When New Urbanists and YIMBY's fight

Why, despite all their commonalities, do some New Urbanists and YIMBY’s get into regular, and often surprising fights?

When New Urbanists and YIMBY’s Fight

A few weeks ago, Steve Mouzon, an architect and notable figure in the New Urbanist movement, published an essay entitled “How the YIMBY-NIMBY Debate Worsened the Housing Crisis.” (YIMBY stands for Yes in My Back Yard, in contrast to Not in My Back Yard, or NIMBY.) Steve calls on YIMBYs to “ditch the confrontation-first approach and try to inspire better things instead… And especially be sure to get rid of the narrative that your mission is so righteous that nothing can stand in the way of your metrics, especially anything that might be confused with aesthetics.”

The piece triggered a strong reaction on Twitter (or whatever it’s called today) among leading YIMBY advocates–including Nolan Gray, the research director for California YIMBY and author of the recent book, Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix it–asking the question “why do new urbanists hate YIMBY’s so much?” 

Like most online debates there’s more heat than light here. But I think it points to something more significant that’s worth reflecting on more deeply. Why, despite all their commonalities (including many overlapping members) do some New Urbanists and YIMBY’s get into regular, and often surprising fights? 

I think it’s worth exploring this question further because in interrogating conflicting ideas we may learn something about ourselves and improve our understanding of what makes cities work. Indeed, we could all do well by asking more questions, instead of pronouncing truths. For example, asking “why are the new urbanists so concerned with urban design, even if it might reduce supply?” Or, “why are the YIMBY’s so focused on increasing housing supply, even if the resulting buildings and urban design might not be top notch?” might encourage an important and fruitful discussion. 

Because, YIMBY’s and New Urbanists do seem to have so much in common. Both have a trenchant critique of modern planning and development. Both are in favor of building new things. Both care about creating good places and making sure there’s diverse housing choices. Both look to learn from historical and international experiences. Many people, like myself, consider themselves to be both New Urbanists and YIMBY. I’m a recovering city planner, turned neighborhood infill developer (in the tradition of the CNU affiliated Incremental Developers Alliance) and the co-founder of a statewide YIMBY advocacy organization, Neighbors Welcome! RI.

After this latest exchange of fire, kicked off by Steve’s essay, I talked to confused leaders in both movements–essentially asking the question: why do New Urbanists and YIMBY’s have these occasional blow ups, when we share so many goals? I think it may help to look at the history, membership, and problems each movement is responding to, so that we can work together better in the future . Major caveat of course that these are broad, diverse, and overlapping social and professional movements and each contains multitudes. 

The New Urbanists

If you go back to one of the original New Urbanist books, Suburban Nation, by NU luminaries Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck, it’s right there in the subtitle: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. New Urbanism, starting in the 1980’s and 90’s and laying out its principles and goals in the Charter for the New Urbanism at the fourth Congress for the New Urbanism in 1996, was established in opposition to the suburban sprawl development pattern and sought to recover the design principles for building traditional neighborhoods–with mixed uses, mixed incomes, walkability, etc. 

Over the years New Urbanism has radically changed the base assumptions of many institutions and professionals around development, so much so that younger generations may have a hard time recognizing the impacts that the movement has had, even in its watered-down institutionalized form–from popularizing ADU’s to Complete Streets to mixed-use-zoning and more. But also, as an older movement, it’s weighted more toward baby-boomers and gen-x than the younger YIMBY movement. 

New Urbanism was populated firstly by architects who wanted to build another way, then planners who sought better objectives for planning and new tools to regulate development. Many of the iconic projects of early new Urbanism, from Seaside to Kentlands were economically successful market-rate development projects and there has long been an orientation of new urbanists toward developers and popular taste. Because new urbanists want to build, the bulk of practicing new urbanists are based or work substantially in the US south and midwest, and in suburban and exurban areas, where regulations and economics have been more favorable for building. 

New Urbanists have worked on policy reforms over the decades, but generally these reforms are technical, including subtle reforms to mortgage standards or shifting zoning toward more mixed-use and form considerations. So to greatly over simplify, new urbanism is a movement tilted toward older urban designers and southerners (as Steve Mouzon is) working against status quo suburban development to build better places, i.e. “quality.”

The YIMBY’s

The YIMBY movement is a very different animal. Most YIMBY’s would date their movement to the last 5-10 years, perhaps iconically initiated by activist Sonya Trauss’ San Francisco Bay Area Renters Federation (SF-BARF, yes that was on purpose). You can read Conor Dougherty’s Golden Gates for a more detailed story of the movement, particularly as it relates to California’s exceptional housing crisis. 

The YIMBY movement at its core was driven by activists (not architects or professionals) focused on political power building and policy change, drawing on economists (housing papers) and lawyers (the color of law) for intellectual grounding (rather than historical architecture and urban design, as for New Urbanists). YIMBY’s have forged alliances with tenant-rights organizations and unions to win major state-wide legislative victories. The YIMBY’s are most active and fired up in regions with severe housing crises, such as the Calirfornia, Washington, Oregon, New York, Washington DC, Massachusetts etc. As the housing crisis has metastasized nationwide over the past several years, the YIMBY banner is being picked up in many states, cities, and regions, each with its own local flavor but united by the desire to build.

YIMBYism is focused on changing policies and regulations (at first, mainly zoning, but increasingly building code, taxes, and environmental permitting, etc) to make it easier to build. There is a wide range of opinion within YIMBY’s on what is good to build, with some YIMBY’s taking an “everything goes” approach, and others tending toward various typologies: missing middle, high-rises, accessory dwelling units, European-style social housing, etc. 

The goal is to achieve “abundant housing” whereby there are so many homes that people can reasonably afford a home that is appropriate for their life situation in the city or region they would like to live in. This goal sometimes takes on a master narrative (the Housing Theory of Everything, which I largely agree with), and sometimes comes across as monomania: build, build, build. To greatly oversimplify, YIMBYism is a movement tilted toward young policy advocates, mostly from liberal coastal metros, working against restrictive regulations to build abundant housing, i.e. “supply.”

Quite different movements with (somewhat) sympathetic goals

We can then put new urbanism and YIMBYism on a line like this to see the many points of friction that are intrinsic to the differences between the movements. Designer-lead vs. activist-lead; coastal vs. southern; young vs. old; and so forth. Like this:

So New Urbanists and YIMBY’s differ significantly in who makes up the vanguard of each movement, the strategy and accomplishments of each movement, the geography where each is most active, and what they see themselves as fighting against. So it shouldn’t be surprising when there is tension between the two movements. 

Adding more dimensions

But is this the most useful way to think of the tension? I think it’s more useful to think of YIMBY’s and new urbanists not as on opposite sides, but actually occupying two different axes

1. The New Urbanism “Quality” vs. Status Quo Development “Eh, whatever” axis

This axis juxtaposes the status quo industrial development complex, institutional investors and the many folks just looking to make a buck in development, who cares about the outcome, with the New Urbanists emphasis on traditional neighborhoods of mixed incomes, mixed-uses, walkability, etc. 

2. The YIMBY “Supply” vs. NIMBY “Character” axis

This axis juxtaposes the other status quo–the neighborhood defenders, who seek to preserve their community character just the way they like it with the YIMBY’s pro-development message of growth and changing community character with the goal of making enough space for everyone in the community. 

Like this: 

If this is right, the New Urbanists and YIMBY’s tension is not just semantics, or personal dynamics, but actually the result of their different priorities stemming from their differing goals. Because–and here’s the key point–as coalitions organized around a central priority, they can be ambivalent about the other dimension. 

So why are YIMBY’s and New Urbanists sometimes at each other's throats? I don’t think it’s just “internet drama.” I think it’s more deeply rooted to the nature of the groups and their goals and methods. Because YIMBY’s and New Urbanists don’t just occupy the ends of their spectrums, but more like a “cone” away from the center. 

Each movement is kind of ambivalent about the other movement’s central aim. So, you can have YIMBY’s who are just like–build, build, build, and I don’t care if it’s more suburban sprawl, or lots of high-rises, or whatever, and really are indifferent to the urban design goals of New Urbanism. And you can have New Urbanists who are so focused on architectural and urban design quality that they will become opponents of more supply. 

This is part of Steve Mouzon’s original critique–there are some YIMBY’s who in their zeal for supply will discount any other value, including urban design, as bad faith. It’s not hard to find leaders of major YIMBY organizations regularly saying things like “human scale” (something coined by New Urbanists) is BS, cheering for “brutal density,” and you can see how those authors would set off a sensitive vernacular architect and urban designer like Steve Mouzon. 

Nolan Gray is the Research Director for CA YIMBY and Max Dubler is the CA YIMBY Education Fund Fellow. Both employees of the largest, most well resourced YIMBY organization in the country and prolific public communicators on Twitter and elsewhere. (CA YIMBY has a staff of 20, CNU’s national organization has a staff of 9)

It goes the other way too. Steve Mouzon also got into a back and forth for suggesting that mid-size apartment buildings don’t belong near single-family homes, but should instead buffer them from the busier streets at the edge. 

Here Steve comes across as allied with the NIMBY’s trying to protect their single-family homes (neighborhood character!) from the big, bad apartment building (supply!). You can imagine how it would come across to the YIMBY activist who sees single-family homeowner NIMBYs as the villains. Sometimes the sudden feeling of betrayal from what you thought was a close ally, leads to a sharper reaction than you have to your long-understood foes. 

Steve makes a curious argument at one point in his essay, saying that YIMBY’s oppose missing middle housing. And Nolan Gray among others call this out as nonsensical. The missing middle concept may have been coined by a New Urbanist firm (Opticos Design–itself also strongly YIMBY aligned), but it’s YIMBY activists who have gotten ADU’s and missing middle housing legalized across large swaths from California to Oregon, Minneapolis and counting. I think the reason Steve has highlighted this is because of another very online YIMBY, architect Michael Eliason in Seattle, who really has argued that missing middle is inadequate and a distraction. 

Obviously Mike can’t speak for the whole YIMBY movement (and has no position in an advocacy organization), but he’s also quite prominent on social media. 

Eliason’s case is instructive because he has also almost single-handedly tweeted single-stair reform into existence in the US (recent state level action in WA, CA). (In many countries you can have a small apartment building with a single staircase, which has many design and affordability benefits). So, whether you agree with Eliason about missing middle vs his goal of better mid-rise… it’s also undeniable that in the space of a few short years, the YIMBY movement is making major, important changes in building codes across the country… something that the New Urbanists largely haven't done over their decades. It’s kind of a stunning blind spot, that I think a lot of new urbanists should be more self-critical about. Why did this important, old, design idea and regulatory reform idea come from an obscure architect in Seattle, rather than the Congress for the New Urbanism? 

Whither Strong Towns? 

So on these two axes, where does the Strong Towns movement sit? 

Strong Towns believes in the value of traditional neighborhood design, walkability, mixed-use and mixed-income places, drawing on the New Urbanist tradition. Strong Towns is also generally in favor of allowing towns to grow and evolve in response to changing needs, including broad upzoning and other strategies favored by YIMBY’s. 

Yet, Strong Towns and the YIMBY’s do not always see eye to eye. Strong Towns thinking is skeptical of top-down, state-level pre-emption as a sword that can cut both ways; is concerned that large swings in development distort feedbacks and make incremental adaptation harder; and is orientationed towards humility in action and policy that grates against the righteous activism of the YIMBYs. So Strong Towns can find itself called both NIMBY and YIMBY, depending on who’s making the argument. 

Here again it’s helpful to understand a little more about what makes Strong Towns tick. The lore of Strong Towns is of the renegade, conservative engineer Chuck Marohn rebelling against status quo engineering practices that build financially unsustainable places with roads and water systems they cannot afford to maintain. But at root, the problem identified by Chuck is not the specific design (“...and here’s our Strong Towns improvement!”). No, the problem is deeper and has to do with how decisions are made, by who, and for whom. The core insight is that the feedback mechanisms in decision making are broken so that the design of a road, a building, or the city’s budget doesn’t respond to local needs, concerns, and resources, but rather looks upward and outward to state and federal agencies, code books, wall-street, and large corporations. 

This is really another whole dimension than the “supply” / “character” or “quality” / “eh whatever” axes–what has previously been described as the debate between Top-Down (“orderly, but dumb”) and Bottom-Up (“chaotic, but smart”).

In the same way that New Urbanists and YIMY’s can sometimes be at cross purposes, this also helps explain the ways in which Strong Towns thinking doesn’t always line up with New Urbanism or with YIMBY–it’s typically when either is relying on “top-down” solutions, vs. “bottom-up” responses. Strong Towns is also more skeptical of status quo systems of development that many YIMBY’s are happy to harness to Build a Lot of Housing Now!

So what now?

I hope that this discussion helps you to understand why these three movements–New Urbanism, YIMBYism, and Strong Towns are often in alignment but regularly come into conflict. Each is aligned around a different priority, while working on many of the same issues. Each movement is a broad coalition with tremendous internal diversity that is also colored by its members' professions, history, region, politics, etc. 

I consider myself a member of all three movements. I agree with many fellow travelers much of the time–but not always. The liveliness of the debate should be seen as evidence of the movements’ intellectual health. I approach all “sides” of this debate with great affection and hope that is reflected here. I think seeing each other as siblings–sometimes in competition, sometimes in alliance, but fundamentally in the same family, will help us learn from and teach each other so that our overall shared objectives of great cities, towns, and neighborhoods can be realized.