Sometimes I spend too much time on Treehugger. Well, after all, it’s sometimes a great place to sharpen my arguments against authoritarianism, eco-socialism, and neo-aristocrats that decided that their Enviro-Nirvana MUST be achieved regardless of what you and I think about their end point and ESPECIALLY how they want to drag us to it. And yes, it will be more than just kicking and screaming on my part during the entire process.
But it can be fun at the same time, so I bring the stories back here. And Lloyd had a rant about this penny-ante game that does absolutely nothing but got under his skin because it triggered him (reformatted, emphasis mine):
This Useless Game Spotlights the Roadblocks to Fixing Our Cities
“SIM NIMBY” is the most useless game ever … which is exactly the point.
And here’s where I got to add to my vocabulary:
There’s no shortage of nicknames for people and their building opinions. There are the NIMBYs who say, “Not in my backyard!” There are the BANANAs who say, “Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.”
Those I knew. Here’s the new one AND it isn’t just this “game” (SIM NUMBY)
And there are even the CAVEs who are “citizens against virtually everything.” These types show up in droves at public meetings to oppose bike lanes, intensification, transit, and many of the changes we need to get people out of cars or create much-needed housing, particularly of the affordable kind. They are particularly powerful in California.
NIMBY Bingo has been around for years, but Steve Nass and Owen Weeks, advertising copywriters in Brooklyn, now bring us SIM NIMBY—a play on SIM City—with 54 commonly heard NIMBY quotes. (Turn down your sound before you try it.)
Unlike SIM City, you can’t actually build anything, ever. You click and click and every time, you get the same popup message: “ERROR. CAN’T BUILD IN NIMBYVILLE.” You’ll also receive a hilarious quote such as, “Housing is a human right! Just why does it have to be here?”
And what REALLY drives Lloyd nuts (and people like him):
We talk about green building and many cities have developed greener building codes, but the single biggest factor in the carbon footprint of our cities isn’t the amount of insulation in our walls—it’s the zoning. it rarely gets changed because … you CAN’T BUILD IN NIMBYVILLE.
People like Lloyd don’t like it that “uneducated and uncaring” (and unwoke) people don’t want to change. They seem to “like things the way things are”. Like the reaction that local folks are having when developers want to turn their towns upside down and are using the tools that NH Gov. Chris Sununu game them in trying to do what the Obama HHS was doing – overriding local control and zoning that locals like to make NH turn into NY via workforce housing and other such “changes”. So like Baby Huey, Lloyd isn’t happy with his “opposition”. He quotes a report and makes it clear he doesn’t like that “others get in their way”:
The pro-density nonprofit California YIMBY recently covered a study about how NIMBYs and these ridiculous statements actually do make a difference. They wrote: “Comments made at public hearings do matter, but tend to be made by unrepresentative voices, resulting in planning outcomes that entrench elite preferences.”
The people making comments are generally whiter, an average of 21 years older than the median resident. California NIMBY concludes that “the findings suggest that policymakers and planners should closely examine the role of the public hearing in planning.”
Handy NIMBY bingo card. pic.twitter.com/JRKjirn56g
— Martyn Schmoll (@martynschmoll) April 12, 2019
Well, you can see the attitude. GraniteGrok fought the Agenda 21 back 10 or so years ago. Same condescension then as it is now. I bring it up now because Lloyd, 4 months later, showed it when the first commenter (with whom I cross swords a lot of times) left a retort (emphasis mine):
jim heameach: This article sets a new bar in its contempt for and mockery of local democratic control. This is a good example of why many people see environmentalists as wealthy elites who’s preferences ride roughshod over the democratic wishes of the local people. And it does not escape notice that once again “professional environmentalists” are doing the bidding of wealthy developers in fighting against local democratic control ( you know the people you mock with terms like BANANA, NIMBY).
We’ve spent a bit of time a decade fighting the snootiness of the professional planners towards we who settled in our towns BECAUSE of the “look and feel” of those towns. Enamored of these professions know-betters, we weren’t – so I guess that’s why I’ve held onto this post since September.
Jim is right – the Elite Enviros against the Normal folks that make up the bulk of the town. Lloyd’s simple answer said a LOT even if it was just three words long:
Thank you, Jim
I didn’t like that answer BECAUSE I took it to be condescending, so I left this. REALLY – “Unrepresentative voices”(quoting what Lloyd quoted):
“Comments made at public hearings do matter, but tend to be made by unrepresentative voices, resulting in planning outcomes that entrench elite preferences.”
We have these “highly educated and credentialed” planners here in mostly rural NH that act like every little hamlet be zoned like cities. They get upset when folks tell these planners to buzz off as they (the residents) LIKE the character and the “look and feel” of their town and that the planners come SECOND to actual residents.
>> preferences ride roughshod over the democratic wishes of the local people.
The planners still have yet to learn that while suggestions are fine, trying to ram them threw over the complaints of the residents WHO PAY THEIR SALARIES is not earning them “warm fuzzies“.
The problem, like everything at Treehugger, is that there is little empathy of “not them”. They really do expect folks like us to just roll over and accept them and their ideas as just being better than you and yours. It’s “Utopia by Slices” only they are the only ones with the knives making the slices.
Democratic process – I may not always like the results but voting, especially here in NH, on town stuff is the stuff of legends and tradition. WE get to decide and frankly, annoying people “not from heah” that want to change “heah” like they had it “back theah” need to be loaded into the U-Haul and helped to go BACK to “theah”. And folks like Lloyd and the professional planners should realize that they are only a few voices that are no better than the rest of us.
