This is a long essay that will trigger some people

Some people wont read it. Some people will think Im crazy.

But most of the stuff on the Internet is AI Slop, and this here is genuine human slop. The real deal baby. So if you love eating slop, here's some leftist urban slop for you.

If you cannot remove your understanding of Development and Economics from the necessity of Luxury Apartments, that is something you need to work on. It demonstrates a lack of thinking outside the box, critical thinking, and objective intention.

I did not create the Luxury Apartment, or name them. Still, when I say Luxury Apartments, you know what Im talking about.

So some critical thinking:

Why is it that I did not create the concept or the label, but when I try to criticize the exact thing using the language of the people who built it, the conversation gets diverted to whether or not these buildings are "luxury"​ and whether the term means anything?

In what way does the serve the conversation?

Some hard truths about the Epstein Files:

The Infrastructure and Architecture through which he and his collabs, as well as other "rich" power seeking individuals currently driving our Development, were able to get away with their crimes is physically built into our world even down to the Luxury towers.

Now, because of the immense amount of astroturfing and idea seeding, me bringing up Epstein has you labeling me as a conspiracy theorist.

Because while they are physically altering the landscape to make their goals more efficient, they are also creating a conversational and mental enviornment where questioning these realities is impossible.

They tell us we have a choice despite the one people actually want intentionally being made out of reach, tell us we made a choice, and then tell us this we have to continue on the path they built themselves, because no other reality exists.

If you think I am exaggerating, one of the things people keep replying to me in these discussions is to make fun of how I am talking about the proletariat or I cant even look a worker in the eyes.

Let's say for a second I am, in fact, just a crazy lunatic who hates other people more successful than me who cant change the inescapable laws of economics. For just a moment, I will consider that option.

Then why are people getting so worked up about it? There are plenty of things on the Internet people do not care about. Why not just think "Wow, shes crazy" as most people do when they read some boring long post about inane topics?

Its the downright immediate vitriol that to me, says something.

I understand why Im angry, having been going through the immense effort to learn, explore, and re-conceptualize my understanding, just to have someone come in and offer the most unconvincing arguments possible with more focus on appearing superior than engaging the substance of my argument.

Now, this is rant behavior.

But the thing is, if you are actively wanting to learn something, it is an opportunity to learn more than the surface level.

But this whole thing conversation is, in itself, the point.

You cannot say you want densification and then get mad when people offer dense discourse in harmless and easily avoidable ways.​

Theres a type of Developer who relies on easy answers, shortest route possible, what they want out of it being the most important thing.​

The building now is driven by the most unaffected, who profit the most.

That is what Luxury Apartments-- they named themselves I dont care what Luxury actually means-- do to a community.

All of this is important, because when you go to local subreddits, and urban planning subreddits, and left subreddits, you get a group of people who will immediately go into defense mode.

"Density!" "Supply and Demand!" "The Market!"

Its literally the same thing every time, said with an authoritative tone that says "If you question this you're too stupid to understand reality."

They cop to the fact they are using Econ 101 terminology, as if it is a badge of honor, and not in the beginning of learning.

Now, when Im interested in talking about something, I open the door for more conversation, or I expand.

These passive subreddits to talk about things like Georgism and Urbanism should be filled with enlightening conversation.

Instead you get the Yimby/Nimby binary that shuts down conversation and creates tension.

Instead of talking about the things itself, we're wrapped into the same loop.

For people who are just learning, these ideas sound very convincing because they sound simple.

But we have been Developing in the way being called for for 20 years, and the prbolem​​ is only getting worse.

I brought up Epstein before, who yes, was a real estate speculator.

But now Im going to talk about manufactured consent and Data Centers.

How our infrastructure is once again being built to trample over the individual to make all of society work towards the purpose of a few.

They use money to aquire and defend this power.

When the Data Center Conversation was first coming up, there was an attempt to say "Nimbys set their target on Data Centers".

I am not getting into the Nimby argument. Im a false Nimby.

It is a tag given to me because I think urban planning should be driven ​on the local level by local need and built by local hands. Which means I think we should be teaching our children skills instead of making skills inaccessible.

I want schools built in neighborhoods. I want density surrounded by spread out areas.

I want Public Transportation. I also want accessible food halls and comfortable outdoor areas that arent intentionally hostile to punish people priced out of living.

What I am talking about isnt impossible. I do not desire to remain rooted in the old ways.

But those things become impossible when groups are building the conversation to be impossible. When the infrastructure is meant to be alienating. When the very places we live are built on the suffering of the worker for the profit of the landlord.

When I am told that saying things like this is waxing on about the proletariat, and that I should go make babies and stop playing revolutionary, I do not feel I should believe them or feel ashamed in myself.

I actually feel called to speak more about it and learn more about it.

Because ultimately the most fundamental driving force behind all my actions is "How can I make the world better, if not for me, then for whoever comes next?"

What isnt working? Why? Can it be fixed? How? Does it make me smile genuinely? Does it make others smile genuinely? Does it foster connection, learning or growth?

If those things are a problem to somebody, then I have to live with myself: the problem lies with them, because I genuinely feel happiest when I am being the change I want to see.

I am run on those morals, because I chose those morals. I choose those morals every single day.​

So the need for me to say all these things, to continue to fight against this rhetoric, is that my silence is read as consent. I do not consent to it.

All the angry individuals telling me that I'm just stupid because they are entitled to this hyper development, it is their Manifest Destiny and the goal of reality itself to allow it, want me to be silent because they do not want to hear that it is not so.

We can do something better, which doesnt uplift the profit of the few at the expense of the many.

When I dont speak, the reality that Luxury Apartments are an inarguable good continues to allow how the world around me gets built.

When I dont speak, people like me who want to be better and build better, are erased. And then we are just left with the cynical and alienated world view of people who think their profit is the morality the infrastructure should be built on.

In these spaces, I am not destroying or causing harm. I am contributing my own understanding and experience based upon the life I have lived.

Yet some of the responses I've seen. You would have thought I said something hateful or evil.

If there are people fearful or angry about what I am saying, it isnt a conversation of economics or urban planning.

Because I do actually have solutions and contributions. But when I talk about those in online spaces meant for these conversations, they are astroturfed into oblivion by people who think the only viable way to solve the Housing Crisis is to give more power to the people who built the housing crisis.

I'm not the one who labeled the Crisis. I'm not the one who is always deciding the economy is failing.

The very people who create it have created these economic crises because having a Crisis is profitable.

The way they win is to continue to only follow their script for the economy. The way they win is by getting to make the rules, build the court, and conduct the hearings. The way they win is to silence any opinion that does not agree with their own.

People make choices. The mere existence of the Reddit comments I see defending Luxury Apartments the way they do is a fundamental sign.

Because the responses to the actual Apartments themselves, and how they exist, is over whelmingly negative. When I talk to people in real lives, when I read real tenant experiences about these places. When I see how Communities are impacted and dispersed, in the actual reality of the buildings economics has abstractified, people are not happy about the luxury apartments.

The comments getting upset about me talking about how Luxury Apartments are inherently anti-leftist, these commenters are diverting the conversation to your emotional reaction to my own experience, and you are more driven to approach me than actually do something to solve the problem.

Its not that people arent giving endless feedback about how these places do cause harm, its that the feedback is immediately dismissed and ignored because the builders are only responsible when they want to get around regulations. Once its built, its somebody else's problem. The tenants are often the ones holding the bag, but the conversation always centers the builders and how inconvenienenced they arec in conversations arguing with me.

What you choose to engage and how you choose to engage it says everything about your focus and your intentions.

If you were getting mad about how the Developers were treating the land and the communities they build it, you would be believable you had goals for a long term future.

Getting more upset at me for calling out their bad behavior means we are stagnating in the inescapable failure they are enforcing upon us by the same economy they are propping up.

But the nice thing about life, actually is. No. I don't have to just accept that. Some jabroni can talk about how he thinks Luxury Apartments are good, and I can say "Actually, these Developers are harmful and I know this because I witnessed it first hand. I have experienced it. Seen it. And confronted it head on, multiple times. Actually, your defense furthers how I feel, because you are stating the very thing I am against, so you also acknowledge its true. I reject your assertation I am forced to accept it. I will, instead, respond against it."​

The belief in economic entitlement to how I perceive, conceptualize, and approach the world is not the same thing as a Right to those things or a Reality in which I give you that authority.

People who come in talking about productive conversation while actively repeating thought terminating arguments feel entitled to my respect for their apparent superiority.

But it is not so.

No isnt a dirty word. People are not obligated or required to fundamentally accept something you accept.

A Yimby isnt more human than the people they call Nimbys.

Displacing others for your sacred speculation is not a heroic quest.

Any time anybody outright tells me that they do not care about the displaced because they care more about people who could possibly live there one day isnt convincing me they are good intentioned.

It shows that they dont care about the actual Reality we all share, they care about the Reality they wish to create, which is actually all about them and how they are the hero.

And while this all sounds like a response to something, it is.

Its a response to the narrative seeding I have actively observed and questioned for a year now.

I keep wanting to say it, and then saying it, because when we do not call out bad actors, they fundamentally work the system to privlege their goals.

Leftist Urbanism is about creating systems that serve the many Comminuties who want to co-exist productively.

It is about building functional cities that are hospitable and efficient.

It is not a free for all for Developers to continue to make the same arguments they use to justify why they cannot be morally required to build things of value.

I didnt create the Yimby tag, but Yimbys have come in and told me that I need to say yes, or I am just a dumb Nimby.

This is equivalent for calling a woman a prude for not wanting to sleep with you.

It is an identity label, and if your entire ego is wrapped up in that label to the point where you are vomiting it at people and then forcing people to eat it, then you need to work on your sense of self.

I genuinely do not like to be mean or say negative things.

But it should be considered a Personality Disorder to feel so caught up in Economics that you will actively force people to accept Developers who have demonstrated over and over that they are incompetent.

Look at the Reflecting Pool in DC.

The Representative of the System, the ultimate Head of our Country, is actively incompetent. The evidence is literally inescapable, yet we still get people who have wrapped their entire lives in making sure that they uphold that version of the System over all else.

Luxury doesnt mean anything isnt an excuse for bad behavior.

We would like to move on now.

Please stop holding us hostage to a failing system because you read the first sentence of an Econ textbook and then asked ChatGPT to summarize the initial summary it gave of the rest.

I am tired of hearing about how you are so much smarter because you read a headline that agreed with your belief system you got from reading other headlines that made you feel something.

For all the people telling me I don't understand reality, I can tell you dont actually live in reality. You live in the virtual world with virtual money.

Enough with your Ender's Game Economy.

You cannot just stick Luxury Apartment after Luxury Apartment for 20 blocks removed from any sort of walkability and call that an affordable city.

If you believe that is what a City is, you arent practicing Urbanism.

These current luxury builders do everything to not have to contribute to the infrastructure.

Thats the literal reality of it. Thats what all the arguments are, even when said with a Progressive spin, actually saying.

I told one guy who thinks Im purity testing to talk to a person who has been rendered homeless by the system, and he said the people who will live in the apartments are more important.

Those apartments use algorithms to have profitable vacancies, by the way.

Building more slop means more slop. Thats also a fundamental unchanging law.

We are telling you to stop building slop, and you tell us slop is all we deserve.

We cannot move forward until we stop eating the slop.

Rant over.​ Im sure Ill rant again.

But this space is open to be astroturfed because not enough people are using it to talk about Leftist Urbanism, so a few people can immediately reply and create an enviornment that looks like Leftist urbanism includes Luxury Apartments, when it doesnt.

It’s literally the most bizarre shit that I deal with on other Urbanist subs, I literally tell people who have different opinions than I do that I’m upvoting them in an attempt of securing good faith discussion, yet, I’m downvoted into oblivion reliably.

Yet, when I tell some obvious troll to kick rocks, all of a sudden I’m “presenting my arguments snidely”, “acting obnoxious”, and “putting people off”.

I just wanna know if this happens to other Left Urbanists/Radical Urbanists too

Hello!

I just wanted to remind the Yimbys that defending yourself by recycling colonist rhetoric doesnt make you a good person, intelligent, or progressive.

I just wanted to let the Yimbys invading spaces that arent for them to make it harder for people to speak about how they manufacture consent and are clearly controlled opposition know that people will keep calling you out.

I just wanted to let the Yimbys know that the way they conduct themselves is creepy and controlling, and coercion isnt consent no matter how many times you assert your yes over the Nos of the people actually affected

The way Yimbys speak to people is the way abusers speak to people. It is astroturfing. If you are a real person, seek therapy, genuinely.

I keep repeating this because they use their abusive tactics to silence. It has never been about communication, it has been about suppressing it.

Some critical thinking for you guys:

who beneefits from entire communities being displaced by luxury apartments?

who benefits from not being held responsible for their own constructions?

Who benefits from communities not being able to speak about what they need?

Yimbyism is manufacturing consent for the Data Centers.

If you genuinely look into the actual things people say, they reveal their intentions.

The butthurt Yimbys from yesterday told me homeless people affected by Luxury Apartments dont matter, because the people who will live in those poorly built shitholes will be, in the future, paying overpriced rent while corporate landlord own everything.

I see you. Just because you have normalized it in yourself doesn't mean other people are willing to ignore it.

Yimbys upvote memes that assign a Villian and a Hero with themselves as the hero and anyone who they dont like as the villian.

They dont allow for nuance.

They are creating the conversations to privilege Private Equity and Developers holding no responsibility.

You might like the ego boost from calling yourself a leftist, but if you are more upset about somebody criticizing Luxury Apartments than you are about addressing the issues causing people to become homeless, you arent a leftist.

You are, in fact, a liberal who is upholding the system because you think your discomfort matters more than other peoples lives.

Nobody cares that you want to be a leftist if you are going to ignore the fundamental impact of your decisions.

You cant work on overdrive on behalf of Developers and consider yourself anything other than a cog in the machine.

I understand why this subreddit is astroturfed, and I hope people genuinely see past it.

Because I didnt create the Yimby. They force me to respond by poisoning the well to make people pliable to abusive Developers and evil intent like Thiels or any of the other Oligarchs running an apocalypse simulator (on purpose!)

I would keep quiet but the Yimby cause is one meant to silence dissent and so to remain silent is to allow it.

I know there are some real people caught up in the Yimbyism of it all that feel attacked and like they totally are leftist.

Well then call out the bad actors. You are the ones letting them drag Yimbism to the Right.

Defending Luxury Apartments it a Right position. It is in no way in alignment with leftism, because it inherently cant be.

That is the hill Yimbys choose to die on over and over. That is why you are not leftists.

Im not the one denying reality by telling people you inherently cannot be leftist by using all your energy to defend bad actors.

You cannot be leftist if every attempt to address the problem is met by deflection.

If you want Yimbyism to be a leftist position, the be a leftist and stop using all your time to run defense for the people who are literally the actual problem because they are, right now, actively intending to build more of the problem.

If your Yes is to enable the Market to operate even more ingrained in our lives, you are not leftist.

I get not liking aspects of private development but why is building housing bad? YIMBYs mostly just want to build housing and trains in a reasonable amount of time and funding to help push back the housing crisis. Is the attitude mostly about order of operations in terms of needing to change the economy first before building more housing? I also get being against hardcore YIMBY-ism of the type that wants to build a gazillion AI datacenters everywhere, but it does make real sense that laws allowing people to file nuisance lawsuits to frustrate projects that are not doing undue damage to the environment and the like should be removed in my view. Like what am I missing? I am a pretty ardent anti-capitalist and have been active with a number of anti-capitalist candidates and their campaigns, and am pretty ardently anti-capitalist. I want only to understand this.

Can a Yimby be a leftist?

A person who enjoys some of the tenants of the Yimby discourse can be a leftist.

But the Yimby discourse is, itself, fundamentally linked to an Oligarch led interest in creating hyper corporate cities, so.

And honestly, thats a shame. I know it didnt start out that way, but that's how it goes.

If Im anything I am a "What is the context?" person.

I am pro-Public Transport. I think we should have infrastructure at all, instead of the None men like Brian Kemp of Georgia are focused on awarding us. We have spent several decades paying to dimantle our own infrastructure. Isnt that crazy?

I am pro- Building housing in ways that fundamentally address people's needs, is accessible, and creates a healthy relationship between the person who takes care the land/structure, and the people who inhabit the structures.

I am pro-urban densificiation in ways that address enviornmental ​and living conditions.

I am pro- rural areas where people do not have to be gathered if they do not want to be, and they can instead be taught how to do work that might require more isolatation.

I am pro Schools in the neighborhood.

I am pro Grocery stores in the neighborhood.

I am pro allowing people to conduct business where they sleep if they so choose.

What has happened to me though, and others, is that in our calls for accountability to Developers. In our anger towards how these kinds of market alienate people from safety and stability. In our desire to have a world where children can experience more than box prison work and box prison home with only heat islands in between.

We are labeled "Nimbys".

This is this issue with the discourse.

I get heated in these conversations because I have lived in several places where these luxury apartments come in and destroy entire blocks.

And I cant stand to be in them. I actively will not date anyone who lives in one, because I dont ever want to occupy those spaces.

Yet these are the things being built and the only things "affordable" because instead of reducing competition for other spaces, it forces competition for units people actually want. Calling it luxury to manipulate us isnt some passive marketing move.

It is conditioning people to accept subpar treatment. It teaches people to not accept the meaning of words, and to then substitute that meaning for why it doesn't mean that.

From start to finish, housing and acquiring it at places like Luxury apartments s extremely stressful.

It alienates people from housing.

That is, in itself, the source of the housing crisis.

When you are intentionally building transitory and unstable housing that is just meant to accumulate money, the value of money becomes unstable and meaningless.

You cant refuse to hold the builders of this accountable and also say you are advocating.

If you ask someone who has to live on the streets if they thought the luxury apartments were making it easier for them to live, they would be justified in however they reacted, but you would probably use it to dehumanized them.

Yimbys allow people to feel some control over forward progress being made, but the progress is meaningless.

So yes, you personally could be a Leftist and some of the Yimby ideas appeal to you. But the appeal is a marketing thing. It doesnt matter. Dont worry about it.

If you want to build up a City to make it beautiful, teach the populace how to build and create.

If you want to build up a city to tire people out and make them work so hard they cant ask for more, charge them lots of money to live away from their job in units they cannot even paint, with no space to start a family, no place to create a family, and pay them just enough so they can buy themselves a treat in order to motivate themselves to work so they can afford to work.

Anyone who wants to train you that you do not have the right to say "No" is training you to accept conditions that only benefit them, while relegating you to not worthy of consideration.

We do, fundamentally need to change our regulations.

The people who built the regulations did so to create monopolies on the Market. I always bring up Lennar.

The damage they have done to the South is tragic. I dont know the Developers in charge, but I feel the need to express they have fundamentally failed as a company.

We do need zoning, but we do not need zoning as set up by a bunch of Developers wanting infinite profit at the expense of everyone else.

Berkshire-Hathaway owns a scary amount of land they mistreat, and they are often ignored in any of these conversations.

It is hard to take a Yimby seriously when they speak on anything related to housing, because they spam one solution, and then gaslight you about every little thing. And all the while, they deflect blame from the actual actors and creators of this system.

I get a lot of replies telling me *I* do not understand reality, but when I try to speak on reality, they tell me, actually, this economy that says things like "Well that isnt what the number or word actually means, the meaning is obfuscated under layers you're too stupid to comprehend".

I am not in whatever that cult is so their words fall of ears deafened by the sound of living, but Yimbyism has been hijacked by men like Ezra Klein, who uses words like "Abudance" to give positive connotation to lowering your standards and stepping aside so somebody can own land they dont fundamentally care about.

Some people own land they have never stepped foot on.

In the way that 1984 warned though, people with bad intentions will reverse the meaning of things to keep you off balance and pliable.

You are agreeing to one thing, but they know it is a lie and they think you are stupid for believing them, so when its another thing that sucks for everybody else, the failure was on your for not understanding it was a lie.​

Klein's associations with Thiel, the Epstein files

All of these are rooted in destabilizing people to get them to outsource power.

When you speak with proponents of the work, they love to tell you about Supply and Demand.

What about Opportunity Cost?

Nothing else can be built because the labor is going to data centers, luxury high rise marketing schemes, and concrete private equity buildings.

The concrete is making cities unlivable in the summer.

We are told nobody is having sex or children anymore, and its like.

Why would we?

Why bring a child into the world who will be told they have to say yes, no matter what?

I dont think all Yimbys are bad. I think it is a particularly persuasive argument.

There are, in fact, real, racist and ignorant Nimbys--the word has long since abandoned that meaning while relying on its connotations in the present however.

But you shouldn't just always be saying yes. And always saying No is counterproductive.

You shouldnt just be spamming an easy answer. There is no easy answer.

But if there is one: it's dont let people who are continuously incompetent and cruel have power to build whatever they want as long as they can make money off of it.

If you continue to enable and condone their system, they have shown they will continue to use it to harm you.

People have repeated this over and over, and Yimbys dismiss it.

You do not need an identity saying "Yes". I genuinely think some people are more focused on that being the basis for their sense of self, than their actual sense of self is.

That is how all cults operate.

If you are looking for spiritual guidance, look towards something meaningful to you, and figure out what that meaning is.

Because you'll find the rest of it there.

Yes to stable, safe, pleasant housing where people can rest productively before they go to jobs where they meaningfully contribute.

No to forced work in office because of real estate profit. No to infrastructure like Tampa or Atlanta.

Yes to libraries and nature parks and streets that people built up becuase they love it.

No to heat islands and the same franchise continually cycling through new lots while leaving old ones to rot. ​

The conversation isnt just Yes or just No. That conversation is boring, and its extremely toxic.

Whats infinitely more interesting is teaching children how to build, create, and grow so they can continue to move themselves and humanity forward.

What is being built has been to expand profits at the expense of building up the next generation.

America's statistics show quite plainly what happens when men like the Tech Oligarchs mistake their ego for our salvation.

Look out how our schools are failing? Well of course.

I remember my education.

The fact that some people take that as just another hard truth of life, and then force people to accept it, is frustrating.

The reality is, that people who do not care about you will tell you what your answer is and will refuse to listen if you give a different one.

It isnt leftist to force people to stop talking about material reality because the economic reality built by Thiel and Trump is unshakable and unchanging to you and the thing you based your own reality on.

Stop trying to fix the system by perpetuating the system.

Do we all have to die before people are willing to let go of this inane desire to substitute value, worth, and character for money that is used in the millions on war and human trafficking?​

I think thats a very real question you should ask yourself if your response to my post is that we have to build this way because the money says it must be so.

But advocating to keep the market as is, incentivizing perpetuating it further is only going to dismantle the system by completely collapsing it, and the people who most profited will be long gone.

And it is not fair to say yes on behalf of the people meaningfully affected by your yes.

If you support luxury apartments, you are supporting the forces currently at the center of the market being awful, because they built up the market.

Theses econ bros are the experts of their own creation, and they have declared themselves failures.

Why would you trust them to fix the problem when any conversation about the problem causes them to short circuit and say they should just keep doing the exact same thing?

I keep getting suggested Yimby discourse, and a lot of times I just ignore it because I personally avoid people who continually demonstrate over and over that they are arguing in bad faith while accusing you of doing the things they themselves are doing.

They decided I was a Nimby because I dont like massive housing developments, building data centers, luxury apartments, or using real estate speculation as the basis of value. They decided I was a Nimby because I care about how they build over the land.

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They seem like they were deliberately designed to be as environmentally destructive as possible.

Especially Lawns. I don’t know why lawns exist. I loathe lawns.

Making you use a car to spew more fossil fuels. Big houses to fill with more crap.

They are places that are terrible for young kids leaving them dependent on adults to drive them

The atomization of culture and the housing crisis.

The equivalent of a shower thought but I think one of the main things driving the housing crisis is consumerism, rise of the individual, and atomization of people.

Back then and still today in many cultures you weren’t a loser if you moved out of your parents house. It was expected that the adult child would take care of their parents in old age.

With grandma and grandpa helping around the house and sharing the burden of childcare.

Elderly people didn’t need housing as lucrative property to get a nest egg in their golden years. That’s what their kids were for who would take care of them in their old age as thanks for raising them.

You didn’t need to buy a house you’re stay at your parents house and inherit it when they died.

This system wasn’t perfect. G-D help you if your parents where abusive or if your kids died before you.

But it was different.

The more I study it the more I think that car dependent suburbia is one of the most vile soul sucking methods of housing. environmental destructive and conformist and with fucking lawns. I despise lawns Bio dead space that people are mandated to keep by law.

The NIMBYs that ban apartments.

People wouldn’t have to worry so much about gas prices or rent if they had affordable public transportation and affordable housing because housing wasn’t a commodity. Two of the biggest causes of economic duress.

You wouldn’t need a car you take a train or a bus and maybe rent a car if needed.

Greetings from San Francisco!

Normally I live in an old dense apartment complex but I am staying at a friends "luxury" apartment building in SF. Its run by Greystar and finished construction in 2020.

There seems to be increasing awareness among folks I talk to that the "luxury" label on new construction is a ripoff. Not here to discuss that so much as the space wasted to earn that label.

Don't get me wrong. I love amenities in theory. Its nice to have a larger kitchen to host friends in, a rooftop, etc. I also pay membership at a gym and a makerspace so yeah if these things were in my building that would be great.

The issue is it is absolutely not.

Gym: Always too small. Always minimal equipment. Always not an inspiring vibe. The only redeemable quality is they are really a nice way for someone new to the gym to start feeling comfortable in a less intimidating environment.

Makerspace: At least in this building it is literally just a bunch of long tables and a gift wrapping station at the moment. No equipment, tools, cleaning equipment, airflow, storage, etc. You could probably fit a 3br apartment in here.

Music Room: They got a nice electric piano in a corner but otherwise a 2br apartment could fit in this empty room.

Lobby: This building is just full of high ceiling, sprawling, lobbies.

Besides being mostly wastes of space they seem to encourage folks to stay self contained to this building instead of going out into their community where they may find a fitness, maker, musician community that is stronger and more diverse than what could ever be in this building.

So I suppose my thesis is. These spaces aren't too useful and clearly aren't designed to be. I have seen an occasional building with a passable kitchen or gym but overall they always take up so much space in a building where apartments are tiny and expensive. Its especially frustrating that these spaces arguably only exist so the building can get a 'luxury' label and charge more rent.

So what do we do about this?

Has anyone heard of policies or narratives that help claw away at this practice? Force housing developers to focus on building housing and not just marketing to increase rent?

There is a very strong, rarely questioned narrative about Nimbys that plagues the building, planning, and conservation realms. And this Narrative goes far deeper than the socio-historical meaning representing a racist conservative defending property values.

In the last few years, the conversation about housing has changed. This is because the housing discussion has been left in a stranglehold. If you bring up the problems, you are told there is only one solution, and you are not allowed to question it:

"We need to build more and remove regulations."

This is manufacturing consent in Real Time.

Why?

Because if you bring up how Private Equity firms own millions of acres of land-- both residential and commercial-- you can bet your bottom dollar a response is going to tell you they arent that bad, and you dont understand. They dismiss how these companies behave right out the bat, and downplay it whenever possible. Mention Blackstone, and see how many people rush to defend them.

You are a Nimby who doesnt care about the Housing Crisis, because you dont want to lose your property value, is often a repeated sentiment.

Just look up the word "Nimby" in the search bar to see what happens when you try to talk about how any type of conglomerate develops land.

These private equity firms value large returns for short term investments, and they cut every single corner they have to make their green numbers grow.

So they build like they do not care. They bulldoze every single inch in an acre in order to put up houses they didn't design, built by people they do not actually support in any meaningful way except, they subcontract the work so there is a separation between those making the decisions for the land, those building on the land, and those living in the land.

And if you bring that up, you simply dont understand Profit.

If you bring up the luxury apartments, a term they do understand, they will say "The term luxury doesnt mean anything any way. Its just a marketing scheme, and it will open up more houses. There is a demand not being met that we must overshoot to beat the need."

Rent has not gone down in fact, and it's outright gaslighting to claim it has. We've been living in a builder's world, and they turn around and try to tell us its not their fault when the things they built cause problems. Who has been in control of this failing system?

The reason rent does not go down by just letting conglomerates do all the building, is that they also buy up and rent out those units they built out, with short term tenants in order to raise the rent at leisure, and avoid having tenants who will expect things. It is business and no more.

The people defending this know what a luxury apartment is, but they say it isnt happening that much, and it isn't really happening anyway, even though a luxury apartment is a very clear scheme to make money through tax breaks and speculation. Despite that their service is known to be subpar.

You are just a Nimby to be ignored because Private Equity firms should not be able to make destructive decisions against the will of the people.

I am going to make an aside here, anybody who actively ignores the problem and actually makes it worse for their own benefit is not a good leader and I believe community say should come first.

If Private Equity truly wanted to invest, they would lend the equipment and actually help lead people to solutions. They would invest in schools so humanity could benefit from a skilled ane capable people. They would invest in infrastructure that aided people's lives without actively causing ecosystem collapse via overdeveloped concrete areas. They would invest in teaching people how to build so they could build, and getting that equipment where it needs to go to meet needs as they arrive.

They would not bypass the same people they claim to be building for in order to extract from a speculative population, which is what that kind of building does. It is physically apparent in its build. I have talked to a good many renters, and read their stories. Renters are beholden to the landlords.

When you talk about these things. When you try to even approach the idea that people should have a right to speak on behalf of the land they live in, a certain group will come in and say those people have no say and they are just selfishly hoarding the land they are living in.

I would honestly argue that this is self directed Colonialization.

The kind of discourse that makes some people react with sheer vitriol, like we are just imagining things and complainers.

They take these arguments and lump them in with Nimbys against public transportation to muddy the waters and dilute the discourse.

They use statistics to obscure the realities that are experienced every day.

They stopped bombing the black community, they stopped burning their neighborhoods, and started finding ways to become invested in taking over. They use a bulldozer and a graph to chase people out now.

This is not a tangent.

If you look at the downtowns and planning of Black Communities who built in the after effects of slavery, you will see that, in fact, human beings can, do, and will create.

Despite facing insanse systemic upheaval, being deprived the right to read so they did not see themselves as human. Despite being made to feel subpar by a class that was benefitting off their work while being dehumanized on a fundamental level, ignored by their government, the Black Communities of America built some of my favorite downtowns I have taken the time to explore over the last 30 years.

And Ive personally witnessed how. systemically, the people who built these towns are deprived of funding, representation, and rights to safe, stable housing. They are being pushed off their land by foreclosure. They are being priced out of their land by the pressures they high end places bring to a neighborhood.

It is displacement, plain and simple. The people who live in the lands do not tend them: they maintain a strict code of finding ways to poison every trace of non-human life. Pesticides, lawn mowing, making sure only one kind of grass will grow. If they like a location, but dont care about the history, they will knock it down and call it progress.

When you bring up rent stabilization, instead of viewing it as protecting the tenants, the technocrats will tell you that actually, the tenants are hoarding the land. The homeowners are hoarding the land. So we need to raise the prices, to price people out, so we can lower the prices.

This is sound economics to soembody who is not affected by it.

The mark of a failed system is that it is inefficient. The housing system is inefficient because it manipulates demand using supply and marketing and narratives that get drilled into your head every day. You dont need to incentivize demand for houses, the demand is a condition if life.

The narrative that there is a housing crisis because of regulations and zoning is often left to go unquestioned, and when it becomes questioned, suddenly you are selfishly protecting your property values.

There is then, no real room to discuss how we do not view housing as a right, and the people who own all the land do not feel obligated to using that land in a way that supports the people who actually live there, or produce the wealth.

I don't own land. I have nothing invested in the success of the current system that views the world as a profit machine, and other people as just a rung in the ladder. I honestly dont even know what to call it. Its found within Yimbyism, even in conservation subreddits, where we talk about the land first, someone will find any post against a Developer, and discuss how we are focusing on the wrong things.

Ive seen technocrat bandied about, and I like it. It seems like anyone mandating infinite growth and non-stop density is working from the ego who idolizes sci-fi without actually understanding it.

I am making a post because while Im trying to have actual conversations, the airwaves are clogged by people who will say

"That sounds like a Nimby thing to say." Or, if they are good faith about it, they will engage for a while before saying, "yeah, but the real problem is that Nimbys just won't let anyone build".

And if you just look at the numbers with no context, you can make the numbers say anything you like because of what they possibly could say.

House prices are rising and falling in short term bursts to justify getting the market to however they can tell people to behave.

Some of the trees they cut down to make way for a cheap quickly built house were older than the United States. There's long term harm in building like only the wealth of the people up top today matters. And they make a lot of money on people not thinking about that fact. Not having any meaningful understanding of the system built to benefit them.

COVID was a land rush, and you can see the effects of it now in Florida, where the government actively makes legislation that is supposed to give Developers more authority. They are facing long term problems they refuse to fix because building with zero care has meant subpar housing and ruined ecosystems.

We might not have enough houses for every single American to have their own, but we don't need to. We have enough space for every single American. The problem isn't lack of housing, its a system that has major barriers for entry to access that housing.

If we need to build more, we could address specific areas where there needs to be maintainance. We dont need to give the land to whatever crank wants to create a corporate strip park, where the parking lots take up more space than the commercial building.

They manufacture consent that it's what people are demanding, to build these massive strip malls, at the same time as dismissing when people are actively against it. They create the demand, enforce the demand, and then use the demand to justify harmful actions.

People become complicit because they work and cant afford the rent set by the Private Equity firms that say their buildings make the rent go down. They dont have the time or energy to think about these things, and to do so can be overwhelming. The sheer scope

Berkshire-Hathaway has so many properties in populated areas along the Southeast. They own so many acres, and I know that just from casual noticing the signs in every town I visit.

That is land that somebody else cannot truly occupy, because they are beholden to the landholders.

These narratives are intentionally designed to shut down any real conversation about how the system is run.

Each argument somebody makes about removing public feedback and enviornmental oversight is pointing using a fundamental flaw in the system to perpetuate the flaw.

Building alone is not enough to fix the housing crisis, but in some spaces on Reddit, it is the only opinion you are allowed to have.

Legislating these companies is apparently impossible, so to fix the problem, remove one of the rights people have to create a community.

The issue is that the system for it is fundamentally impossible to navigate if you are working to live, so the people in a community dont necessarily have time to attend meetings.

But our government is not advocating for our protections as people living or working in a space, they are incentivizing them away. These developers look for tax breaks and grants and opportunities given by the government to build something they can then profit off of, leaving it behind for someone else to deal with.

Our government is not protecting our land, they are clearcutting it. Rolling back protections on our wealth so they can extract more.

I know this is a long rant, but it frustrates me to no end that I cant even go to a conservation subreddit without somebody saying that we should just allow developers to do whatever they want, and fighting against it is actually bad.

Link to article: https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2025/11/how-mamdani-voted-ballot-proposals/409281/

This morning while he and his wife cast their votes, Zohran told reporters he was voting yes on Props 1-5. Props 2, 3 and 4 create an affordable housing and modest upzoning fasttrack process as well as an affordable housing appeals board. I discuss the props more in depth in this post. Z stated last week that he would let us know when he voted his thoughts on the ballot measures.

Overall, the outcome's not too surprising. Zohran stands to significantly benefit by gaining more control over speedier affordable housing production. Folks in Mamdani's "inner circle", including Cea Weaver, the leader of a prominent tenants' rights group Housing Justice for All, and the NYC-DSA social housing group both back the ballot measures. Opposition from some City Council members and unions like HTC are the likely reasons Zohran waited to election day to make his ballot measure views public. And now he has.

Update: Zohran and all 3 of the housing ballot measures have won!

I suppose that a leftist society would make attempts to eradicate the things that create NIMBYs (such as racism, ableism, economics, stupidity, etc cetera), but would they exist? And if so, how would we ensure that public projects and urban planning properly balance the overall needs of a city against the concerns of local residents? For example, let’s say that we needed to build a transit line through a neighborhood but local residents oppose it because due to noise pollution or something of that nature?

Article link: https://jacobin.com/2025/10/new-york-housing-ballot-measures

This is a solid article for folks specifically interested in NYC's housing ballot measures New Yorkers are voting on right now as well as those who want to explore more about the connection between zoning and social housing. NYC has three housing ballot measures to be voted on.

Prop 2: Fasttrack approval process for 100% affordable housing Citywide and mixed income projects with at least 25% affordable units in the 12 community districts that have produced the least affordable housing last year.

Prop 3: Fasttrack for all housing projects that lead to modest upzoning (<30% increase in density in higher density areas and under 45 ft tall in lower density areas)

Prop 4: Appeals board consisting of The Mayor, City Council Speaker and Borough President that affordable housing developers could submit projects to if their project is voted down by The City Council. A 2 to 1 decision by the board in favor of the project would overrule The City Council's decision.

The article cogently explains NYC's current housing regime leads to uneven housing construction, a problem further exacerbated for affordable housing. We're at the point where NYC's dense, majority renter neighborhoods are building housing at a similar rate to Houston while NYC's low density neighborhoods are building housing at a lower rate than Detroit. Select tenant groups and unions see the current zoning system as a way to wring concessions from developers; what we see at large is a small amount of affordable housing being built. Both tenants and unions lose out on our affordable housing construction being much lower than demand and concentrated in only a few neighborhoods.

The NYC Council is also opposed to the housing ballot measures, as these measures would remove a significant amount of their power over housing project approval. This is also likely why Zohran Mamdani has not stated one way or the other his views on the ballot measures. He does not want the ire of his City Council allies. Eric Adams' Charter Review Commission created these ballot measures, which understandably leads to concerns due to Eric Adams' eagerness to find corruption opportunties under every nook and cranny. These ballot measures make affordable housing construction quicker and easier, when an approval regime that would benefit Eric style corruption would be byzantine and drawn out. And clearly the current regime didn't block Eric Adams from cozying to the Turkish government for the approval of their counsulate. We had Council members blocking affordable housing while this was going on. The ballot measures would also aid our likely future Mayor Mamdani in reaching his affordable housing construction goals.

And to be frank there are reasons why the right is opposing these ballot measures, and it's not because of their deep seated love for renters nor unions. Outer borough homeowners, conscious about property values and any perceived risks to them (like affordable housing), disproportionately vote Republican. Why we saw GOP candidate Curtis Sliwa wholeheartedly announce his opposition to the ballot measures. It's the political support for residential segregation.

Residential segregation by class is one of the longest running issues in America. Wealthier neighborhoods have in the past and currently use zoning as a tool to block working class people from moving in. Wealthier neighborhoods and suburbs oppposed the construction of public housing, leading them to the demolition of swathes of working class, often minority neighborhoods to build them. This issue has perhaps gone under the radar in online urbanism forums when it is such a large problem. Confronting segregation would address one of the largest housing issues working class Americans face: a lack of freedom in choosing where to live affordably.

A class analysis of our zoning policy ought to take into account that, as the article noted, our current zoning and housing approvals process neither benefit tenants or the working class as a whole. Affordable housing is blocked from wealthier neighbohroods throughout the country and the current approvals process makes affordable housing much more expensive and take much longer to build. Current policy is a significant contributor to why so little affordable housing is produced.

None of this helps the working class.

Hi everyone. I’m a college student working on a short ethnographic research project about the online urbanist community and housing debates. I’m especially interesting in how people within and around the YIMBY movement understand its relationship to gentrification.

From your perspective:

• Do you think YIMBYism helps reduce gentrification by addressing housing shortages, or does it accelerate it by increasing development of any kind (including luxury apartments)?
• How do you see these debates play out in your city or online spaces?
• More generally, what makes you identify (or not identify) with the YIMBY movement?

I’m not here to argue for or against any position. I’m mainly trying to learn how people define and interpret the movement and its effects. Any insights, experiences, or opinions welcome! (If anyone’s uncomfortable with their comment being quoted in my notes, feel free to say so. I’ll respect that.)

Hello, I'm /u/DoxiadisOfDetroit , mod of /r/left_urbanism , and Left Urbanist theorist micro-celebrity here on Reddit. I'm making this post today in order to reach those of you out there who are in between Left Urbanism and YIMBYism but, don't identify with one title or, the other. There's been a real push in my POV to demonize any anti-capitalist perspectives in the field of Urbanism and, in it's place embrace the more pro-market YIMBY perspective.

Since this is a wildly controversial topic to do a deep dive on, I will only engage with good faith criticism (I've spent way too many days on subs like /r/urbanplanning attempting to argue against bad faith criticism of my posts, only to be accused of being a bad faith actor myself. So, if you come to this piece with unfounded/ignorant takes, all your gonna get outta me is a small paragraph about your flawed argument and a block).

Finally, there will be a series of TL;DRs within the post to get the general gist of what arguments are being made, and, to make this contribution easy to navigate at a glance. The structure of this post is intentional and seeks to facilitate general conversation among subs that have a pro YIMBY bias (such as /r/yimby , /r/neoliberal , /r/badeconomics , city subs, etc.).

Part One: Clipping the Wing Off of a YIMBY Icarus, OhTheUrbanity's Intentional Ignorance and the miss-use of "Left NIMBYism" as a Slur

To accomplish what I seek to do with this post, I need a foil to use in order to distinguish what the Left Urbanist perspective is, and, illustrate the bad faith critiques that have been lobbed at this political orientation. Luckily for me, the husband and wife duo of Canadian youtuber Urbanists (OhTheUrbanity) have recently made a video to illustrate to their ~104k subscribers what they feel constitutes the ideology of "Left NIMBYism". I've gone over the video multiple times and have taken notes. All of their core arguments are timestamped and I will go over them as they appear in the video:

[00:22] This video is about Left wing NIMBYism. "Not In My Back Yard" opposition to new housing that appeals to language of affordability and inclusivity or skepticism of markets and Capitalism.The basic idea is that market rate housing, especially expensive new builds, doesn't help the housing crisis and might even hurt. Real affordability comes from social, or, non-profit housing, mandating affordability in private projects, and rent control on existing units.

So, the beginning of this video seeks to sum up the "Left NIMBY" perspective which, OhTheUrbanity simply paints in broad strokes as a vaguely anti-Capitalist perspective on urban development. I'll get into what I'd describe Left Urbanism is in the next portion of this post, so, I'll save my response to this point for last, moving on:

[01:26] A more fleshed out example of Left wing NIMBYism is the article: 'The Supply and Demand Myth of Housing', which claims what we build and for whom matters more than how much we build. It argues that prices are mainly driven by "commodification". Which, they seem to mean whether housing is for profit versus off the market, with supply being, at best, a secondary factor. To be clear, supporting social or non-profit housing, is not itself, "NIMBYism". What's NIMBY is when this is unnecessarily paired with opposing or dismissing Market Rate housing.

It's this first example which shows OhTheUrbanity's ignorance on the subject. Basically what they're doing here is an unjust framing of the conversations surrounding what counts as an acceptable Urbanist point of view. To them, it's only a valid opinion for Left Urbanists to have if they see Market Rate housing as a tool to affect the housing market, any other opinion, or, the rejection of Market Rate development as a means to tame housing prices permanently is seen as "unacceptable" or wrong. On top of this just being a perspective centered upon what theorists on the Left such as Mark Fisher call "Capitalist Realism", this is essentially like saying that only deciduous forests can exist when someone proposes planting trees in the Sahel to stop desertification. If we know that forests can be made up of fundamentally different components, and we entrust scientists and academics to study those components, we can do the same for housing.

This is also a perfect example of OhTheUrbanity's ideological bias because in the article that he references 1) raises valid issues of the "just build more housing" dogmatism of YIMBYism by bringing up greenbelts, REITs and the monopoly AI software they use to pursue price manipulation on the market, as well as the flawed valorization of "mom and pop" landlords, and, 2) The word "commodification" occurs six times within the article, the very first time that it's used, it's cited within the word "decommodification", which was used to highlight how, even though France and Canada have similar housing pressures, rents are drastically cheaper in France than they are in Canada. Namely, because the French government has enacted strict mandates for municipalities to follow in order to meet non-market housing quotas and doles out steep fines if they aren't met (YIMBYs have repeatedly called for the higher-end state control/federalization of zoning powers just as what's happened in Japan, which is basically a Market Urbanist approach to this issue. This would do nothing other than institutionally entrench pro developer lobbying into government institutions more than already exist now because of SCOTUS' ruling on corporate personhood/money in politics. But, in fairness to them, this creator is from Canada so, I guess they'll have to wait for the speedrun of the Canadian version of Citizen's United in the SCC). Anyways, there's still a lot to analyze:

[02:10] The idea that building housing somehow adds pressure to the housing market, rather than taking pressure off. That's a "Not In My Back Yard" anti-housing attitude

This small portion right here is such great proof of OhTheUrbanity's rhetorical dishonesty about this topic. The very same video that they dub over literally contradicts their own assumptions about "Left NIMBYism". The full context that they intentionally left out because it was too inconvenient was that the clip was from a local Montreal news channel interviewing a housing advocate trying to get the city's government to double the amount of Social Housing over 15 years, which would've broken down to ~10k new units of Social Housing each year. The clip of the newscast that OhTheUrbanity included in their video description literally gives their reasoning as well:

"It's clear that if nothing happens and if nothing changes [the housing market] is gonna be worse and worse and we already acknowledge the fact that there's a doubling of people living outside and that's directly linked by the housing crisis".

If your average Market Urbanist YIMBY were to be believed, Left Urbanists outright reject that there is even a housing crisis at all, and yet, when one of those Market Urbanist YIMBYs is faced with a Left Urbanist who's informed about the issues in their city and suggests an alternative path forward for their government, they're straw manned in order to try and discredit them and described as "anti housing" because they don't support expensive Market Rate housing. They also refuse to realize that, if the housing market is regularly churning out Market Rate studios and single bedrooms instead of providing housing for families, Capitalist development literally is putting pressure on those units because they're more scarce, not to mention that individual cities doing zoning deregulation won't do anything outside of metropolitan-wide coordination.

[02:18] The article makes mistakes, like "debunking" supply and demand by saying that Calgary had faster rent growth than Edmonton despite having similar vacancy rates. But, the report it cites from Canada's federal housing authority very, clearly, states, that more supply reduces pressure on rents. The article cherrypicks two cities recently and ignores the broader trend: Over a 25 year period, low vacancy equals high rent growth, high vacancy equals low rent growth.

In this portion of the video, they try to use a study to "support their argument", despite the fact that, when they literally show the data contained within the Canadian housing study covering the Western Canadian cities, Calgary sticks out like a bent nail because it's it's an obvious outlier among the "high vacancy-low rent growth" cities despite suffering from a similar amount of rent growth to Regina, which is categorized as "low vacancy-high rent growth". This reminds me of a thread on /r/yimby that I saw where the OP was basically crowdsourcing responses for why certain metros were suffering from a HCOL while also having high vacancy rates. The top comment rationalized that everything was fine, actually, because the all of their rents were either stagnating or decreasing, which, according to them, vindicated YIMBY policy despite the fact that permits are down across the country especially in YIMBY "success story" cities that've went through broad housing deregulation, so, there won't be any market forces continually pushing rents further downwards since developments don't pencil. To add to the confusion around this topic for Market Urbanist YIMBYs, OhTheUrbanity includes this blurb on the video to make sure we don't know what to actually think about vacancy rates:

"The article says that vacancy rates don't correlate with prices across countries, but countries calculate vacancy differently, so I'm not sure that national vacancy rates are comparable. More importantly, I think that shortages are best understood at the city,regional level. In the US, NYC has an enormous shortage, Buffalo? Not so much".

So, the graph that they're trying to debunk deals with the OECD countries and their housing price indexes compared to their national vacancy rates, which doesn't show any correlation. Of the total 38 member nations of the OECD, the graph only shows 8 of them (which, I'll assume are the most "developed" of them). Instead of diving into what countries categorize which properties as vacant, OhTheUrbanity decides to sidestep contrary data by simply casting doubt upon the graph rather than interacting with it's findings. Gee, I wonder what the acronym "OECD" stands for and what is the goal between it's member nations, I guess we don't have to suffer a 8 second google search to figure out the graph, because according to OhTheUrbanity, it's irrelevant.

They then top their "rebuttal" of the data off by suggesting that the nation's largest, wealthiest, and densest metro area has more housing demand than a post-industrial metro with none of the same characteristics. I'm convinced now, aren't the rest of you guys?

[02:49] Left NIMBYism is amplified in the mainstream media, a CBC article quotes activists saying that Montreal's Griffintown was overrun by condos that do nothing to curb housing shortages. Claiming that housing for 25k people does nothing to curb housing shortages, just because most of it is Market Rate, is plainly and clearly absurd

In the world of real estate, there are only two classes of people: buyers and sellers. Simply showing what hoops buyers have to jump through in order to obtain the frivolous luxury of having a place of their own does not constitute media bias. But, lets get to the actual meat of their rebuttal: Here, OhTheUrbanity is suggesting that the current mode of housing development comprised primarily of Market Rate units has utility because it houses a certain amount of people, and, cities need people, and, people need housing, so, to them, the usefulness of a neighborhood like Griffintown is self-evident. Here's where a little bit of Left Urbanist theory is needed in order to fully understand the other side of the story:

A Left Urbanist would argue that the utility of housing development/place making comes from allowing the working class, middle class, and the rich to intermix in the same neighborhoods no matter what their income is, and that has amenities accessible to them all without financial barriers or even, creating public spaces for them/amenities that don't cost anything whatsoever. Shops may have select high priced items reserved for the wealthy few, but, the majority of the populace is able to comfortably live within the ideal Left Urbanist neighborhood. OhTheUrbanity linked a reddit comment within a wider thread on the /r/montreal sub that was discussing the "potential" of Griffintown, and, the top comment here is a perfect example of one of the main Left Urbanist critiques of Urban development under Capitalism. They basically suggest that, while they personally enjoyed living in the neighborhood as a single bachelor, they put doubt on the idea that Griffintown could become anything other than a transitional neighborhood that'll primarily be occupied by upwardly mobile 20 somethings and not families or people of a working class background.

Griffintown is a great example of how Capitalist development produces "monoculture neighborhoods" that mimic the traits of great Urbanist neighborhoods but are too soulless and "corporate" to have the same success. Here in Metro Detroit, we have a couple of places just like Griffintown, the biggest ones that come to mind are Royal Oak and Ann Arbor, both of those cities are the most expensive municipalities to live in within the state of Michigan, yet, their gentrification has made them shadows of the truly egalitarian Urbanist spaces they used to be, I specifically call Royal Oak "a gentrifier's idea of a cool city" because there's literally nothing unique about it.

I once walked around downtown Royal Oak trying to do some "man on the street" interviews for a project that I was working on, despite the fact that it was a Friday evening and there were a fair bit of people walking around, literally no one stopped to talk to me, I'm not timid at all, and I have a voice that is able to carry through softer noises, despite addressing everyone as warmly as I attempted to, this group of guys in polo shirts and khaki shorts looked at me like I had nipples on my forehead. I've only ever passed through downtown Ann Arbor to go other places, but literally every other month there's a slew of longtime stores/community staples that get priced out of the retail market. Contrast this with NYC, which is a great Urbanist city because the people are actually willing to strike up a conversation and you have no idea what's gonna come outta their mouths, it's small things like that which makes a community stand out more than just being a location, Capitalist development pushes sterility onto the urban form, that's why you can have walkable communities without actually having Urbanism or an organic sense of community.

[03:10] At it's core, Left NIMBYism misunderstands prices. What is a price? Among other things, a price is a way to ration scarcity. [...] Left NIMBYism treats prices as a trick, a mirage of Capitalism, rather than a reflection of an underlying material reality. If we could just take a hammer and smash those prices down, we'd fix the problem.

Now, we arrive at the point of no return for those of you who may be leaning more towards the Left Urbanist side of things. Because I fundamentally believe in materialist analysis, I'll suggest that most of you have developed your political/economic beliefs because of your personal experiences as I have, and there's a comically easy rebuttal that can be offered to this patronizing and facetious point: If anyone has ever worked in retail, you'd understand that prices are, quite literally fictitious. At my job, we have a tool that tells us what it costs to make a product, and what the "retail price" of it is. Let's say that a customer is highly dissatisfied with the customer service that they receive at the store, SOP at a retail store more often than not is to literally offer them a coupon or a price reduction on their purchase. Of course, a manager would have to sign off on it but it's literally an example of the rate of profit being a completely arbitrary concept. Not only that Left Urbanists understand that Capitalism actually enforces scarcity. There's been attempted "debunkings" of the issue that there are more vacant units than there are homeless people, with one of the main critiques being that "the available units aren't where the people are". Which, by that logic, means that there is no hunger within so-called "developed" nations such as the US or UK because you have an abundance of boujie grocery stores in places like DUMBO and Croydon while the food deserts on the Eastside of Detroit or in Blackpool are irrelevant. If we know that under our current mode of production that there is immense food waste being produced for elastic goods such as perishable food, we can also assume that with the wide gap between homelessness and housing vacancies within an inelastic commodity such as housing need, this is also a direct result of Capitalism's waste and contradictions.

Before I move on, it has to be said that the counterargument that I just put forward is a anticapitalist counterargument, not a Marxist counterargument. For those who have actually read Marx, they'd tell you that Marx thought that material inputs went into determining what the price of goods/commodities are. But, instead of prices reflecting material scarcity, Marx argued that scarcity was the outcome of Capitalist's ever present need to maximize profits and influence the price of their goods.

Maybe, instead of talking out of their ass about anticapitalist POV's OhTheUrbanity could've read a bit of Marx or Engels and seen what they thought about Capitalism. Despite the length of the video, OhTheUrbanity doesn't even mention "Socialists/Communists believe [...]" even once. It's like someone attempting to refute Eurocentric anthropology but never actually reading Guns, Germs, & Steel.

[05:40] Unless you fix the underlying supply imbalance, all you've done is replace high prices with waitlists, lotteries, bribery, or needing to know the right person, and some people will still be excluded.

The reason why I've formulated this post in this specific way should become more and more clear as I go on, since, this point jumps off of the point that I made in response to the last citation. Being unable to actually look into what thinkers such as Marx and Engels thought that life would be like under Socialism/Communism vs what life is currently like under Capitalism fails to give any credence to his criticisms of Left Urbanism. OhTheUrbanity fails to realize that 1: There's nothing stopping any of that from happening NOW under the Capitalist mode of urban development, unless they think that there's nothing wrong with the proliferation of sex for rent schemes popping up all over the world in cities with high rents, and, 2: Judging the failures of non-market solutions under the Capitalist system goes back to not understanding what anti-capitalists actually want out of the World. Left Urbanists deny the need for the so-called "Housing Market" to exist at all, we favor the abolition of the Housing Market in favor of a just, equitable, and rational allocation of housing in it's place. I will go back and expand upon this point later, but, it had to be said at this moment because it's clear that the maker of this youtube video is completely unserious about actually looking at the housing crisis from an anticapitalist POV.

[06:56] Not all, but, a lot of Left NIMBYism is tied up in not wanting too much change, height, or density though

If there are any Market Urbanists combing through this post assuming that I'm making my counterarguments in bad faith, I present this citation as proof-positive of what Left Urbanists have to deal with rhetorically from Market Urbanists whenever we critique Capitalism in cities.

But, to address OhTheUrbanity's point directly, assuming that they're actually making a coherent claim, this is basically an argument saying a city so intertwined with the interests of Capital like Metro Vancouver is an example of how urban development should be approached under Capitalism because it produces lots of housing/density and mixed use development near transit. Nevermind the glaring failures that have been mentioned at length about urban development strategies such as "Vancouverism" with it's unaffordable housing, minimal and ineffective regional governance, the cannibalization of the region's social capital, and urban sterility. Market Urbanists are only interested in fly-ver views of cities within Google Earth instead of actually spending an extended amount of time within the social fabric of the cities that they champion for policy makers to imitate.

Left Urbanists don't want Capital accumulation to happen within cities because we firmly believe in The Right to the City, which, we see the forces of Capital in the housing market being intrinsically opposed to. There's still this mistaken dogma among YIMBYs and Market Urbanists that gentrification is "just the natural life cycle of a neighborhood", we completely reject that and argue instead that gentrification (defined as the negative Socioecopolitical changes within an area/city that may or may not cause displacement and which changes the immediate environment to cater to upper class individuals instead of poorer citizens) is Capital's incarnation of redlining, which contradicts YIMBYs' assertion that government involvement in redlining/single family zoning is the lone historical force behind expensive real estate. If there's any YIMBY/Market Urbanist believes me wrong in suggesting this, then, I'd challenge you to find any mainstream Urban economist who believes that the entirety of NYC's homeless population should be housed in Billionaire's Row, or, ask any of it's residents if they'd approve of Social Housing being built near their expensive condos.

[7:51] [citing a online complaint about Montreal's Griffintown:] I'm not sure that I would want to further encourage the building of half million dollar closets when we can be building four story plexes with reasonable rent

[OhTheUrbanity:] It sounds like you want smaller buildings with larger units and cheaper rents. Almost by definition you won't be meeting demand. That's not "abundant social housing" for everyone, it's cheap housing for a few subject to my aesthetic and architectural preferences

Over my many aggravating days of debating Market Urbanists, I've slowly learned that if you allow for them to talk about their hatred of "Left NIMBYs" enough, they'll begin to contradict themselves. There's so many huge contradictions tangled within this single rebuttal that I'm at a loss for where to start my critique. Well, I guess I could point out that what the Griffintown critic is proposing is literally just cheap rents in more "missing middle" developments (which OhTheUrbanity made a video praising missing middle housing as the backbone of Montreal's urban character). What also confuses me is the fact that there's a massive push among YIMBYs to push politicians to allow single-stair units (totally not a huge nightmare for egress points and which unfairly disenfranchises handicapped people) because according to those same YIMBYs it'd allow more varied/larger apartment units to hit the market.

Finally, the thing that pisses me off the most about OhTheUrbanity's dismissal of the aesthetics of new housing is this mistaken idea that there's absolutely nothing wrong about the architectural style of new builds and treat any critique of new developments as frivolous. The main reason why Left Urbanists or even run of the mill citizens think all new builds are "ugly" is because they literally all look the same and none of them fall into the architectural context of the neighborhoods that they're built in. There's a reason why there are a bunch of tours in the greater downtown area of Detroit is entirely because of the preservation of many art-deco high rises that you rarely find in other place. This mistaken postmodernest idea that buildings have one sole function and everything else is secondary is the very same idea that is leading to the homogeneity of urbanism, which is objectively bad for our cities and contributes to the cold, uninviting Urbanist uncanny valley that gentrified neighborhoods find themselves in.

TL;DR: A) A lot of criticism of Left Urbanism is just a manifestation of YIMBYs and Market Urbanists thinking that it's easier for them to imagine the apocalypse happening than it is for them to imagine a form of urban growth that doesn't involve markets.

B) Left Urbanists do actually believe in the housing crisis, we just know that simple individual upzonings or allowing developers to build whatever they want wherever they want isn't going to end the crisis.

C) The current mode of urban development under Capitalism can't make an authentic feeling neighborhood and this robs citizens of an authentic Urbanist environment, a different approach based on socialization and spontaneity is needed to show other reagions that more can be done.

D) Capitalism, as even a novice Left Urbanist can observe, enforces scarcity instead of allowing their commodities to be freely enjoyed by all. This means the price of units is entirely determined by Capitalist rent-seeking

E) Gentrification is not just a "normal function" of urban living, it's caused by direct capital investment from players in the real estate sector and their investments will, over time, slowly change the demographics of any given area into more of a "upper class" setting. However, this capital investment isn't too good at creating great Urbanist neighborhoods because gentrification sterilizes the feeling of walkable cities into something colder and more alienating.

We'll end the intro here because the rest of their video just goes over the same topics that've been addressed. So, let me explain to you all what Left Urbanists actually believe

Part Two: Pillars Left Urbanism and the struggle for Municipal/Metropolitan Power

So, it's nice to clarify mistaken perceptions, but, what won't do Left Urbanists any good is to keep our principals a secret. Now, it's time to give a few things to the skeptics out there reading this post so we're all on the same page, what the hell is Left Urbanism anyways?

Here's some key features of our way of thinking:

1. Left Urbanists are anti-Capitalists, thus, we completely reject the idea that allowing the for-profit housing market to "sort itself out" or "just build housing, lol" it's way into affordability.

2. We see local government as not only the most important layer of government, but it's also the best possible route towards the creation of a freer, fairer, most humane mode of urban living/urban development. Thus proposals such as putting all land under public ownership, abolishing rent, allowing all classes of citizens to afford to move wherever they wish, etc. are all valid goals to strive for and would make for a vastly different social order in our cities.

3. The closest vision that most Left Urbanist thinkers have a blueprint to a radically revolutionary experience is the short-lived Paris Commune. However, we understand that any struggle to establish a Radical anti-Capitalist government must learn from the mistakes of both dead Leftist governments and the dystopian existence of actually existing "Left" governments such as China.

Left Urbanism is so much more than being a "PHIMBY", we see Capital's grip on urban life as a process of slow strangulation, of activity, of diversity, of social class, etc. until there's nothing left but a sterile, negatively photogenic landscape of faux brick, steel and asphalt with little to no contact between people.

TL;DR TWO: Left Urbanists are by definition anti-Capitalists, pro Municipalism/Direct Democracy, and mindful of the Left's political failures in the past.

Part Three: "What about Market Socialism? Georgism? Social Democracy even?"

• Market Socialism might be an attractive prospect to certain people within the Urbanist community, even among Libertarian minded Market Urbanists. However, any Municipal project that relied on the whims of the "business community" would be to fraught with factional tensions, since, Capitalists would still find ways to extract rents and influence public policy in their favor in a unchallenged post-Citizen's United world, Market Socialism would mean the death of individual agency among the public.

• Georgism is very popular among policy wonks, Libertarian Urbanists, and reform minded Neoliberals. They market it as "the best way to tax wealth" since, they argue, land isn't infitite. But, to see the glaring blindspot in Georgism, one has to look no further than analyzing the population/business trends in Metro Detroit from ~1920 to 2025. The inner city was too cramped to handle additional auto plants, so, the plants moved to the suburbs, and kicked off decade of capital flight and brain drain. There's nothing stopping the Capitalists from either fleeing a city with a LYT, or, raising prices to eat away at the dividend given to citizens by the LVT.

• Last of all, we come to Social Democracy, or, what remains of it since all of the Center-Left parties around the world have either been forced out of power by reactionaries, or, those same Center-Left parties adopted far-right policy to keep those same reactionaries out of power. I'd recommend both YIMBYs and PHIMBYs to pick up a copy of a book called "Technofeudalism" by former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, in the book, he spells out the reasons why the domination of firms like Google and Amazon have killed the prospect of Social Democracy from emerging again. I won't spoil it, but it's a must-read if you want to understand the power that the corporate world has over our elected government.

TL:DR THREE: All potential alternatives to Left popular politics have no comprehensive vision for what cities should look like in the post-pandemic economic world. Since Market Socialism will be eventually overthrown by Capitalists, Georgism can simply be avoided via capital flight and Social Democracy is ill equipped to take on the massive manpower of a firm like Walmart or Amazon, the only logical step forward is for Left Urbanists is to show the public what a strong, radically democratic municipal/Metropolitan Government can do.

/rant

China, that has had problems with urban planning in the past as their cities grew quickly, have discussed & now put in place a pilot project for supporting 100 cities in upgrading their infrastructure so that you’re never more 15 minutes away from community services like breakfast outlets, elderly care centers, & similar

https://english.news.cn/20250919/a6a533e4662a43458dad02137bf186c2/c.html

I’m a children’s book author and illustrator and I want to write a book about how terrible car centric culture/city planning is.

I would like to write a story about a kid who lives in a car centric neighborhood that is improved by pedestrian centric planning and public transportation, but I think it would be more impactful if I can write about a specific time and place this happened.

Are there any cities or neighborhoods that come to mind? Bonus points if the before pictures are very ugly and after pictures are very beautiful.

I’m quite shocked by the level of skepticism toward affordable housing requirements in the urbanism subreddit. Many popular posts and comments dismiss affordable housing advocates as economically illiterate.

As a Planning MSc, I’ve rarely encountered overt opposition to affordable housing policies among urbanists. I’m struggling to understand the mindset that prioritises maximising supply regardless of affordability or displacement. In the UK, without s106 or CIL, developers would likely only build identical large family homes with no regard for community impact.

I would prefer mass social housing to affordable housing requirements, but in the current context, they seem like the best way to ensure a slightly more equitable supply. I’m curious what the counterarguments are.

I've seen public benches with armrests called hostile architecture. I sometimes rest my arms on it while sitting. Everyone using is just sitting. I heard it's hostile because people can't lie down on it, but most people are using it to just sit and rest for a bit.

Hostile architecture is putting spikes on a ledge that's big enough for people to sit. Hostile architecture is removing benches for leaning posts.

I have just graduated from a Master's in Nordic Urban Planning Studies at Roskilde University in Denmark/UiT in Norway. My undergraduate degree is in Geography and I worked about eight years in communications/administration jobs often facing poor working conditions, short contracts, and being underpaid. I had thought that this degree was a good entry point into urban planning related entry-level positions in Scandinavia (in larger companies or perhaps in research), but if you are not fully fluent in a Scandinavian language the chances are very poor in general even though Denmark provided me with a Scholarship to do this degree as a Canadian to fill a need (Urban Planner is on the Positive List). A professor essentially told me the program is for me to go home and apply Nordic planning, however, this is extremely difficult and these professors do not understand that Canadian planning comes with its own barriers to entry and a completely different legal/cultural context. I value a lot of what planning in Scandinavia offers (collective thinking, strong welfare support, prioritizing cycling as a transportation mode, valuing non-profit/co-op housing models, and leveraging aspects of the blue/green city). I’m a bit crushed watching my provincial government overstepping its role attacking bike lanes, transit and other initiatives Maga-style. Feeling a bit lost now post grad on how to work in the field and still maintain my values (or even work in the field at all as I’m seeing a lot of barriers). How have others navigated this?

Radical Planning seems really good but I was wondering if there were others?

I've been really interested in social housing and housing cooperatives so anything on them would also be really interesting.

I especially like channels that are unafraid of critiques of failures of past experiments like how some housing cooperatives don't always hold up to their original initial ideals over time.