NIMBYism: To build or not to build - Paritosh Purohit

Four years ago, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors reviewed a development proposal.

It sought to build an apartment complex comprising sixty-three units, fifteen of them priced below market rates, all to replace a number of smaller buildings falling into disuse. In a city where the median rent is around $3000 a month, this should have been a welcome proposal; more housing where there was none.

The proposal was turned down. The reason?

It would cast too much of a shadow on a nearby park.

Much as it may seem so, that was not a joke. The Board argued, without blinking, that the new building would cast darkness over too high a proportion of the park, and since the neighbourhood’s residents had only one wide-open space available to them, this was reason enough to strike down the development of housing in a city desperately in need of more housing.

(A little over a week ago, they did the same thing, for the same reason- shadows- again.)

This current of thought- a seemingly reflexive opposition to changing the look or feel of one’s neighbourhood, even at the cost of worsening a global cost-of-living-crisis- has a name: NIMBYism.

The acronym stands for “Not In My Back Yard”, and is meant to mock the boiler-plate response given by NIMBYs to any proposal that involves building (housing, wind farms, renewable energy plants, waste management depots, whatever): “yes, yes, sure, we need more housing, and we need to build, but please, somewhere else: not in my back yard!”.

The term “NIMBY” appears to date back to the 1970s, when it was used in the context of a major effort to build nuclear-powered electricity stations in the American Midwest and Northeast. It was initially meant to connote a neutral defense of personal property, and opposition to large-scale development that could affect the living standards of house-dwellers.

Quickly, however, it came to be viewed as a pejorative, connoting- in the eyes of socially-oriented and environmental groups- a certain classist apathy for the poor and ill-off, both by sweeping away the (often blue-collar) work such development would bring to a neighbourhood, and by implying (through their refusal to permit development in middle-class neighbourhoods) that they wished for the burden of visual pollution and toxic waste to fall on poorer neighbourhoods and people.

NIMBYism is a global problem; in the United States, refusal to build has in part allowed housing to remain unaffordable, a source of economic ruin. Across Europe, NIMBYs slow down the expansion of renewable energy. In India, NIMBYs embrace literal rubbish, opposing the building of trash management facilities. The resistance of certain subgroups of individuals to development projects is near-universal.

In reaction to the overtly negative view of the term “NIMBY”, people labelled NIMBYs have attempted to justify their positions on a range of grounds. Most prominent amongst these is a professed concern for local heritage; a communitarian dedication to the maintenance of local ways of life, of the common right to city. What follows is a similarly common fear of YIMBY development destroying the often centuries-old character and flair of local neighbourhoods; NIMBYs argue that YIMBYs put forth an overly commercial and privatised view of what constitutes a neighbourhood, and suggest neighbourhoods should be thought of not merely as a repository of housing, but as the organic socio-cultural canvas of each resident community.

A second concern put forth by NIMBYs, in their defense, is fear of the concrete jungle: NIMBYs accuse YIMBYs of wanting to tear down areas reserved for natural proliferation and build, build, build, nature be damned. On these grounds (pun not intended), NIMBYs reject the “selfish” label applied to them by their opponents and cast themselves as protectors of greenery and environmental preservation; as people who oppose development projects so protected areas centered around natural goals- such as green belts- may remain intact, and so as people concerned not about their backyard, but about the natural commons.

A final, popular, claim made by NIMBYs is that YIMBY policies respond to a problem they perpetuate: corporate rent-seeking. NIMBYs suggest that the real problem behind unaffordable housing is large-scale developers trying to squeeze money out of their consumers, and accuse YIMBY advocacy of easing housebuilding regulations of providing an outlet for corporate money-hunger. YIMBYism, they claim, falsely paint developers as people who serve the public, when in fact making it easier to build would lead not to increased housing affordability, but developers doing whatever they can to get richer.

The easiest claim to rebut is that of YIMBY anti-environmentalism: contrary to what might seem commonsensical, research has shown that urban density is what is best for the environment. While this may seem counterintuitive, it is not, for two reasons. First, urban density aids efficiency: by reducing waste (for example, by transporting water over shorter distances), and by spreading the resources of a certain area over a larger population, dense spaces lead to more efficient energy consumption, and potentially to less energy consumption overall per capita. Secondly, denser urban cores eliminate the spilling over of urban settlement into the cory side (that is, sprawl): higher numbers of urban residents being housed within a dense urban core leads to less housing needing to be built elsewhere. Think of it this way: if we packed everybody into the city, we’d be able to leave the countryside alone.

More harsh, but about as true, is the YIMBY counter to NIMBY concern for local heritage: the hierarchy of needs. Yes, it is true that beauty is independently valuable, and that the maintenance of local culture is something worthy of prioritisation. However, these are luxuries rather than basic needs: when preserving one’s local heritage comes at the cost of denying millions of people priced out of housing markets a place to stay, it should not be controversial to suggest that one set aside concern for heritage so more people may gain access to housing. Needs are not created equal; some of them are more immediate than the rest, and the right to a roof ought to supersede the right to inhabit surroundings respectful of the region’s heritage.

Closest to being valid is NIMBY hostility to the prospect of corporate price-gouging: yes, it may well be that hasty deregulation of housebuilding might lead to housing only being built for those who can pay, and to housing being turned into a commodity first and a need second. However, one might consider that this is not a problem intrinsic to YIMBYism: no YIMBY ever insisted that all new housebuilding be done privately. The exploitation of relaxed housebuilding laws by private developers is not a given; it could, for example, be countered if public authorities took advantage of relaxed development laws to promote the widespread building of social housing, as is often done in the city of Vienna, considered a renters’ paradise. What this would do is guarantee competition- now, private landowners risk losing money if they refuse to cater to lower-income consumers- while also ensuring that development independently benefits as large a cross-section of the general public as is possible.

This is, of course, in addition to several other issues caused to cities and the human way of life that increased building would solve. A major cause of traffic, for example, is the separation between residential and commercial building that necessitates driving and the consequent need to build roads; an approach to city planning oriented in favour of density and mixed-use development would lead to increased workplace-homes integration, allowing for greater walkability and reducing the need to drive. Resistance to dense building has also allowed racist attitudes to perpetuate, in a manner easily disguised as environmentalism or heritage preservation. And finally, a YIMBY approach to energy policy would allow for a quicker transition to renewables; some of the strongest opposition to the expansion of wind farms, for example, come from NIMBYs.

Key to the YIMBY position is the following notion: if there are problems with YIMBYism- congestion, overcrowding, natural destruction, profiteering- they are nigh certain to be the product of building the wrong way. This is a legitimate concern; it is, certainly, possible for increased development to veer off course and be done badly. However, the problem does not lie with increased development itself; it lies in approaches to development. The response to the problem of building potentially being done badly is, surely, not to disavow building, given the immediate nature of the world’s housing problems, and the similarly immediate need for a green transition, but to develop ways to ensure we can build wisely.

It is on those grounds that YIMBYs reach the following conclusion: reflexive opposition to increased development has empirically proven itself to be naive moralism at best, and an obstacle to progress at worst. Increase development can go wrong, yes, but that does not mean we must not build- it means finding ways to build correctly, in your backyard, and in mine.