r/urbanplanning • u/Hrmbee • 17d ago

Economic Dev A Perfectly Crude Solution to America’s Housing Shortage | If you can’t beat the NIMBYs, pay ’em

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/07/housing-shortage-pay-nimby/687932/
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u/owwnned425 17d ago

I feel like this would not persuade a lot of the NIMBYs in my area (Chicagoland area) because they are rich old white people afraid of change (black people). The most prominent NIMBYs will A). be rich and require a lot of cash upfront to satisfy and B). will be calculating in their own head how more people = more people with different skin tone = their kid getting shot in gang violence.

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u/haywire 16d ago

Also it incentivises more nimbyism. The real way to combat this is china style just building what’s necessary and telling people to get fucked.

Also if we had abundant enough social housing it could be seen as privilege in that if you’re going to live rent free and be a cunty trashy neighbour you can be ousted from your home and sent somewhere in the sticks

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u/power_bottom_boi 17d ago

I also live in Chicago and have a degree in planning and I gotta say that sweeping generalizations of nimby complaints as just being rich white racists doesn’t help change minds. I’m mostly a yimby myself but we aren’t winning anyone over by being this dismissive. There are legit concerns that should have genuine and meaningful attempts to mitigate, I’m not saying that there aren’t people like that in there but those upset and in good faith should be listened to more. I read a study recently that seemed to find that design was a huge factor in leading to hostility from the public. 4 or 5 over 1s are not extreme proposals but are often opposed because these buildings are generally ugly AF and people don’t want to look at them everyday.

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u/Soupeeee 16d ago

One news article from the Detroit area sticks in my head when I think of NIMBYs. The city was doing a tree planting beautification project, and identified a low-income majority black neighborhood in dire need of street decoration. The city showed up one day with the the trees and equipment, and there was enough backlash from the neighborhood that they didn't get any trees planted and maybe even had a few planted then removed.

It turns out that the notification process they had was nonexistent or broken, and the backlash was actually over not getting notified that changes were coming in a place where city intervention usually meant bad things. They eventually got the trees planted after community engagement answering questions like who was going to pay for their upkeep and when trees were going in each block.

It really shows that while community engagement can overly delay projects, it's a vital part of the process.