It’s more about long term, but I see what you mean about lighting a fire under butts.
One of the most eye opening discoveries for me on my urbanism journey is how Amsterdam got better. It wasn’t always a bicycle paradise; its city center had massive parking lots, huge roads, and a poor pedestrian environment.
But today it’s much different — because policies were enacted decades ago which ensure roads are re-configured when it’s time to replace them. So over time, the city has become better.
These long-term policies are deeply important. We didn’t get into the current situation because someone woke up and decided housing scarcity would be cool. It happened after decades of planning and building under policies which seemed like the future 60 years ago, but have become unsustainable. Parking minimums don’t instantly turn your town into a parking lot — it takes decades as buildings are replaced and more and more land is carved out for parking.
So yes, YIMBY doesn’t instantly solve the crisis, and we need to do more. But over time, as houses and lots sell, people remodel and build, the financial incentive to make more housing units available is very strong —- so over many years, things will definitely densify.
There’s a great podcast that delves into the Big Dig. It was an exceedingly difficult giant construction project. The original cost estimate was a made up number for political expediency. They lied knowing once they dug a big hole the sunk-cost fallacy would pull them over the finish line.
This aligns with my observations. There's a huge amount of noise made about things like zoning reform. Politicians are usually smitten with themselves once reform is complete. In practice, it's hardly meaningful if applied to an area that has been extensively developed. Just for example: covenants on the deeds can render the zoning change moot. Likewise, it seems unlikely that existing residents are going to uproot their lives just to advance some specific concept of reform.
Some of this reform is also stupid, like Austin attempting (and failing) to mandate 9 ft ceilings in the name of "affordability".
My observation has been that if you're looking for an observable change in the next few years - just move somewhere else. It's less headache and the results are instant.
>We didn’t get into the current situation because someone woke up and decided housing scarcity would be cool.
I mean, in a way, we did.
CEQA didn't become the monster that it is now because the California legislature intended to enact a monster. It was effectively an accident of an interesting, and arguably activist, interpretation by the CA Supreme Court in a case called Friends of Mammoth v. Board of Supervisors:
>In 1972, the California Supreme Court broadened CEQA by interpreting a "public" project as any development that needed government approval.[4][5]: 1 Since then, CEQA has become the basis for anyone with a grievance against a project to file lawsuits to slow projects by years or kill projects by imposing delays and litigation costs that make projects infeasible.[6]
One of the most eye opening discoveries for me on my urbanism journey is how Amsterdam got better. It wasn’t always a bicycle paradise; its city center had massive parking lots, huge roads, and a poor pedestrian environment.
But today it’s much different — because policies were enacted decades ago which ensure roads are re-configured when it’s time to replace them. So over time, the city has become better.
These long-term policies are deeply important. We didn’t get into the current situation because someone woke up and decided housing scarcity would be cool. It happened after decades of planning and building under policies which seemed like the future 60 years ago, but have become unsustainable. Parking minimums don’t instantly turn your town into a parking lot — it takes decades as buildings are replaced and more and more land is carved out for parking.
So yes, YIMBY doesn’t instantly solve the crisis, and we need to do more. But over time, as houses and lots sell, people remodel and build, the financial incentive to make more housing units available is very strong —- so over many years, things will definitely densify.