CityLab Daily: What NIMBYs Want

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Backyard battleground: California’s housing crisis has spurred a deep divide in the state’s largely progressive metro areas. On one side of this debate stand the NIMBYs—often seen as older suburban homeowners fiercely resistant to any new development. Their young nemeses are the YIMBYs—Millennial urbanites who insist on squeezing in new housing wherever it can go. That generational clash has served to reduce each camp to cartoons, but it hasn’t captured the nuances of the region’s bitter struggle over housing supply; neither side seems interested in the hopes or fears of their adversaries, or their love of their cities and neighborhoods.