Trauss's followers live by the neoliberal belief that deregulation and building more housing, even if it's only affordable to the richest of the rich, will trickle down and eventually make housing affordable for all. Her vision is Reagonomics "dressed up in a progressive sheep's costume," according to Becker. But Trauss's "fresh approach" to the dilemma of exploding housing costs has got conservative libertarians and lefty media outlets alike foaming at the mouth for more. — Truth-Out
San Francisco, and the surrounding Bay Area, has long been the example around which issues of gentrification are discussed and cited. While it is far from being the only city to deal with an influx of wealth and the subsequent displacement of local residents, its role as the center of the tech boom has given the area one of brightest spotlights in regards to these questions. In a recent article put out by Truth-Out, the authors discuss the rise of a new (according to the authors) approach to solving housing crises—YIMBYism. YIMBYism stands for Yes-In-My-Backyard and is meant to designate a positive stance on development. It is an approach, as characterized by the authors, as being along the lines of trickle-down economics—the idea being that building more housing, even if it's only affordable to higher-income earners, will eventually make housing more affordable for all.
The article focuses on the conservatives running this movement claiming that they have become the "Alt-Right" of the Real Estate Industry. But, YIMBYism is an approach that has both conservative libertarians, wanting to develop in new neighborhoods, and left leaners, who feel that anti-development zoning and regulations put strain on the market and prevent affordable housing, falling in the same camp with similar goals. This is because the term development itself, to put it simply, is quite vague and these categorizations have reduced one's stance into a binary of pro or anti-development. YIMBYism is the foil for NIMBYism, which as a term used to refer to those who want squash development, can be applied equally to wealthy residents who don't want an affordable housing complex in their neighborhood, or to low-income residents who don't want a new luxury housing complex raising rents in theirs. In this same vain, the term YIMBYism oversimplifies two widely different reasons and ways for wanting or not wanting development. Just because many of gentrifications biggest fans are proponents of YIMBYism, doesn't necessarily mean that the answer for those seeking to curb gentrification has to be, and clearly is not, it's complete opposite.
It's telling that this post's position --that extreme positions should be avoided in favor of a more nuanced, case-by-case analytical approach-- sounds radical. But, unfortunately, this seems to be the strident, ideological, mindless and polarized age in which we're living.
Pass the whiskey....
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I believe in architecture
For some more perspective and to quote @AlJavieera re: "How to re-educate your YIMBY friends. If these readings don't work, nothing will and you should divorce them..." one might start the list below;
Chapter 2 in Ruth Wilson Gilmore's _Golden Gulag_ on the California Political Economy. https://books.google.com/books?id=zThPAQAAQBAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s …
Neil Smith, "Gentrification and the Rent Gap" https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2563279.pdf …
Richard Walker, "The Golden State Adrift"
https://newleftreview.org/II/66/richard-walker-the-golden-state-adrift
Carl Beitel, "The Subprime Debacle"
https://monthlyreview.org/2008/05/01/the-subprime-debacle/
Logan and Molotch, "Urban Fortunes" https://books.google.com/books/about/Urban_Fortunes.html?id=XtIMclQwMY4C …
Harvey's Limits to Capital https://www.versobooks.com/books/64-the-limits-to-capital …
Lefebvre, The Right to the City (read with the Neil Smith foreword) https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-urban-revolution …
"More Simple, More Fun, More Mobile, More Secure!" in The Coming Insurrection https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/comite-invisible-the-coming-insurrection#toc4 …
+one of the best pieces on urbanism ever, 2Pac's To Live & Die in LA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jp20gOwlS4 … listen to every word.
It's telling that this post's position --that extreme positions should be avoided in favor of a more nuanced, case-by-case analytical approach-- sounds radical. But, unfortunately, this seems to be the strident, ideological, mindless and polarized age in which we're living.
Pass the whiskey....
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