Predictable NIMBY opposition, but this is a needed change to boost density in NSW cities resulting in increased housing affordability and allowing more people to live without being tethered to a car.
Wont all of these projects include carparks though? I live in a large block of flats in the Inner West and everyone of my neighbours still drives everywhere except for a few of us.
I find the whole nimby/yimby debate to be a manufactured distraction and the yimby side feels like an astro-turfing campaign.
Wont all of these projects include carparks though?
Likely, but that doesn’t mean you have to own a car just because a carpark exists. Certainly, I’m all for completely abolishing parking requirements due to the costs they add to housing along with the wasted space.
I find the whole nimby/yimby debate to be a manufactured distraction and the yimby side feels like an astro-turfing campaign.
NIMBYs spend their time going to council meetings and advocating against high density housing, and local councils frequently cave to them because they perceive it as the popular view due to this (rightly or wrongly). It’s not manufactured, but a very real issue.
I don’t doubt that residents are organising in their perceived best interests whether you or I agree with them or not. That’s not what I mean by manufactured. I think the framing of the debate as an us (renters, homeless) vs them (home owners) or urban sprawl vs higher density is entirely artificial. Regardless of it’s origin I think that nimby is corporate developer language that isn’t helpful.
It should go without saying that there is a real housing crisis. But it wasn’t the residents of Balmain or Glebe or any other residential community that created this crisis. It’s entirely on the banks, investors, developers, construction giants and their pro-developer mates on councils and in parliaments. But they seem to be getting off scot-free in all of this. Not only scot-free but they’re about to make another massive windfall off this rezoning.
And I don’t think that those interested in continuing to profit of this crisis have any motivation to end it. That’s what I mean when I say manufactured.
I mean I get you, the developers themselves don’t really care about solving the crisis, they just want to make money. But increased housing supply is the only real politically viable solution, and unless we want even more sprawling, car dependent cities, then that requires higher density. So in this case, people who want affordable housing and developers that want to make a profit, have a shared goal.
Now if you were to argue that the government should instead build a massive amount of publicly owned high density apartments, terrace houses, duplexes, etc rather than handing it over to the private sector, than I’m all for it. But I really don’t see that happening any time soon, and that’s partly because a minority of people will protest to their local council that it’s ruining their community (and their property values).
Whenever I hear the word ‘NIMBY’ thrown around I just think about how these people expect current and future generations to be worse off than their parents.
You want a garden? No, fuck you NIMBY. You want a pool? No, fuck you NIMBY. Solar panels? No, fuck you NIMBY. Now, get in your box and stay there. No complaints.
Housing supply is an issue and it’s purely because of poor infrastructure, shitty government, and out-of-control migration.
these people expect current and future generations to be worse off than their parents.
That’s just…not true. Like yeah, there are some things that you might perceive as disadvantages at first. But in net it’s such a huge improvement, and most of the “disadvantages” actually become advantages when thought about more deeply.
No pool? Thank fuck. Those things are dangerous, expensive, and a lot of work. Instead, urbanists want more access to all sorts of public services, including more public pools with their trained lifeguards and professional maintenance.
No solar panels? Eh, that one’s just straight up not true. My preferred form of development is as many row houses as possible, and in that everyone has their own roof that they can put solar on if they want. But there will of course be some apartment buildings too. Ideally, those should have solar as well, it just requires a situation where housing is not as much treated as an investment vehicle and is instead thought of as people’s homes, so bodies corporate are working to the benefit of residents. It might also require some clever engineering and social/legal structures to get it to be equitable.
Gardens are somewhere between these two. You can have public and community gardens which add a greater sense of community as an added bonus, gardens in greenspace that forms common property which does much the same but only with your closest neighbours, or row house developments can easily have small yards at the front with room for planting.
But even if we were to concede all of the above, you’re ignoring all the other disadvantages of low density development. They inherently are more expensive. Land is way more expensive because you literally need to pay for more of it. Rates are more expensive because you end up paying for more metres of infrastructure—roads, electricity lines, sewerage, etc.—per household. You pay more for transport because cars become almost a necessity to live, and that’s a huge expense. Or your pay more (either directly or through taxes) for public transport because that’s less efficient in low density—if the government runs it at all to such low density locales.
And then you get into all the other matters related to car dependency. How low density housing is terrible for children because they become so dependent on parents to give them lifts anywhere, rather than being able to walk or ride to their friends’ place or to soccer practice. How it’s just literally more dangerous for kids because cars are one of the biggest killers. How cars themselves and the road infrastructure to support them are bad for the environment, both in a global atmosphere impact thing and in terms of local heat island effects. And how they’re so terrible for wildlife. How driving is by far the most stressful mode of transport, how it causes people to dehumanise others, how it hurts local small businesses and props up big box national chains—which is especially relevant at a time when so many media stories are coming out about how terrible Coleworths have been for both suppliers’ and consumers’ wallets.
Never mind the simple fact that increasing density is necessary to resolve the housing crisis, medium density neighbourhoods are better for your wallet, better for communities, better for the environment, better for your children, and better for the economy. They’re just straight-up better. And it’s wrong to pretend that urbanists are asking you to settle for worse.
You argue my statement to be untrue then provide your unrealistic utopian vision of
cramminghigh density urban living as if it has any reflection in our current reality. Developers are not building your utopia, they are doing everything they can to maximise their profit. I’ve lived in enough expensive high density shitty apartments with no air conditioning and no maintenance to take everything an ‘anti-NIMBY’ has to say with a shaker of salt.Increasing density is not necessary to resolve the housing crisis. Halting and properly managing population increase is the solution. Governments not sabotaging public transport is the solution. Social housing as opposed to housing-for-profit is the solution.
Neighbourhoods change. The city and neighbourhoods you’re clinging to don’t exist anymore. In their wake can come great new neighbourhoods, just different to what was there.
