YIMBYism and Fatalism, cont.

Hi everyone. Hope you’re doing well, despite [gesticulates in the general direction of world events].

A few notes I’d like to append to last month’s post:

First, I noticed a little belatedly that Steve Randy Waldman has written a generous response to my response to his initial critique of YIMBYism. I won’t get into the greenfield development debate here, in part because there’s no real YIMBY consensus on the subject. But I think Waldman’s response is a valuable entry in the debate. I may have been guilty of a little shadowboxing with the Steve Randy Waldman of my imagination in that last post, for which I feel duly sheepish.

Second, I wanted to draw everyone’s attention to this great post on a related topic, by Zak Yudishthu for the Metropolitan Abundance Project. Following a major citywide upzoning in Minneapolis, Zak dug into where new multifamily housing is getting permitted and where it isn’t. His analysis offers some valuable lessons to the pro-housing crowd, among which the most important is: The details matter. Not all upzonings are created equal, and some will be far more consequential than others.

Third, my last post referenced an ADP report on “domestic offshoring.” Here is my longer consideration of the domestic offshoring trend for Business Insider. (I have another piece forthcoming for BI about homeowners associations — stay tuned.)

Fourth, on the larger question of whether YIMBYism works, I recommend this post by Kevin Erdmann and this response from Salim Furth. It goes without saying that my views on this are closer to Furth’s than Erdmann’s. My take on both Minneapolis and Auckland remains that the data we have now look promising, but it’s too early for a full evaluation of their respective upzonings. Still, “legalize a ton of infill housing production in high-cost cities” looks like as sure a bet as you’re likely to find in uncharted policy waters. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing other things simultaneously.