A reminder that NIMBYism really has nothing to do with homeowners' preferences for one kind of development over another. It's all about managing threats to property values:
Remember Seaside, the famous New Urbanist development by Andres Duany on the Florida panhandle -- symbol of the new approach to development and community? Another developer had the idea to create the same thing on a site next door, to be given the unfortunate name Watercolor but to be built according to the very same principles of New Urbanism that made Seaside so successful . . . In keeping with the spirit of connected streets -- versus dead ends and cul-de-sacs -- Watercolor sensibly proposed running its streets right up to the end of Seaside's streets, creating a seamless flow in the fabric and the grid. But the residents of Seaside wanted nothing to do with the idea. They didn't want their streets connected with Watercolor's streets. They were perfectly happy in their isolation, as a stand-alone community that had functioned internally quite well before this unwanted new neighbor came along. The paragon of density saw its mirror image and was resolute: not in my backyard.
This from Anthony Flint's This Land: The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America.
The only way to interpret this sad little anecdote is that the Seaside residents were afraid the new development would dilute the Seaside "brand," and reduce their property values in the process.
Update: An apparently knowledgeable commenter says it wasn't NIMBYism at all, just that Watercolor wasn't going to be a very good development.
