This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the YIMBY article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed Article policies Neutral point of view No original research Verifiability

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1Auto-archiving period: 12 months

This article was nominated for deletion on 12 September 2009 (UTC). The result of the discussion was keep.

This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Architecture Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Architecture, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Architecture on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ArchitectureWikipedia:WikiProject ArchitectureTemplate:WikiProject ArchitectureArchitecture Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Effective Altruism Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Effective Altruism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relevant to effective altruism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Effective AltruismWikipedia:WikiProject Effective AltruismTemplate:WikiProject Effective AltruismEffective Altruism Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale. Sociology This article is within the scope of WikiProject Sociology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of sociology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SociologyWikipedia:WikiProject SociologyTemplate:WikiProject Sociologysociology ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale. Urban studies and planning Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Urban studies and planning, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Urban studies and planning on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Urban studies and planningWikipedia:WikiProject Urban studies and planningTemplate:WikiProject Urban studies and planningUrban studies and planning Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

On 20 July 2024, it was proposed that this article be moved from YIMBY movement to YIMBY. The result of the discussion was moved.

I think that these would fit better under the "Regional" header. Perhaps a reorder to go:

Regional YIMBY Movements
- North America
 - Canada
 - United States
 - List of North American YIMBY Organisations
- Europe
 - Slovakia
 - Sweden
 - United Kingdom
- International Greenking2000 (talk) 09:13, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 January 2024 and 15 March 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): 0xtomato (article contribs). Peer reviewers: AlexVonGod.

— Assignment last updated by Juniper37 (talk) 18:58, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

In the next couple weeks, I will be revising and editing this article for an energy and sustainability course project. I would appreciate any feedback on my proposed edits, which I will be working on in my user sandbox. So far, my planned changes to the article include:

• A greater emphasis on the connections between the YIMBY movement and other political movements, especially in the context of climate change and the environment

• Adding to the "academic research" section with updated research and data of what's happening in cities undergoing upzoning transitions
• Expanding the amount of information about opposing groups' viewpoints to fully frame the issue

Thanks!

-0xtomato 0xtomato (talk) 19:22, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The article lacks information about funding sources of "YIMBY" groups (referred to therein as "movements", which is undefined). For example, "California Yimby", a 501(c)4 non-profit organization, does not and will not disclose the sources of its combined receipts ($8,800,199) or assets ($12,284,638, both as of 2021); the required disclosure form lists donors only as "RESTRICTED". There is also no disclosure of how this money is spent. (Source: IRS990 form, CA Atty General website.) This is hardly a grass-roots volunteer "movement" (director Brian Hanlon was paid $270,000 in 2021); rather, it is a professional lobbying corporation, presumably funded by tech, RE development, and trade union interests (though this information cannot be confirmed because it is kept secret). The dichotomy offered in the article--"YIMBY" versus "NIMBY"--is false unless there are organized professional corporations equivalent to "California Yimby" funding some sort of "Nimby" activities. Please provide more documentation. 2600:1700:DAA0:8490:3DFC:9475:83CE:7BC1 (talk) 18:50, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reading documents like their disclosure form yourself and interpreting them is WP:OR. Would need a citation to a reliable source such as a newspaper article to talk about this in the article. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:01, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Understood, thank you. 107.202.145.117 (talk) 05:31, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any evidence that "Planners' Alchemy, Transforming NIMBY to YIMBY: Rethinking NIMBY" inspired the YIMBY movement. I think it's an interesting bit of trivia that they happened to stumble on the same term, but not sure if it's directly relevant Earlsofsandwich (talk) 14:15, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The first sentence starts:

The YIMBY movement (...), based on supply-side economic theory, mostly focuses on ...

The underlined clause should be removed as misleading and polarizing – many readers have strong feelings about other policies that have been described as supply-side economics.

Instead, a sentence should be added near the end of the first paragraph that introduces all of the major motivations for YIMBYism:

The YIMBY movement is rooted in New Urbanism, environmentalism, and a supply-side approach to addressing housing affordability crises through abundance.

Jruderman (talk) 22:39, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, supply-side economics is not mentioned elsewhere in this article, and is a WP:SYNTH argument of what YIMBY is (has nothing to do with reducing taxes or overall economic effect), and I don't think it should be mentioned in your last statement, because that confuses the reader, maybe something more like "and addressing housing affordability issues by allowing construction of more housing?" ---Avatar317^(talk) 00:56, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct. I was thrown off by supply-side economics having regulation cuts as a pillar and broad prosperity as a goal. But supply-side economics is fundamentally a macroeconomic theory, whereas most YIMBYs are focused on the microeconomics of the housing market.

However, YIMBYism is a prominent example of supply-side progressivism. Who decided to give those two ideologies such confusingly similar names? Jruderman (talk) 01:22, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

YIMBYism is not an example of "supply-side progressivism." Those who call themselves "supply-side progressives" are part of a YIMBY coalition with non-progressives, i.e.: "The YIMBY movement has supporters across the political spectrum"--as noted in the article, YIMBY coalitions are multifarious collaborations between left, right, and center.

YIMBYism is, as the cited sources explain, based on a supply-side theory of economics. Per Investopedia: "The supply-side theory, or supply-side economics, is a macroeconomic concept that contends that increases in the supply of goods lead to economic growth. Supply-side economists argue that the government should increase production through tax cuts and reduced regulation."

YIMBYism is built on a single, underlying economic policy thrust: reducing regulation of housing (i.e., "exclusionary zoning," environmental regulations), in order to increase the supply of housing. As Bryan Caplan of Reason Magazine makes explicit, this is a direct parallel to supply-side economist Arthur Laffer's infamous napkin:

"In 2019, Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti published "Housing Constraints and Spatial Misallocation" in the American Economic Journal. It's probably academia's most famous Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) article. H-M imagined a scenario where New York City and the Bay Area never imposed draconian housing regulation. Then they estimated how much bigger the U.S. economy would have been in this alternate history. Their answer was shocking. Restraining local regulation in just two keys localities would have made total U.S. GDP 4-9% higher."

--The YIMBY Napkin

Caplan is incredibly straightforward about what YIMBYism entails at its core, as he demonstrated by titling his New York Times commentary piece "Yes In My Backyard: The Case For Housing Deregulation":

"I know of something close to a panacea policy: one big reform that would raise living standards, reduce wealth inequality, increase productivity, raise social mobility, help struggling men without college degrees, clean the planet and raise birth rates. It’s a sweeping reform that Democrats and Republicans, progressives and conservatives could all proudly support. The panacea policy I have in mind is housing deregulation. Research confirms that there are large benefits in saying yes to tall buildings, yes to multifamily structures, yes to dense single-family development and yes to speedy permitting."

It's understandable for those who fancy themselves "progressives" find a particular discomfort in being associated with the theory behind Reaganomics. This does not change the fact of the matter: YIMBYism's focus on deregulation to stimulate housing supply (the only part which has universal appeal between left- and right- YIMBYs) is an exact recapitulation of supply-side theory.

This is also explicitly referenced in the first source in the Wiki article, Renee Tapp's "Introducing the YIMBYs: Renters, Housing, and Supply-side Politics in Los Angeles." The term "supply-side" is right in the title, and in the body of Tapp's paper:

"Focused on the affordability crisis within Los Angeles’s rental housing market, this paper analyzes the emergence of supply-side politics among the city’s YIMBY groups in order to demonstrate how financialization is reproduced by local efforts. A detailed case study of the city’s YIMBY groups reveals that financialization is embedded in cities not only by the top-down accumulation strategies of investors, but also from the bottom up by renters struggling to find cheaper housing costs."

"The second section analyzes the supply-side economic arguments YIMBYs use to justify development in Los Angeles and the spatial consequences of this on the struggle for affordable housing."

"Significant fault lines exist among renters thanks in large part to the rise of the YIMBY movement. As groups of supply-side oriented housing advocates, YIMBYs are committed to “clear[ing] away the regulatory barriers and let[ting] developers build more housing” (Flint, 2019). Although YIMBYs share the “historical roots of pro-development” associated with the ‘growth machine’ and business elites they are fundamentally a “new form” of housing activists (McElroy and Szeto, 2018: 8). Unlike their pro-growth predecessors, more housing—built as quickly as possible—has become a rallying call for a select group of renters who do not stand to materially benefit from development in the ways that business interests (i.e. landlords) would have in the past."

"Significant fault lines exist among renters thanks in large part to the rise of the YIMBY movement. As groups of supply-side oriented housing advocates, YIMBYs are committed to “clear[ing] away the regulatory barriers and let[ting] developers build more housing” (Flint, 2019). Although YIMBYs share the “historical roots of pro-development” associated with the ‘growth machine’ and business elites they are fundamentally a “new form” of housing activists (McElroy and Szeto, 2018: 8). Unlike their pro-growth predecessors, more housing—built as quickly as possible—has become a rallying call for a select group of renters who do not stand to materially benefit from development in the ways that business interests (i.e. landlords) would have in the past."

"Under the umbrella of YIMBY, renter groups have started to overturn and dismantle specific political institutions that regulate development. Examining this process is crucial to understanding the ways in which housing as a financial object is politically constituted from the ground up. The following empirical sections support that argument and are organized thematically around the reconfiguration of the political landscape engendered by the affordable housing crisis, the economics of supply-side housing, and the rescaling of housing politics with a case study of Los Angeles."

The repeated erasure of YIMBYism's economic theoretical basis is not "confusing to the readers." It's plainly obfuscatory. It follows that a YIMBY who styles themself a "progressive" would not want "supply-side economics" to be associated with their movement, but this is very plainly a violation of WP:NPOV. Both adherents and detractors of YIMBYism agree that YIMBYism is a supply-side economic argument, and this is borne out by the research papers and the secondary sources above. 68.173.118.65 (talk) 02:15, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To quote from the first source listed: "The first empirical section outlines how the YIMBYs emerged as a viable political force in Los Angeles as a result of a proposed building moratorium, Measure S, in the March 2017 elections. The second section analyzes the supply-side economic arguments YIMBYs use to justify development in Los Angeles and the spatial consequences of this on the struggle for affordable housing." (emphasis added)

Additionally, "supply-side economic arguments" are not a "motivation" for the YIMBY movement, but a critical theoretical underpinning for the movement's policy arguments. Without neoclassical "supply-side" economic arguments such as trickle-down (which YIMBYs call "filtering up"), there is no theoretical basis for YIMBY policy suggestions. 68.173.118.65 (talk) 00:58, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll add that this wording was added by an anon user a little over a month ago. I saw the edits on my watchlist and found them a bit strange, especially since there were no edit summaries, but nothing seemed immediately wrong about them so I didn't revert them. Saucy^{[talk – contribs]} 07:46, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for pointing me to this diff. Seeing the previous wording helped me turn the first sentence into something I'm happy with. Jruderman (talk) 08:26, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It was a subtle one! It only drew my attention because of my intense hatred for the non-central fallacy, and it took Avatar317's deeper understanding of supply-side theory to realize how completely wrong it was. Jruderman (talk) 10:22, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can we make a three-sentence stub for now?

Upzoning is ______

Upzoning is often a part of infill development plans, and as such, it is one of the key policies advocated by the YIMBY movement. Metro areas that broadly upzone see a ______ decrease in ______, per _____ of increased zoning capacity.

I'm pretty busy right now so I won't be doing the research needed to create it myself. And I thought it would be good to discuss here first. Jruderman (talk) 22:41, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This would probably be better covered as a small section in the Zoning article rather than a dedicated article for "Upzoning". I doubt that even long term it would become more than a rather small article, but if it did it could be later broken out. Maybe at the end of the "Main Approaches to Zoning" section? ---Avatar317^(talk) 00:12, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This makes sense. We could also change the redirect "Downzoning" to point to a nearby section of "Zoning" or Rezoning", instead of SFH zoning as it does now. Thanks Avatar. — Jruderman (talk) 21:58, 17 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]