New and Old #245

Strong Towns vs. YIMBY, how government invented suburbia, resisting lifestyle creep, and a (non?) Christmas song

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On The Tension Between YIMBYism and Strong Towns, Max Dubler, November 10, 2025

This tension is something I’ve seen discussed here and there for a long time, but Strong Towns has gotten larger, more professionalized, and more influential in the last couple of years, and the salience of the housing issue has kept going up. So a tension that was always there feels, I think, more consequential to people working in housing/urbanism.

I’m happy to say I was part of a long, multi-part series of essays over this question, between Strong Towns president Charles Marohn on one side, and Laura Foote (an original YIMBY founder from San Francisco) and Jeff Fong (YIMBY Action board member) on the other. (Check out Marohn’s piece, mine, and Foote’s/Fong’s.)

I found this ongoing debate to be one of the most rewarding things I’ve followed and participated in during the course of my work as an urbanist writer. It’s very cool to be part of a serious and good-faith debate in an area I’ve followed for a long time. And it’s really neat to see these issues becoming mainstream in real time.

Anyway, this essay from Max Dubler is another good entry that I would slot into the ongoing debate.

First of all, Dubler makes an observation that other Strong Towns-adjacent folks, like Seth Zeren, have made: “It’s sort of a pro-urbanism group with an atypical level of focus on suburban and small town issues.” In other words, it’s important to understand that Strong Towns’s orientation is from a Midwestern/small town/small city angle, i.e. not from one of the housing-crunched superstar cities. While some urban YIMBYs see Strong Towns as insufficiently urbanist, I think it’s more useful to see them as congruent but also somewhat parallel, finding a way to make these issues relevant in a lot of other places—and more importantly, palatable to people for whom they otherwise wouldn’t be.

But like many YIMBYs, Dubler disagrees with Marohn’s ambivalence about state preemption of zoning, and with his general emphasis on reforming housing/zoning/etc. at the local level. This specific issue of state preemption is what set off this whole round of essays, in fact. (Marohn is definitely skeptical of state preemption, though I read his writing on the issue as leaving room to come on board with preemption in the future.)

While Dubler’s more sanguine view on preemption is not surprising, I found this bit interesting, and I think it correctly identifies a major tension between YIMBYs and many urbanists on the one hand, and lots of “regular” folks on the other hand:

I think Marohn’s desire to avoid thinking of housing in explicitly political terms, his desire to give NIMBYism the benefit of the doubt, and his ideological commitment to local control cloud his judgement.

Frankly, I am probably so simpatico with Strong Towns because I also fundamentally am uncomfortable thinking about things “politically” (I wrote about how conservatives often think about that, here), and I also ultimately want to give NIMBYs the benefit of the doubt—by which I mean I think they’re wrong and sometimes absurd, but I don’t like the idea that, say, most of the people I know back home are cynical, greedy, or racist, rather than just normal people who like what they know and don’t think about any of this beyond that.

But I also think the harder line the YIMBYs take makes sense given their exposure to the broken public input process. Dubler knows up close what advocating for housing looks like, and how difficult it is. YIMBYs involved in advocacy like this know what a brick wall you run into.

I’ve heard stories from people I know of public input hearings devolving into shouting and chanting like a political rally, to drown out people speaking in favor of a development proposal. I have a feeling most “regular” NIMBYs have never seen any of this, so there’s an element of “What are you guys talking about?” when YIMBYs recount these stories about NIMBYs. The normal NIMBY-ish people think they’re being talked about.

Dubler continues:

Many people sincerely do not like neighborhood change and do not care about the affordability or sustainability impacts of their preferences. These people are not “scared, uncertain, or unclear about the tradeoffs” between new housing and affordability. They simply believe, as many Americans do, that single family zoning is a kind of property right that entitles them to a fixed and unchanging neighborhood character. Local governance structures disproportionately empower these people while underrepresenting the voices of people who support building more homes. (More on this here.)

Marohn largely glosses over these facts, insisting that advocates should get involved and make change at the local level because that is where housing policy is traditionally set, and where policymakers are best positioned to evaluate tradeoffs in light of local conditions.

This is clarifying to me, because I only grudgingly accept this. On some level I want to believe that nobody except a small minority really believes in NIMBYism; I think of them as just absorbing anti-development attitudes but holding them weakly, because they’ve never heard an alternative articulated, or they’ve never heard a positive case for urbanism that they can receive (in the case of Strong Towns and its intended audience, largely a case that doesn’t strike them as politically radical or left-wing). On the other hand, it seems true—and I accept but it isn’t the way I wish it was—that a more stridently political approach does at least sometimes get more done.

I do ultimately think Dubler is probably right on the policy questions, at least on the question of preemption. Dubler points out, usefully, that local control/state power are not completely at odds. Local action often does generate good policy reforms. But once those reforms are known and tested, they can be enacted at the state level instead of having to be fought out in every single municipality:

I think carefully iterating on policy at the local level is a great thing—many of the statewide reforms we pursue at California YIMBY were first developed at the local level—and that legalizing what Marohn describes as “the next increment of housing” is a good way to get people comfortable with neighborhood change.

One more bit and my response, and then I’ll leave you to check these essays out further:

While I understand and admire Marohn’s desire to give people the benefit of the doubt, it cannot survive contact with California housing opponents’ words and actions. What are we supposed to say about people who wait hours to speak in opposition to affordable farmworker housing in downtown Half Moon Bay because it might make it harder for them to park their cars, or who scream at public officials who propose converting an existing motel to homeless housing? What do we make of people who live near UC Berkeley—where one in ten students experience homelessness—and sue to block the construction of a dorm because the students might be loud? What should I think about a city council member who brags about building fewer homes for needy families to mollify her constituents who dislike mid-rise buildings? Should housing advocates continue to seek compromise with NIMBYs who understand perfectly well that endlessly dragging out the entitlement and permitting process with bad-faith demands for further project-level public input can kill projects’ financial feasibility?

My response to this is that the number of NIMBYs who actively oppose new housing by showing up at these hearings/input sessions, or writing in comments, or organizing neighborhood groups, is basically infinitesimal compared to the total population.

These are the “professional” NIMBYs, and I think a lot of regular people who might not want new housing but don’t care enough to register their complaint formally would be appalled by the behavior of many of the professional NIMBYs. I consider someone who grumbles about traffic or parking or overcrowding, but who would never bother to make a comment against it, to be more or less an ally.

So I think it’s possible to reconcile what Marohn is saying about NIMBY-leaning regular people and what Dubler is saying about a small minority of organized professional NIMBYs. Dubler even suggests a little later in the piece that he’s mostly talking about this professional subset, while I think Marohn is talking about the broader public.

Anyway, read the whole thing!

How the Government Built the American Dream House, The New Atlantis, Joseph Lawler, August 28, 2025

Here’s how the system, the American system, works: First, the state or city defines the standard product, through zoning and other rules. The product is a single-family house on a lot large enough that it can only be sited in the suburbs or exurbs. Then, the federal government subsidizes the product. It gives buyers a special government-backed loan to buy it and tax breaks for owning it, and then helps pay for the highway needed to reach it.

This system is a deliberate creation of the government, going back many decades. It is not a product simply of demand meeting supply at agreed-upon prices. Ostensibly, it is meant to promote homeownership. But in reality, it does not. Instead, it encourages mass financial speculation on housing, urban sprawl, and widespread resistance to new construction.

Speaking of politics, this is written by a conservative author, who takes concerns about big government seriously. And not just big government in general—much of the architecture of modern suburbia was invented by FDR! But not only his administration; the story really begins with the Hoover administration:

It is true that the United States had a pre-existing pro-suburbs movement in the 1800s, led by thinkers such as Catharine Beecher and Frederick Law Olmsted, that promoted an ideal of the detached home with a yard as combining the best of urban living and rural tranquility. What the Hoover Commerce Department launched, though, was instead a project to transform housing into an investment product that could be quantified, regularized, and generally made legible in a way conducive to the workings of big business, creating the conditions for the sprawl that would later take over America.

Lawler notes that while Hoover rejected public housing as socialist, he was a major enthusiast for zoning. Zoning seems to me at least as “socialist,” in the general American usage of government determining things for people, as public housing does. But these rules were also good for the business of homebuilding. Which I would only take to mean that big business and free enterprise do not always overlap.

Here is another point, this time on the unintended consequences of tax breaks. This is a general insight that conservatives understand well when it comes to, say, loans for higher education and tuition prices: “Over time, any policy meant to attach a benefit to owning a home is going to disadvantage homebuyers, making it a wash for homeownership rates.”

This is also an important bit, and it’s a reason why housing and transportation are in many ways different dimensions of the same issue:

In addition to subsidizing your loan for a house out there, the federal government will help pay for your highway commute. In the postwar period, following President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s signing of the Federal-Aid Highway Act in 1956, drivers did not fully pay for the highways they drive on. Today, highways are only half paid for by users through tolls or other fees.

It’s hard to imagine, decades later, that it was not always this way. Indeed, in earlier versions of the suburbs, it was the other way around: developers owned and operated streetcars to bring people to new neighborhoods.

In other words, the interaction of federal subsidies with state and local building restrictions effectively codifies the model of “drive ‘til you qualify” — the real estate lingo that represents the reality of homebuying.

I think some people view this “Government invented suburbia!” line as basically fake, as a kind of gotcha: “See, opposing suburbia is actually conservative.” But it’s not fake or a gotcha. It’s very clear from the history that it is basically true.

There’s a lot here, and it’s a policy-heavy piece but easy to read. Read the whole thing.

The Best Things in My Life are Free, Extracurricular Pursuits, Emily Ann Hill, August 20, 2024

Is a Saturday morning spent at a $45 barre class in a $170 Vuori set a total bust without stopping for a $18.50 $23 collagen-infused cherry on top? Do we really need Whole Foods to stock $29.99 emu eggs? Can we keep in mind what an absurd luxury it is to have filet mignon and lobster tails regularly fetched to our front door?

Anyway, after climbing out of this “I can’t afford to exist” living beyond my means rabbit hole, I realized that over the past few years, I’ve unintentionally experienced whatever the opposite of indulgent lifestyle creep is. I’m still searching for the right term, but it’s something along the lines of simplification and minimalism — perhaps lifestyle pruning?

For an article that starts with the author debating whether to settle in Spain or Mexico after several years of European travel, this isn’t quite the point you might expect. I suppose I would consider that unattached lifestyle to be far more indulgent than a little bit of consumerism, personally.

But here’s her explanation for why those are not contradictory:

This is mostly due to traveling of course, as it’s been impossible to accumulate unnecessary material crap when suitcase space comes at a premium. Being on the move has also slashed my recurring expenses, as there’s no need to hold onto a pricey gym membership and I now decidedly prefer living car-free. I’ve also had to fossilize my daily habits so that they can be reproduced no matter what city or country I’m in — the number of dishes I can whip up with the same eight grocery staples is impressive. Sure, not all of my plane tickets and temporary accommodations have been a steal, but now that I’ve even begun to cut back on those expenditures, what’s left is a deliberately assembled daily routine packed with things that provide genuine fulfillment, uninfluenced by fads, trends or consumerism. And the kicker? Most of these things are free.

And:

By living outside the States, I’ve experienced something way more impactful than just lower rent and cheaper coffee: In Spain, Mexico and nearly every other country I’ve lived in, that hyper-consumerist, convenience-driven behavior so common among Americans is practically nonexistent. Nobody has a $735/month car payment, mindlessly strolling the aisles of Target is not a weekly ritual, Amazon boxes don’t pile up on doorsteps, and if you want a collagen-infused smoothie, you’ll definitely have to DIY it.

She notes that part of this is possible for her because she’s a childless freelancer living in lower-cost countries—yep, that’ll help—but her point is that a lot of this American consumerism is completely optional, for everybody. And she notes but doesn’t fully say that living without a car and relying on walking and transit makes it clear what a time and money suck driving can be, especially when everything is far apart.

Kind of like Dubler talking about YIMBYs needing to be political, the conservatism in me sort of recoils at this Europe adventurer telling me I spend too much money, but the thing is, she’s probably right.

Mystery Solved: Here’s How ‘My Favorite Things’ From ‘The Sound of Music’ Became a Christmas Song, Billboard, Fred Bronson, December 21, 2017

The first time “My Favorite Things” became associated with Christmas was in 1961, when Julie Andrews performed the song on a Garry Moore TV holiday special – long before she starred in the movie version of The Sound of Music, which was filmed in 1964 and released in April 1965.

Interesting! I found this article because I heard this song on the radio at Christmastime, and I thought “Why the heck is this a Christmas song now?” and had to look it up. Apparently it’s sort of been a Christmas song for a long time. And it’s been included on many Christmas albums.

The article outlines the history of how it ended up that way, in a good amount of detail. It’s a nice read about something light.

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Related Reading:

New and Old #178

New and Old #179

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