When you argue for housing reform to legalize denser development in our cities, you quickly learn that some people hate density. Like, really hate density, with visceral disgust and contempt for any development pattern that involves buildings being tall or close together. (Don’t even get them started on buildings that are tall and close together.) “Pilling humans into meat lockers only destroys all that gives meaning to being a human”, said one comment on a video of ours. Another referred to high-rises as “non-places” and the people who live there as “non-people”. A comment in a newspaper about Edmonton’s housing reform said “apparently […] we can no longer afford to live like humans but rather like animals in stacked compartmental cages”. The Jericho Lands, a high-rise housing development in Vancouver, was opposed by a “coalition” that said tall buildings “do not respect the land or the people”, and are “#unliveable & #unlovable”.

It won’t be a surprise that we think these reactions are absurd and completely detached from reality. Lots of people happily live in or near apartments in cities all around the world, and if you treat this as some unthinkable or absurd living situation then you’re in a bubble, plain and simple. With that said, it’s true that denser urban living isn’t for everyone. There are lots of reasons why you might want a more spacious house yourself, maybe with a yard, and although it’s harder to understand why some people are really bothered by just seeing other people living in apartments in their neighbourhood, aesthetics are subjective and we try not to judge too much. The question is what do we do about these preferences and conflicts. The standard assumption in urban planning over the past few decades is that if you don’t want your neighbourhood to change then you can legally block it from changing. We want to offer an alternative solution. If you don’t want to experience higher densities or see taller buildings, you shouldn’t live in a city, especially a major city. You should live in a small town or rural area that naturally suits your preferences better.

We both grew up in small towns and rural areas and still have friends and family there, so we understand better than many other city-dwellers that life in a big city or even a small city isn’t for everyone. But what’s what confuses us about urban NIMBYism where people live in places like Vancouver or Sydney and fight against density. You have an endless supply of small towns you can live in if you don’t want to worry about traffic, parking, shadows, or seeing a residential skyscraper anywhere near you. The people who opposed Jericho Lands wanted a “medium-rise town centre” instead. If tall buildings bother you that much, why live in Vancouver? Why not live in an actual town? You can even go more remote and not have any neighbours at all, if you want.

Having moved away from small towns ourselves, we expect that the answer would start with jobs. Some jobs are inherently local and needed everywhere, like teachers and plumbers, but others are specialized and only exist in bigger centres, like in tech, research, and finance. Cities just provide more different jobs and opportunities for advancement than what you can find in any small town. Remote work gets around this a bit, but employment is still probably the biggest downside to living smaller and more remote. After jobs, you can cite better access to education, healthcare, education, and cultural amenities as reasons so many people are drawn to city living.

We’re not exactly shocked that urban NIMBYs don’t immediately jump to moving to a small town. But here’s the thing. The exact same reasons you (as a hypothetical NIMBY) want to stay in your city are the reasons other people want to live in your city too. You want to live in Vancouver or Sydney for the jobs, schools, hospitals, and sports — well, other people want to live in those cities for the exact same reasons. But by fighting against new housing, urban NIMBYs are effectively monopolizing or limiting access to those amenities. The fundamental problem of urban NIMBYism is that so many people want access to city amenities without having to deal with traffic or shadows or consequences of other people having access to those amenities too.

Cities are like airports. If you’ve ever flown out of a big, busy airport, it can be overwhelming. Checking in, security, finding the gate, and getting your baggage can all be a pain compared to a smaller airport, especially during holiday seasons. But in return you get substantially more flights to substantially more destinations, often at a better price. Traveling from the same place as other people has inherent advantages, like lots of flight options, and inherent disadvantages, like lots of people needing to go through security at the same time. The urbanist or YIMBY approach would be to embrace this and build the airport to meet demand. More transit to (and around) the airport, more security processing capacity, and so on. If big airports aren’t worth the hassle for you, no problem; don’t fly out of one. The NIMBY approach to airports would say “well, the airport meets my needs already; what we really need to do is cap capacity and raise prices for people who haven’t used the airport before”. This analogy isn’t perfect because you can build new airports in a way that you usually can’t do for cities, and we’d all like to see trains better compete with flying for short-to-medium distance travel, but the basic point stands. If you want lots of flight options, you need to accept lots of other people using the airport too. If you want the jobs, services, and amenities of a city, you need to accept lots of other people living in the city too.

We talk positively about cities and density on this channel and that might give you the impression we think city life is the best and everyone should be happy living in the highest density possible but that’s not really it. Our point is more that densities should be allowed to match the actual demand to live in a place. Urban NIMBYs don’t think about it like this, but density limits amount to monopolizing high-demand locations, amenities, and opportunities for a smaller number of people. If you want lower density aesthetics or lifestyles, move to a lower-demand place. Having lived in the full spectrum from rural to big city we understand these trade-offs, and it seems like a lot of urban NIMBYism is about trying to avoid any trade-offs. It might seem harsh for us to tell people to uproot and move, and we’re not unsympathetic. But suggesting people voluntarily move if they don’t like new buildings is much better than actually forcing renters and younger people to move because we blocked new housing and priced them out of the city.

But here’s a prediction. We don’t actually think tall housing developments like the Jericho Lands in Vancouver actually bother people that much that they’ll sell their homes to flee the shadows, blocked views, and traffic. If we had to guess, we suspect neighbours will be annoyed at first and then go back to enjoying their big detached homes in the city near the beach with all the jobs and universities. That’s because our system of community input encourages people to catastrophize new developments and exaggerate concerns like views and aesthetics because they can block new construction at relatively minor cost to themselves. Say what you want about the idea of suggesting people move, but at least it’s asking people to put their money where their mouth is and decide if a new development really will be such a disaster for their quality-of-life or whether it will be closer to a minor annoyance that they’d rather avoid but don’t really care that much about.