DO PEOPLE OBJECT TO DEVELOPMENT—OR MOSTLY DEVELOPERS MAKING MONEY? A UCLA study shows that a desire to punish developers drives anti-homebuilding attitudes.
Back decades ago when I was involved in business, I read the book How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success In Selling by Frank Bettger. (He sold insurance.)
He made the point that when people say "no" about buying, they have a "public" objection that sounds good, but a deeper objection that doesn't sound good that they don't want to state. He always would say in response, "Yes, but what is the real reason you don't want to buy?" and that would usually lead into a deeper conversation.
“Regardless of whatever you’re selling, you must get to your prospect’s true objection.“Sightline Institute calls our attention to this paper from researchers at UCLA, "Opposition to Development or Opposition to Developers? Survey Evidence from Los Angeles County on Attitudes towards New Housing."
It reminds me of the arguments made by Frank Bettger.
Granted, lots of new projects are poorly designed, don't fit in well with historic architecture, etc., but plenty of new projects are decent enough, providing new amenities that help to build stronger commercial districts and more interesting neighborhoods.
(The problems with many projects are really about failure of planning systems to provide better requirements and oversight to produce as a matter of routine better projects, instead of value engineered aesthetically-challenged projects.)
Excoriating developers is a form of misdirection and an attempt to hide self-interest. I believe that people arguing against a project because greedy developers are the beneficiaries making profits, and benefit extra-normally is a form of mis-direction, of making palatable their opposition to projects, opposition that they would have anyway in all likelihood, even if the project was of high quality, even if it were constructed on a nonprofit basis.
I have to read the paper but I think that people seize on the “developers making money” trope merely as a way to criticize a project that they oppose generally, regardless of “developers making money.” This is capitalism after all.
1. In LA, transit activists who say rail is for whites fought against Measure J calling it "corporate welfare” for the companies that design and build rail systems ("Foes of transit sales tax extension face uphill battle," Los Angeles Times; Bus Riders Union: Transit Justice, Not Corporate Welfare – No on Measure J," Streetsblog LA
Note the photo in this LA Times article, showing a “corporate welfare” check from LA MTA (Metro) to Parsons Brinckerhoff:
Lisa Korbatov, right, of Beverly Hills joins Rosa Miranda of the Bus Riders Union holding blank checks highlighting Measure J's corporate sponsors and beneficiaries during an October rally. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times / March 31, 2013)
2. In Suburban Maryland outside DC, saying that the light rail program exists merely so “developers can make money” has been mentioned by opponents in letters to the editor in the Washington Post and the now no longer published Gazette suburban newspapers.
3. In my own community, “developers making money” has been used to criticize proposals for a multiunit housing building on the Metrorail station property, etc.
I think in all of these cases, concerns raised about developers, construction companies, and engineering consulting groups like Parsons making money is misdirection.
They’re just seizing on that trope to provide what they think is an argument that doesn’t appear to be self-serving.
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Years ago, Dan Malouff, an area resident, planner, and blogger made a good comment about opposition to conversion of no longer needed schools to housing or other worthy uses, when people would say no, they'd rather have a park--for example opposition to construction on a "park space" on Georgia Avenue ("DC residents: Plan to replace public housing will jeopardize popular popular," Washington Post), is ironic because the park replaced a demolished building and was specifically termed temporary.
He made the point that opponents to such adaptive reuse projects seize on a park use as the least worse alternative (not his language) to any form development whatsoever.
I think he's right.
Labels: capitalism, civic engagement, land use planning, nimbyism, participatory democracy and empowered participation, real estate development
posted by Richard Layman @ 4:27 PM&Permanent Link
2 Comments:
https://slate.com/business/2018/09/black-neighborhoods-white-racism.html
Now there it a lo to unpack there.
I'd say 75% of NIMBYism is an externality issue. CBA are a way to address that but lets be honest there is very little B in a CBA.
If anything, I'd tie a CBA directly into your later post on Main streets.
When I worked the Census in 2000, I did some enumerating on Connecticut Ave. NW in Cleveland Park. The African-American I was talking to in one of those nice, big expensive apartment buildings, assumed I wouldn't think that African-Americans could be well off. "I said, you're living here, why wouldn't you be well off."
But yes, moving to DC in 1987 made me a lot more conscious of the reality of a black middle class and needing to be focused on SES, that "race" is a different construct from SES. So middle class black space was and is real, be it Brookland, a lot of Ward 4, H Street back in the 1990s, etc.
A lot of whites probably have a problem with this because our movements within a metropolitan area are so constricted. E.g., in Detroit not a lot of people are going to travel to Palmer Park c. 1990 or 2000.
But the reality is that this isn't just a white phenomenon. When I wrote my "Commerz in the Hood" series in 2006, one of the conversations that infused it was with Karen Alston, who had been with the North Capital Main St. program as a neighborhood resident volunteer. She talked about how her friends living in the suburbs refused to come visit her in Eckington because it "wasn't safe." Karen is Black and the friends she referred to are also Black.
http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2007/03/time-passages.html
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Anyway, "benefits." I've come to realize that there is a lot more going on behind this than I fully understand, because I don't have a grounding in anthropology.
The real issue is that people have an expectation that developers and businesses have a responsibility to "buy into" the neighborhood that there is a "kinship of community" and that to be a part of it, you have to contribute.
I first had that realization in this piece
http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2012/12/in-lower-income-neighborhoods-are.html
which is two pieces in one, and too long.
But clearly it's not merely a phenomenon of the low income neighborhood.
wrt benefits, I wrote a lot about that c. 2005-2008 and came up with my master framework.
http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2008/02/community-benefits-agreements-revised.html
http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2008/06/community-benefits-agreements-revised.html
The basic problem is that DC planning at the neighborhood scale has so many gaps. One is the failure to develop a sense of consensus on neighborhood priorities.
When you have that kind of list, then you can direct benefits in a focused, concerted way in an open, transparent process.
But my argument is that we leave these processes underdefined to make the cost to developers as low as possible. It's one element of the GM agenda I suppose and the major value return for investing in political campaigns.
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