Neighborhood Defenders
"On October 18, 2016, the Cambridge Massachusetts Planning Board met, as they do every two weeks, to consider applications for new residential and commercial developments. Among other proposals, they examined an application from a developer who sought to convert a commercial warehouse on Regent Street into four residential units"
Stats for nerds
4recommend
13mentions
5people
2020–2025years
62% recommend38% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I don’t know what YIMBYs like to cast people who oppose housing. I am pointing out an effect of the lack of new housing.
I reccommend you read, if you haven’t already, Katherine Einstein’s book ‘Neighborhood Defenders.’ It accurately describes the housing politics in Massachusetts.
Any housing analysis is incomplete without taking into the geographical effect: The only people who care strongly one way or the other about new homes are the people who live near the proposed construction. Almost invariably, people who live nearby are against the change. Those who live far away are actually fine with new construction, at least in the abstract. The very same people who show up to protest nearby construction are also typically fine with housing on other side of the city. People just don’t want new housing in their neighborhood.
This has a practical lesson: control of housing policy, particularly, density, must be ripped from local city councils, where it now rests. Local city councils are beholden to their NIMBY homeowners, as homeowners are the only one who typically vote in city elections. The states thus need to reclaim their legal right to set housing a policy, a right they have ceded to municipalities.
- Yes I am aware that new development/upzoning often increases nearby land values while at the same time putting downward pressure on market rents. See Mast et al’s work from the Upjohn Institute. I am very aware that homeowners (at least those that outright own the land underneath their house i.e not condo owners) stand to financially benefit by selling to developers who put in higher density housing. My remarks about money were not directed at them. Existing homeowners simply oppose new housing of all sorts. Please reread.
Look, I live in Boston. I have also lived in Rittenhouse square. I know the buildings you speak of intimately. I suggest you do something that I have personally have done several times: go to local city council meeting about a beautiful new housing development proposal. Observe how vehemently neighbors oppose the construction of this gorgeous new multifamily housing development. They complain about parking, too much traffic, too much noise, a burden on the school system, the wrong sort of people, blah, blah, blah… it never ends. These people simply don’t want new homes near them. See Katherine Einstein’s “Neighborhood Defenders” to get an overview of this phenomena.
As I said, your focus on aesthetics is a distraction. The road forward is either to appeal to the personal economic interests of the three groups I mentioned, or pray the SCOTUS overturns Euclid vs. Ambler.
- House scarcity is caused by restrictive zoning laws that limit or even outright ban the construction of new homes in high demand areas. It has little if anything to do with capitalism. The main supporters of restrictive zoning are homeowners who oppose new homes in their neighborhoods. See Katherine Einstein, “Neighborhood Defenders’.
House scarcity is a result of too little capitalism, not too much.
- I don't think that either of these are examples of progressive politics in San Francisco. The city is not being beautified, it is being kept the same and not allowed to be beautified. All comparisons with the rest of the US would place San Francisco as more conservative on beautification than progressive.
Similarly, it's not the community that's involved in these decisions, it's a veto system where only those with abundant time and resources can be heard and have influence in the system, further cementing economic privilege rather than making it more equitable or democratic. For recent academic investigations of this, check out the book Neighborhood Defenders by Katherine Einstein et al:
- Thanks for linking this summary! This is by far the most controversial comment I've ever made here, it keeps on fluctuating in score. I hope it prompts some people to examine the history, but unfortunately I did not provide any scholarship to back up my views, which are heterodox in the general population but I think commonly held by those who investigate the boring subject of zoning.
Some other sources of how systemic racism in government has been used to further single-use suburban planning:
Segregation by Design by Jessica Trounstine https://urbanaffairsreview.com/2019/06/24/segregation-by-des...
Neighborhood Defenders by Einstein, Glick, and Palmer https://www.politicsofhousing.com/neighborhood_defenders/
A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow in South Florida by NDB Connolly https://history.jhu.edu/2014/02/19/a-world-more-concrete-rea...
Every talk I've seen by NBD Connolly is outstanding but this is the first I saw and the one that really motivated me to find more sources on this topic: https://youtu.be/DjmUWfMEhfE
- Three books that dive into the problems of our "local control" system, including how it can be anti-democratic:
Neighborhood Defenders by Katherine Einstein et al
Segregation By Design by Jessica Trounstine (recently won a planning book of the year award)
And though it's not about loca control, as much, The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein is an essential for looking at the federal policies that forced segregation in housing.
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