Why do you expect to have control over other people's property, just to satisfy your aesthetic preferences? You can move away if you don't like what your neighbors are doing.
Why do you expect to have control over other people's property, just to satisfy your aesthetic preferences? You can move away if you don't like what your neighbors are doing.
The thing is that I do have such control - my town council's architecture department has a strong ideal of keeping historical parts of town intact and recognizable as historical parts (e.g. can't build larger than other buildings in the area, old buildings can be demolished only if they're not mendable any more, etc). If inhabitants of the area don't like a new building project they can offer arguments why it should be changed, and a committee of architects will decide the result. If I didn't have such control over my neighbors I would absolutely have to move, with large costs to myself. Since I can, I use my control. Also, my neighbors and the town council have similar control over me. Should I decide to build another house on my plot and rent it out, they may object and ban it. Now, should our town suddenly become insanely popular, everybody trying to move in, like SF, the town council may decide to overrule the architects and sacrifice the historical town parts to fit more people. Then I would lose my control over neighbors, they'd lose their control over me. The current situation, however, doesn't necessitate such a measure.
All I wanted to say was that economic considerations may not dominate NIMBY sentiments, at least not everywhere. These can be esthetic, or a yearning for peaceful traffic for young kids to safely move around on their own, or whatever.
Sounds like 'might makes right'; not a great system.
I agree with you that NIMBYs are primarily concerned with neighborhood character instead of property values, and I think survey evidence would prove this.
About the 'might' question, we all in the neighborhood have equal might and the town council is mightier above us all. I'm sure you generally agree that it's a good system when inhabitants of a place, e.g. a dorm room or a Mars colony, agree on some basic rules everybody should follow and then enforce these? I wouldn't call this 'might makes right'.
If the environment was to change drastically (e.g. our population grew 100-fold) then keeping these rules would become silly and they'd be changed.
Why do you expect to have control over other people's property, just to satisfy your aesthetic preferences? You can move away if you don't like what your neighbors are doing.
The thing is that I do have such control - my town council's architecture department has a strong ideal of keeping historical parts of town intact and recognizable as historical parts (e.g. can't build larger than other buildings in the area, old buildings can be demolished only if they're not mendable any more, etc). If inhabitants of the area don't like a new building project they can offer arguments why it should be changed, and a committee of architects will decide the result. If I didn't have such control over my neighbors I would absolutely have to move, with large costs to myself. Since I can, I use my control. Also, my neighbors and the town council have similar control over me. Should I decide to build another house on my plot and rent it out, they may object and ban it. Now, should our town suddenly become insanely popular, everybody trying to move in, like SF, the town council may decide to overrule the architects and sacrifice the historical town parts to fit more people. Then I would lose my control over neighbors, they'd lose their control over me. The current situation, however, doesn't necessitate such a measure.
All I wanted to say was that economic considerations may not dominate NIMBY sentiments, at least not everywhere. These can be esthetic, or a yearning for peaceful traffic for young kids to safely move around on their own, or whatever.
Sounds like 'might makes right'; not a great system.
I agree with you that NIMBYs are primarily concerned with neighborhood character instead of property values, and I think survey evidence would prove this.
About the 'might' question, we all in the neighborhood have equal might and the town council is mightier above us all. I'm sure you generally agree that it's a good system when inhabitants of a place, e.g. a dorm room or a Mars colony, agree on some basic rules everybody should follow and then enforce these? I wouldn't call this 'might makes right'.
If the environment was to change drastically (e.g. our population grew 100-fold) then keeping these rules would become silly and they'd be changed.