NIMBYism has never been about preserving neighborhood characteristic, or noise and traffic concerns. Menlo Park is not Big Sur. Sure, some concerns are reasonable and should be investigated, but most of the time they're bureaucratic distractions that's been weaponized by people who want to delay progress and protect their investment.

For most Americans, A house is their primary savings account, retirement plan, and probably where they keep majority of their wealth. We don't build new housing in old neighborhoods because it would de-value the investment of too many people. Until we can solve this problem (where people are incentivized to pull the ladder up behind them), we will always have housing shortages. It's just too profitable.

A paper came out about this recently: The City as an Anti- Growth Machine.

> Logan and Molotch's “urban growth machine” remains foundational in urban theory, describing how coalitions of landowners, developers, and politicians promote urban growth to raise land values. This paper argues that under financialized capitalism, the dynamics have inverted: asset appreciation now outweighs productive investment, and urban land is increasingly treated as a speculative asset.

https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.70145

I've never seen the evidence where density increases drive down existing land/home values.

I'm not sure why new housing devalues old housing. In my mind, higher density generally makes an area more desirable (e.g. because higher density enables more jobs, better infrastructure) and raises the value. Imagine as an extreme example and existing house in the middle of nowhere around which a metropolis is developed. Surely the value of the house, or at least the land it is built on, goes up, even though it loses its "cabin in the woods" appeal.

>For most Americans, A house is their primary savings account

This is true for California, where people (foolishly) rely on their home value as their retirement plan, which further incentivizes NIMBYism.

But in places like Texas (and other areas with affordable housing), the house is just treated as something you pay off to have a low housing cost in retirement. And your investments are your retirement+savings account.

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Fundamentally as a society we need to stop treating housing as an investment. It is and should be a utility.

Suring property prices is a relatively new phenomenon (as in, post-WW2). The true origins of NIMBYism, at least in the US, is (you guessed it) racism. Long before segregation ended, and long after, there was economic segregation. Redlining [1], HOAs [2], the post-WW2 GI Bill [3], where highways were built [4][5], etc.

In fact this is a good rule of thumb: if you're ever confused why something is the way it is in the US, your first guess should pretty much always be "because racism".

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

[2]: https://www.furman.edu/fu/placing-furman/what-are-racially-r...

[3]: https://www.history.com/articles/gi-bill-black-wwii-veterans...

[4]: https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984784455/a-brief-history-of-...

[5]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-09/robert-mo...

It’s going to take a SCOTUS decision overturning Ambler vs Euclid in my opinion.

We certainly will not see zoning reform until the Boomers die.