Matthew Kiefer is a Boston real estate and land use lawyer who obviously has spent a lot of time in the trenches of the development wars. The man knows NIMBYs. Newgeography has published his piece on the social function of NIMBYism, and it contains one of the best clinical descriptions of NIMBYs that I've read. Read the whole thing, but here is a sample:
There are good reasons why NIMBYism is so pervasive (more about that later), but it is hard to witness firsthand, say at a neighborhood meeting about a proposed condominium project. First, people complain that they did not get notice of the meeting – yet they are in attendance, so what are we to make of that? Others voice complaints that seem embarrassingly trivial to air in public in a voice quivering with outrage: the developer’s trucks are muddy or the project description misspells the name of their street. General complaints emerge about neighborhood-wide conditions that are somehow now the developer’s responsibility to address. These throat-clearing denunciations are a way to limber up for the main event, which is to dismantle the actual proposal and its proponent in any way possible.
The project-specific complaints follow familiar patterns too. The traffic in every neighborhood is, apparently, already intolerable, no matter what the transportation consultants say about “level of service.” The project will only worsen it, infringing upon residents’ inalienable right to uncongested streets.
For large-scale urban projects, the second most prevalent objection is against building height, which often becomes the currency in which trades are made. For the neighbors, height is a signifier of all other impacts. For the developer, height is directly proportional to financial feasibility. So it rapidly becomes a zero sum game, which in turn leads to gamesmanship. The developer leads with a proposal which is taller than needed, to have something to trade with; the neighbors come to understand and even expect this and accuse the developer of duplicity. Sometimes the developer overplays the opening hand by asking for a height which is deemed scandalous, thereby lighting a fire that can never be extinguished.
A third leitmotif is view. Virtually all residents believe that the Constitution protects the view from every window of their homes. Sometimes the developer (or a public official in attendance) will note that views generally are not protected as a matter of property law or by zoning ordinance, but this only further inflames the aggrieved party. The neighbors often elevate their personal views and lifestyle preferences to universal policy imperatives and are incensed if public agencies do not vindicate them. They view public officials as complicit if they express support for the developer’s position, so the officials retreat to the sidelines until the combat subsides.
Length of tenure in the neighborhood often shapes the neighbors’ advocacy. Longer-term residents will recite their credentials: “I was born and raised on _______Street” or “I’ve lived here since____.” to give their views more weight. Their opposition is often poignant: they seem to want to preserve their immediate surroundings in the condition in which they first encountered them, maybe in childhood. Newcomers, with the zeal of recent converts, are often the most vocal in resisting change to the neighborhood they have just discovered.
Some projects attract attention from advocacy groups concerned about affordable housing, historic preservation, open space, waterfront access, or sustainable design, but most opposition comes from those with a close geographic interest. While issue-oriented advocates tend to be progressive in their politics, NIMBYs come in every political stripe. Some are progressives who see their advocacy as a form of environmental protection they are bestowing on their unempowered neighbors. Some are middle-class burghers protecting the safety and stability of the neighborhood. Even libertarians justify opposing development as an infringement on their right to be left alone. It is rare to encounter vocal neighbors whose political views or personal values counteract the visceral sense that their very way of life is being threatened. Nobody, it seems, is precluded from principled opposition, no matter what their principles are.
But Kiefer ultimately concludes that, despite its ugliness, NIMBYism serves an important social function by mediating between new and old development:
In an improvised and very democratic way, it forces mitigation measures to be considered, distributes project impacts, protects property values, and helps people adjust to change in their surroundings. It is a corrective mechanism that, if allowed to function properly, can even help to preserve a constituency for development.
He argues that giving neighbors some control (where feasible) of project design, in order to mitigate the worst impacts, and requiring developers to provide neighbors in-kind compensation (e.g., park improvements) is the best way to assuage NIMBYs' fears.
This is where Kiefer and I part ways. NIMBYism would be efficient in a world where developers enjoyed all the benefits and neighbors bore all the costs of new development. In such a world, bargains between developers and neighbors would ensure that only projects with a net benefit got built. When a project's benefits to the developer exceeded the cost to the neighbors, the developer would modify the design as necessary and offer compensation to the neighborhood. When the project's costs to the neighbors exceeded its benefits to the developer, the neighbors would reject all offers, and the project would not get built.
We don't live in that world. New development often has important social benefits that are not captured in the developer's pro formas. A steady supply of new housing keeps homes cheap, or at least keeps home prices from spiraling upward. New development means more room for more people. More people means a larger, deeper market that permits more specialized retail, restaurants, music and arts. More office space means more room for firms and workers to cluster together; these cluster make both firms and workers more productive. A software developer will be more productive in Austin or San Jose than in San Angelo because a lot of learning takes place just by hanging around with other people in the same trade.
There are increasing returns to growth. This isn't to say that all growth is good. But there is good evidence that some cities are much smaller than they ought to be, thanks to the limits on growth imposed by institutionalized NIMBYism.
Developers worry about their bottom line. That bottom line does not include the spillover benefits to the city of an additional office building, warehouse or housing development. If we rely soely on bargaining between developers and neighbors to decide what gets built, we guarantee that too little gets built. This is how a city like San Francisco ends up with a median home price of $750,000 (even in 2008's market). Cities like San Francisco and New York (and probably Austin) are too small, and institutionalized NIMBYism is mostly to blame.
