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Comment by Veliladon | Hacker News Reader

Yes. This. Not being able to build an ADU by right is so weird to me. If I could build an ADU I could help with the housing crisis.

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You'd have to get past the lobbyists for the residential REITs and private equity lenders who don't want anyone to help with the housing crises because it'll cut into their profits.

In my experience doing work with a local YIMBY organization: it's mostly local NIMBYs. When there's a city council meeting about some housing policy, it's not some guy from New York in a suit who shows up, it's local NIMBYs. When there are proposed duplexes in a "nice" area of town, it's the neighbors who organize to stop them, not some far off corporation.

The positive aspect to this, though, is that a group of pro-housing locals can make a huge difference in the conversation and see real progress. It is really meaningful and fulfilling to see housing built that you helped advocate for.

take a look at the NIMBYs perspective. They have a house, neighborhood that they like. It has certain characteristics that makes it worth living in for them.from the few I've spoken with, the feeling seems to be that city centers are unpleasant and expensive and most importantly, if they wanted to live in a city, they would've moved into a city.

as long as you ignore their perspective, you will get pushback.

My objections are different from most. We need to re-wild as much as we can of lawns. We need to construct more wildlife corridors so carnivores like coyotes and foxes can come into suburban and urban spaces to feast on the mice and rats. we need to drop nighttime lighting down to much lower levels so that nocturnal creatures have a play second live and reproduce.

Oh, I hear their perspectives plenty. I just think we care entirely too much about them to the point where working people are pushed out of the city I live in because of the lack of housing.

Cities evolve and change, and if you prevent the physical form from changing, they still change. The composition of people changes radically, over time, as the wealthy are still able to move in, and the working class is pushed out.

Ideally, cities would change a little bit, everywhere, gradually, but we've prevented that from happening with zoning in so many places in the US that it has screwed so much up...

cities should evolve and change. Building should be torn down, roads/rail replaced or rerouted and new building fit to purpose should replace it. But they don't. Cities are locked in to their current form for a variety of reasons (economic, historical etc.)

The walkable city implementation should be the result of the demolition of an urban space and reconstructed in the vision of the 15 minute city. I take this view because I live in an old mill town in Massachusetts. Because of house hunting in the area, I would say a good half or more of the housing in town is really crap tenements with a thin layer of vinyl siding on it to make it look better. there is nothing you can do with these properties to make them energy-efficient or nice to live in without totally gutting the property down to including the exterior and roof. The area around these houses is not very livable as it's usually asphalt..everywhere. Not a spot of lawn or trees to be found.

instead of building over green fields, the city should use these Brownfield properties as a land for the 15 minute village. yes, this would push people out of the existing houses so prior to that demolition, they should be construction of social housing like they have in Helsinki to make room for the people displaced.

rebuild cities livable as defined NIMBYs and then you might find greater acceptance of what you propose to change.

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