Gimme a little room here...

In defense of NIMBYism

“Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day.”

“My Western Home”, by Dr. Brewster Higley circa 1871

 Ok….ok, you wonder.  Defend Nimbyism (Not in My Backyard)??? Home on the Range???  What exactly are we doing this week?  Well…we are going to talk about space, not outer space, the final frontier…but the space in which we live, how it is good for us, and how developers and governmental officials are trying to screw it up and make our lives worse, and maybe what we can do about it.

Currently developers, urban planners, and other government types are pushing policies and spending money to drag more and more people into urban areas, forcing us into smaller and smaller spaces, with less and less open space.  I call this trend “new tenement living”. It goes under such fad labels as “affordable housing”, “transit-oriented development” and “smart growth”.

However, as our cities cram more and more people into smaller spaces, few are focusing on the basic question of how many people are too many. We have limits for people in an elevator, limits for people on a bus, limits for how many people can be in the club, but no one has a good answer for exactly how many people are too many for the communities in which we live.

Space is a Good Thing

As I researched this…and yes, I do look at things other than my own imagination before I write this stuff, I found studies that opine on how many billions of people the world can handle, the correct size of rat cages, the proper dimensions of chicken and pig accommodations before we kill and eat them, but nothing exactly on the optimum number of people living in a city.

We should know from history and common sense that personal space is a good thing and that we like it.  As a species, over the ages, we have been trying to give ourselves more space to live because it makes us happier and gives us a better life.  The bottom line is; what makes us happier and gives us a better life is what governmental officials should be focusing on when they make public policy and land use decisions.

In the Middle Ages, agricultural workers were outside all day, and got up and went to bed with the sun.  I’m not saying that they didn’t have problems like the black death, failed crops and bad weather, but at least as far as overcrowding was concerned, they were able to get outside and breath the clean air.  As agricultural technology improved in the 18th century, fewer farm workers were needed.  Without jobs, these individuals migrated to the cities to fill the factories arising from the industrial revolution.  Pollution increased, disease ran rampant and life spans declined for these new city dwellers as they moved into the industrial age.

When things got bad enough, many left for new opportunities leaving the crowded slums of 18th and 19th century cities behind.  When America was new, the population was crowded on the east coast.  As it became more and more crowded, thousands left in various migration waves to settle the land and build new cities in the interior.

In the 1860s, government policy was to reduce density as millions left for the farmlands of the Great Plains as a result of the Homestead Act.  These governmental policies had the effect of not only providing individuals with opportunities that were not available in older more densely populated urban areas but also resulted in dispersing the population so that the people could have a better and by the way, more spread-out life.

We can even look to our ancestors to see how as they became more affluent; they used their newfound economic gains to give themselves more space.  Houses, in the olden days (I love that phrase) used to consist of one room with all the family and animals living in one place.  As they progressed, the animals got their own living quarters (the barn), and the people inside got their own rooms. 

It was normal to have 2-3 people sharing a single bed. As they became more prosperous, each individual was given his or her own bed to now, each child has to have his or her own bedroom. 

House sizes have increased in our lifetime as the average size of a house went from 1525 sf in 1970 to 2467 sf in 2015 while the average number of people living in each house has decreased.  As a society, we have chosen to spend our resources to spread ourselves out.  Life was good or at least better.

If we are still uncertain about whether we like space or not, we can go to our friend Gallup.  In a 2020 poll, it found that despite the increased urbanization in the country about half of Americans (48%) said that, if able to live anywhere they wished, they would choose a town (17%) or rural area (31%) rather than a city or suburb.   Only 11% said they would like to live in a big city.

Rats in a Cage

If you want to have another reason why people want to get out of cities, there are studies that show that living there is driving us nuts.  No really.

Studies have shown that living in urban areas is linked with an increased risk of serious mental illness. Compared with people who live in rural areas, city dwellers have higher rates of schizophrenia, distress, post-traumatic stress disorders, and paranoia.  Higher population density was associated with a 21% higher likelihood of elevated depressive symptoms among women and a 21% higher likelihood of suicidal thoughts among men, regardless of sociodemographic and lifestyle variables.

In a study terrifying to all urban planners who read it (or care), John B. Calhoun published “Population Density and Social Pathology,” in 1962. Calhoun constructed “rodent universes” – room-sized pens where he provided his populations with food, bedding, and shelter. Hmmm, reminds me of universal guaranteed income.

With no predators and with exposure to disease kept at a minimum, Calhoun described his experimental universes as “rat utopia.   With all their visible needs met, the rats bred rapidly. The only restriction Calhoun imposed on his population was of space – and as the population grew, this became increasingly problematic. As the number of animals exploded, one of his assistants described rodent “utopia” as having become “hell”.

Dominant males became aggressive, some moving in groups, attacking females and the young. Mating behaviors were disrupted. Some became pansexual and hypersexual, attempting to mount any rat they encountered. Mothers neglected their infants, first failing to construct proper nests, and then carelessly abandoning and even attacking their pups. In certain sections of the pens, infant mortality rose as high as 96%, the dead cannibalized by the adults. Subordinate animals withdrew psychologically, surviving in a physical sense but at an immense psychological cost.  Unable to breed, the population plummeted and did not recover.

The crowded rodents had lost the ability to co-exist harmoniously, even after the population numbers once again fell to low levels. At a certain density, they had ceased to act like rats and mice, and the change was permanent.  The horrific spectacle of crowded psychopathological rats and the comparisons with human behavior in the densely packed inner cities gave us a chilling peak as to what we might be doing to ourselves by not assuring sufficient space in our living environment.

To pile on here, in 2005, Ricard Louv, author and child advocacy expert, wrote the book, Last Child in the Woods, Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.  You can get it in the library if you are interested.

In this book, Louv directly linked the lack of nature and open space in the lives of today's wired generation to some of the most disturbing childhood trends, such as the rises in obesity, attention deficit disorders, and depression.

Last Child in the Woods was the first book to bring together the concept that direct exposure to nature and open space is essential for healthy childhood development and for the physical and emotional health of children and adults.

While we are still waiting for the experts to tell us what the optimum number of persons per acre should be in a community, hopefully, we can conclude while they are working all that out, that as a species, we don’t only want more space to heal our spirit and create a good life, we need it.

So, Space is Good, What’s the Problem?

The problem is that those who are responsible for land planning, economic development, and those who build things, developers, favor densification and urbanization of our cities going exactly in the wrong direction from what is good for our species. Instead of pushing policies that favor opportunities for people to live in low density communities and single-family homes, they are forcing us into apartments, condos, and transit-oriented developments located next to the railroad tracks.

So, why are they doing this?  Well, to be fair, (and I must say that in writing this column, I am under no obligation to be fair to anyone) …I think that all of you who have gotten this far know a lot more about this issue and what is good for the people than those who are making economic development and zoning policy decisions.  Ignorance aside, another reason for policy makers, planners, and developers to push programs that are not in the long-term best interests of the people is, …well, let me just say it, …money, greed and ego.  Well, that’s harsh, you say, but it also maybe true.

We know (see above) that the densification movement is not driven by the public and their desires but by developers and their governmental allies.  As urban areas have less and less space for development, developers would rather densify current space, i.e. put a 300 unit apartment building where 4 single family houses used to be, instead of going to the suburbs or rural areas to build new affordable single family housing. 

The profit margin on a 300-unit condo development is a lot higher and can be realized much more quickly than creating new developments and new cities.  Although the land is more expensive in the urban core, you don’t need as much of it if you can pack a lot of units on it.  Also, development in current urban areas use already built and available water, sewer, and electric lines and current transportation infrastructure.

To build on raw land out in the country would require all of this essential infrastructure to be installed by the developer or the city or county.  The easier, quick buck solution is to densify areas using already built infrastructure and push people into apartments rather than create new infrastructure.

What’s in it for the cities?  Well, with new development, the land and its improvements are assessed at higher rates generating more property taxes. Building new buildings generates more building material taxes, and more people who buy things to creates more sales taxes, municipal greed.  There is also ego involved as elected officials celebrate their victory when they secure new business developments over their rivals.

However, since we all know “now” that we really want more space, and lack of it is more likely to drive us crazy, how do developers and governmental officials get people to accept the idea of living in crowded apartments in urban areas?  One way is builders simply don’t build enough single-family homes such that people who have to live somewhere have no choice but to go to the apartment/townhome market.

Then there is the active campaign where we are told that we should really like to be packed into our little rat cages because if we disperse the population, it will create sprawl and evil carbon dioxide.  This word is used to end the discussion rather than begin it, since sprawl has always held a negative connotation.  Even the word spraaawwwllll is distasteful, but is it really bad?  Thinking about it, really one person’s sprawl is another’s person’s cherished neighborhood.

The argument against sprawl is that it presumes that the public would be required to travel farther to jobs and services in the urban center using more fossil fuels, creating more pollution and sentencing the people to waste their lives in traffic.  But is it really true?  Obviously, some people do travel to the central business district and their commutes may be longer.  However, we know that people who live in outlying areas do not go to the urban core nearly as much as they used to when urban trips constituted 70% of travel in 1920.

With the decline of urban central cores, the rise in crime, homelessness, and the difficulty of mobility as transportation systems are intentionally sabotaged by underspending on roads, people just don’t go downtown anymore.  The growth of jobs, schools and amenities are located close to home in the suburban and exurban areas. Trips to the urban core will only decrease as the trend toward remote work expands.

Another argument used to sell the apartment life is that the younger generations, like millennials, want to live in apartments so they can have “coffee”, be within walking distance of the bars and restaurants, and be where the “action is” in order to have a fulfilling life.  I suspect that this concept has merit for the unsettled single classes of men and women, but as they have aged, they reverted to the traditional conventions of their parents when they started having children.

Being in the place to party is all good until the little tyke comes along, at which point, that one bedroom condo just isn’t enough.  New urban parents start thinking about whether they should have a yard, maybe with a swing set or a garden with access to good schools and maybe even another bedroom for future family growth.  These people are looking for single family residences with bedrooms, space, parks and nature, and those aren’t in dense urban areas.

Well, What Can We Do?

Actually, this is hard stuff, and if you care about your community and your way of life, it will take work and personal attention. 

One thing you will have to get over is that it is ok to want to keep the quality of life that you and you neighbors have.  It’s ok to fight for what you have, and therefore it’s ok to be a NIMBY.

It’s also ok to decide that your community is full up.  There is no obligation to stuff people into your municipality and change your way of life just like it’s ok (although hard) not to put too many people in a lifeboat so that it sinks.  Increased density and economic development are not necessarily progress.  It’s change, and change can be good or bad.

With these basics, the first thing that we as citizens need to do is to decide what we want.  There are people who like to be crammed in little spaces, go to bars, restaurants, and the opera once a year and are willing to deal with crime, pollution, homelessness, bad schools, and the risk of increased depression.  I am not arguing against urban areas.  I am arguing against a system that forces people into urban communities that they would rather not be in because they don’t have a choice.

Once the community decides what kind of community it wants to be, the residents have to elect and monitor representatives who are more interested in representing the residents who currently live in their districts than satisfying those new arrivals who want to move in and change the city culture or the financial interests of the developers.  Elected municipal officials are more likely to hang with developers and urban planners as the rest of us are just trying to live our lives.  The moral of the story is if you don’t pay attention, you are going to get what other people want and those other people are developers.  They are paid to change your community while you are not.

This task is not hopeless.  It can and has been done.  We only need to look to the example of the development history of Boulder, Colorado.  Between 1950 and 1970, there was a huge population growth in Boulder. This growth was due to the presence of the University of Colorado and a strong local economy.  The citizens and their representatives actually decided what kind of city they wanted to be and took action against unrestrained development and growth.

In 1959, city voters approved the "Blue Line" city-charter amendment which restricted city water service to altitudes below 5,750 feet in an effort to prevent the mountain backdrop from development.

Then in 1967, Boulder enacted a small increase in sales tax in order to fund land acquisitions and preserve them as open space and recreational facilities creating a greenbelt around the city. By 1998, Boulder had amassed 33,000 acres of mountain parks and raw land.  The city not only determined its boundaries but set a limit on building areas.  This meant that once the city was “full”, the sales tax could only go towards the maintenance of existing public structures and the purchase of more open space.  The resulting undeveloped land was preserved for an extensive trail system and parks.

In 1970, the population of Boulder was around 70,000 but was projected to double over the next two decades. The community decided that population regulation would ensure that Boulder retained its personality and livability given its finite area of approximately 25 square miles. In 1971, Boulder voters cast their ballots for local government to restrict the population growth rate to a level more manageable than the out-of-control growth of the 1960s.

In 1997, Boulder actually had to limit the number of commercial jobs being created because it was outpacing the growth of the population. Commercial facilities still had land available for building, and they readily used it. The disparity between available jobs and available workers meant that people were traveling into Boulder from other cities for work resulting in overuse of the public roads and other city amenities.

Boulder bought some of the commercially zoned land to prevent further problems with overused roads and rezoned some commercial land for residential use. Then it reduced the potential size and density of new commercial developments by tweaking zoning regulations.

As the city of Boulder taught us, if you want to create a place that is open, less dense, and has less crime and pollution, you need to pay attention and use the zoning tools that are in place to get growth and development to a level that is in the best interests of the people who live there.

Another thing to do.  Quit subsidizing growth.  Why do we give favorable zoning for developments in the Denver Metro area along the front range and then pay billions to move water from the Arkansas or Colorado rivers over the continental divide.  Don’t be greedy.  How about encouraging those developments to happen in Alamosa in the San Luis Valley along the Arkansas river and spend those billions that otherwise would have been spent on moving water to the front range on infrastructure in Alamosa.

This is not to say that this effort will be easy as city planners, city officials and developers have a long history of changing communities in order to encourage growth and increase its tax base for the cities’ coffers.  If your city needs development, it can use zoning tools to encourage it, but if the development only serves to create density for density sake or economic growth for economic growth sake, then maybe it’s ok to try to stop it.

We also need to reexamine those ideas that we have been led to believe are incontrovertible.  We need to reject the sprawl argument and recast it as policies to disperse the population creating unique neighborhoods.  Creating new cities is not bad.  We also need to reject the idea that new generations really want to be crammed into small spaces with their spouse and kids.

Another myth that needs to be dispelled it that we have an obligation to provide jobs and housing for everyone who might appear at our door.  We do not.  We have to come to the realization, as they did in Boulder that at some point, we are “full up” and that’s ok.  It may sound exclusive and subject you and your decision makers to charges of NIMBYism, but NIMBYism is good if you are preserving the quality of life for you and your neighbors.

And remember…

"Where the air is so pure, and the zephyrs so free,
The breezes so balmy and light,
That I would not exchange my home on the range,
For all of the cities so bright."