and get rid of many social services, leaving the poor and lower income families back in the urban cores where over the span of a century ended up developing an urban-oriented culture of crime. Even after rich yuppies got interested in downtowns again around the 80s, the cities still remain as being the highest concentration of crime in America, even if crime is mostly segregated to lower income neighborhoods, such as the case with Chicago, all that crime people talk about is concentrated to the south side, the rest of the city is actually among the safest big cities in America. There's really no easy way to fix this besides revitalizing all of these abandoned cities. One way to do that is by building more houses!

>>32095 >All countries, rich and poor, have low criminality compared to USA. >No social net and guns freely available, the winning combo. Your implicit assumption that all races/cultures have equal capacity for peaceful cooperation is empirically false.

>>32843 >all the wealthy people moved away from the cities, taking their money with them, and voting to defund and get rid of many social services One person = one vote means the middle class can never outvote the poor on anything. That's why social spending, (and taxes/inflation to pay for it) only ever goes up. Try another theory. >There's really no easy way to fix this besides revitalizing all of these abandoned cities. And has that ever worked ever? >One way to do that is by building more houses! Consumers want more houses. Contractors was more money. So what's the problem?

>>32850 >One person = one vote means the middle class can never outvote the poor on anything. The idea that the middle class or poor have any significant political power is a fiction. At best, they're pandered to. >That's why social spending, (and taxes/inflation to pay for it) only ever goes up. federal tax rates have been on a strong downward trend for decades. https://taxfoundation.org/historical-income-tax-rates-brackets/ >>we need to revitalize cities >And has that ever worked ever? I mean, certainly cities have sometimes gotten worse and sometimes gotten better, and there are probably a myriad of policies that affect it. Do you need a case study or something? >So what's the problem? Did you not read the OP? Restrictive laws made by wealthy suburbanites prevent new construction in many jurisdictions.

>>32095 >All countries, rich and poor, have low criminality compared to USA. No social net and guns freely available, the winning combo. Ask you the right questions. plainly false do your homework next time chummer. Nigeria has more total murders despite having a smaller population, if statistics are to be beleived, for instance. Interestingly it has this despite comparatively strong anti gun legislation. There's a whole lot of countries with pretty high violence&murder rates, much higher than USA. I wonder whether we might be able to discerne some sort of common traits between these countries?

>>32853 >The idea that the middle class or poor have any significant political power is a fiction. Politicians need votes to gain power. There are more poor people and they are easier to please than middle class people. That's why we have things like welfare in the first place. You didn't refute that point. >federal tax rates have been on a strong downward trend for decades I don't think this link proves the point you want it to. And don't forget about inflation. Raising taxes costs votes but debasing the currency only leads to inflation further down the road when your political term is probably over and it's someone else's problem. >Do you need a case study or something? Liberal dogma tells you that poor people simply lack money so give them money and everything is fixed. Except we've been doing that for decades and you don't have any clear success story to point to. >Restrictive laws made by wealthy suburbanites prevent new construction in many jurisdictions. Let me guess, it's because we have "bad" people in government. If only we had "good" people in government then it will work.

>>32854 Switzerland has more guns and no murders. UK has no guns but massive knife and acid attacks instead. So gun control has nothing to do with it either. Sweden has a very high social safety net and is also the rape capital of the world. You can't fight religious dogma with facts no matter how obvious they are.

>>32856 >I don't think this link proves the point you want it to. Care to explain why? >And don't forget about inflation. Inflation has grown slower than taxes have gone down. And inflation would only have an affect on the brackets, not on the percent of income taken which is a nondimensional number. >Except we've been doing that for decades and you don't have any clear success story to point to. San Francisco is thriving now compared to the 80s. So is New York. >Let me guess, it's because we have "bad" people in government. If only we had "good" people in government then it will work. No it's because of NIMBYs.