i will use discretion to prevent low quality entries/spam
edit: I'm mostly looking for links to existing articles / other content, or well-formed arguments at least a paragraph in length ideally more, not like half of a sentence
poorly elaborated on my position in
https://manifold.markets/jacksonpolack/m100-per-good-argument-piece-agains#uH3lMB9HQ5VjOWhKiXH8
1,000Tyler Cowen recently had a conversation with Stephen Jennings about a community called Tatu City that he is building just outside of Nairobi, Kenya. They discussed how the increased density of Nairobi (and several other large cities in Africa) is leading to terrible traffic congestion and shortages of power and water. They blame these problems on poor governance rather than on density, per se, but the fact remains that when you do have poor governance, an increase in density will necessarily cause serious problems so a NIMBY attitude is understandable. In this case, the naïve YIMBY solution to the demand for housing in Nairobi is wrong (or at least incomplete). The solution that Stephen Jennings is attempting is to build more housing outside of Nairobi in a new city which is planned from the start to be able to handle significant density without the problems seen by Nairobi. That's not exactly the typical NIMBY position, but it is an argument against YIMBYism.
Note that I'm not 100% sold on Stephen Jennings' idea (for contrast, see https://reason.com/2023/09/02/africas-planned-cities-need-unplanning/), but it seems quite plausible that a competent group could come up a planned community which works better than the alternative of simply adding more and more housing to Nairobi.
A new housing development was proposed in my neighborhood and my wife and some others in our neighborhood opposed it because primarily because they thought that it would increase the traffic on the main street (which can already get pretty bad around rush hour). They went to the development meetings and got a concession where the developers would add an extra merge lane to help with traffic.
I think that most NIMBY arguments are generally wrong but there are occasionally some impacts to existing community which do need to be seriously considered.
This guy has written a lot on this subject that you might find interesting. This link leads to a bunch of articles as well as law review articles that touch on the subjects of zoning, housing YIMBYism, urbanism and more.
YIMBYism could take away local communities’ rights and lead to more centralization.
One can imagine a suburb with low housing density where people specifically move who want to live near a popular city but not in a city. Then, as that city expands, NIMBYS pressure them to allow giant apartment buildings to be built in their suburb. So, either the residents will be forced to live in a city now or they must move further out. And who is to say if they move to another suburb 10 km out of the city that in 7 years that suburb will not also be targeted by YIMBYs, and they will be forced to move again.
Basically if there is a community of people who want to be a low housing density suburb, they should have the right to stay like that. If people want to have more high density cities, they can look for unoccupied land and found a new city there.
