The federal government owns 1/3 of the land in the US, and could use 1% of that to build new cities with development completed through competitive RFP's to contractors with the best proposals.

It's kind of a wild ass idea and one I've always through about. You would be able to immediately have "smart cities" with more intelligent layouts, 5G, connected devices for traffic flow, etc.

Have other YIMBYs though about this before or have opinions?

Hey, there seems to be a jolt of urbanists switching over to Bluesky from X/Twitter this week. The app now has 14+ mil users with 6 mil Monthly Active Users (a common metric for measuring activity). If you're interested in trying out Bluesky or expanding your community, there are some great "Starter Packs" of YIMBY and urbanist accounts:

• Urbanism Worldwide: https://bsky.app/starter-pack/philmarfisi.bsky.social/3l3jl2fov5l2n
• Urbanism, Bikes, Transit, Housing: https://bsky.app/starter-pack/fema.bsky.social/3kztrj7b3tw2u
• United States YIMBYs: https://bsky.app/starter-pack/adamtheo.com/3l7wuktatco2u

If you're already active on Bluesky, live in the U.S, and want to be added to my 'United States YIMBYs' Starter Pack above then ping me.

Bluesky is a microblogging app that looks very similar to Twitter, but has some major differences that make it better IMO:

• Users own and control their own data, even able to self-host it if they want.
• Much better moderation features, including subscribe-able moderation lists and a "nuclear block".
• Customizable feeds with no top-down algorithm. Instead users create and share their own. There are feeds for urbanism, transportation, cycling, and even some cities!

NIMBYs block off building in one state, why isn't there massive development across the state line?

Like many, I was blindsided and upset that Kamala lost the race, especially since her platform seemed to be the only one offering a solution to the housing crisis. And though I didn't think that the republican party would do anything to alleviate the root cause of housing costs, I'm actually hopeful after seeing some YIMBY dialogue by republican spokespeople.

Check out this speech by Vivek Ramaswamy starting at 28:21. He acknowledges that unaffordable housing is directly caused by local zoning and a lack of supply. Unfortunately, it does sound like he calls out the supply around single-family homes, which has caused the car-dependent sprawling mess that we today.

There's still really nothing from republicans in terms of what policy would look like (and since this is largely a local issue, not sure the best role for the federal government to play). But I do have optimism that housing affordability is an issue that both political parties can get on board with. There's really no reason this should be a partisan issue.

Obviously the federal elections didn’t go our way.

But did any of you guys have local YIMBY wins at least?

I'm curious how many of you already work in development, real estate, policy, etc. related jobs, or since joining YIMBY aspire/plan to take on a job that is more related.

Are you guys proud of me?🥹

I've been thinking about this for a while. Cost of living is crushing people, and the biggest part of that is housing. I don't know if all that many people care that a dozen eggs are $3 instead of $2 these days, but it sure as hell matters that a starter home pretty much (a) is $4-500K in most places and more in a top school district, or (b) doesn't exist at all. It's so interesting to me that young people and particularly young men have heavily swung to the right. I wouldn't be surprised if housing is a big part of that. For a young guy, if you can't be a provider and build a stable life, you really feel like you aren't participating in society. It's hard to date, marry, have kids, etc. Like I definitely know plenty of gen Z guys who are nearing 30 years old and still living at home or struggling to make ends meet on their own. The cost of housing is absolutely the biggest issue preventing them from living their lives. I dunno. I'm not at all shocked that Trump won. I think Biden's administration did a great job setting us up for a soft landing in terms of overall inflation, and the economy has done really well under Biden. But the "vibecession" never went away and I'd argue was never just vibes - housing was a huge part of it and the Biden administration never did much of anything on housing policy. Just to give an example, it's awesome that an entry level worker these days can make $15-20/hour. That's way more than five or ten years ago. In terms of *most* inflation-affected items like groceries and gas, entry level income has probably outpaced inflation. But decent housing really has outpaced wage growth and it's really destabilizing. I'm not saying Trump's policies on housing are any good - they are actually idiotic, like the rest of him. He's just trying to do culture war populism with his policies (if you can even call it that) promoting SFH and car culture. But Democrats are especially NIMBY-prone, blue states are especially expensive and hard to build in, and people definitely see that it's cheaper and superficially nicer to live in places like Texas and Arizona. I don't think they give a shit that Texas style suburbia is super carbon-intensive, has high road death rates, makes you fat and unhappy, and shifts your expenses over to your car. That's all kind of academic/abstract for most people. I know this isn't the most coherent argument because I'm just typing it out quickly during a break at work but anyways, there's my two cents. Discuss if you want.

Hello fellow YIMBYers!

This is more a rant than a discussion but, observing, reading discussions about our subject around the world (at least in english), I've always felt somebody is always missing: the builders. There are always some individual small enterprise here or there talking, but I have yet to see a under-organized, under-lobbied interest sector than the (residential) construction sector.

Yet, is one of the lowest-hanging fruit in the lobbying sector. In a world of deindustrialization, a sure source of middle-class, blue-collar jobs. For governments, a source of income coming from the construction and the property taxes. For liberal-leaning people, a source of diversity and revitalization for lots of neighboorhod. But You won't see a penny spent in an ad touting those things, let alone in a campaign for zoning reform.

Some people might observe that this could be more of interests of some Big Real Estate in restricting supply, but I don't believe this make sense looking how restrict the sector is in some spaces, esp. in the Anglosphere. How somebody who has to build things will benefit from the near zero, practically negative discounting depreciation, building rate from the UK?

You could be thinking that this makes our movement more pure, a battle in the David and Goliath fashion, but unless we are discussing taking arms and hanging HOAs and local council members, we are looking more like an young meat-shield for uninterested parts against the housing-asset-rich, political-dominating boomers. Even when our victories should be celebrated, it's still very small in results. Yimbys in CA mobilizated the powerful machine of Democratic Party there, yet they still building close to nothing, far less in the entire states than my city alone (São Paulo), which has an zoning law written by an anti-construction left mayor.

I don't discuss that we are fighting the Good Fight. For some of us, we are literally fighting for our survival in cities. But It bugs me how the stakeholders are so paralyzed and how we are alone.

Hello,

I’m planning to explore how we could address Budapest’s housing challenges by increasing housing supply, focusing beyond traditional government-led housing projects., beacuse that is basically all they talk about, and they are very well aware, how the is no funds in hungary for this kind of projects. Currently, Budapest’s rent prices rank among the least affordable in Europe, yet the conversation on expanding housing supply remains limited.

For my piece, I aim to:

1. Introduce the fundamentals of YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) policies and examine their impacts on other cities.
2. Illustrate how similar measures could help curb rent increases in Budapest.
3. Incorporate relevant data on housing and rental trends, with an emphasis on district-level insights within Budapest, or maybe with other bigger hungarian cities, although Hungarian housing /rent price data is somewhat scarce.

This research is part of a municipal leadership program for Budapest, and my goal is to encourage policy discussions around the city's housing supply constraints. I hope to highlight how factors like vacant properties and short-term rentals, foreigners etc. are not the main issue.

Could you recommend any impactful studies or accessible methods to analyze how these policies could make a difference? I’m particularly interested in finding ways to steer the conversation towards practical YIMBY solutions that could ease Budapest’s housing market pressures.