1. I'm more optimistic about YIMBY in the US than in expensive-capital European countries like France, Sweden, and the UK.
2. The main mechanism I posited last year for why there's no social housing push is that the working class already has decent housing.
3. This housing might be smaller than they'd like, or have roaches, or be in high-unemployment areas, but it exists.
4. The turn-of-the-century story of 10-person families living in one room no longer exists in the developed world.
5. That's why I'm pessimistic about social housing. The Million Program built 12 annual housing units/1,000 people; Paris today builds 2.5.
6. Moreover, in some places, esp. the US, excessive local empowerment makes it harder to upzone for market-rate housing.
7. Because it's opposed to local notables, the YIMBY praxis is the preemption law (e.g. SB 827 in California), not the fair housing lawsuit.
8. However, the national mood in the US is friendly to YIMBYism, I think more so than in Britain or France or Sweden, for a few reasons.
9. First, the educated middle class is geographically mobile, moving between a number of rich cities, like NY and SF.
10. This means the American educated middle class is more interested in policies that enable people to move to a new city, hence YIMBY.
11. Second, for the same reason, this middle class is national and can form national groups of common interest, opposing local groups.
12. Third, American cities repel families, on the theory that middle-class families must move to the suburbs and have a lawn to mow.
13. This means the middle class of Boston or SF grew up in the suburbs, not the city, and needs market-rate housing, not local preference.
14. Fourth, American (and Canadian) cities are replete with single-family housing, which YIMBYism would replace with apartment buildings.
15. Here and in Stockholm, YIMBY means replacing mid-rise apartment buildings with high-rises, and building city center office towers.
16. Both pushes (SFR to mid-rise, mid-rise to high-rise) are good and both annoy preservationists, but the former is easier.
17. Middle-class Americans can point out that beloved cities (Paris!) are mid-rise, in favor of replacing single-family housing.
18. Middle-class Europeans can only point to a narrow set of high-rise places, all in places Europeans look down on (the US, East Asia).
19. Americans are insular, monolingual, and stuck-up, but the more educated ones recognize Paris is nice, even if they won't move here.
20. In contrast, Europeans would not recognize the benefits of high-rises in New York or Hong Kong.
21. Now, if you look at the four reasons I'm listing, you might recognize one rich American city doesn't fit: New York.
22. New York has a stronger local identity in the educated middle class than Boston or SF, and less white flight in that social class.
23. Anecdotally, the Americans I met in grad school were mostly from the suburbs, but the ones from central cities were from New York.
24. And the New Yorkers I know at Intercon are native to the city; the New Englanders are rarely native to Cambridge and never to Boston.
25. Finally, New Yorkers view themselves as separate from and superior to other Americans, in ways Bostonians and San Franciscans don't.
26. The result is that my explanation for why American YIMBYism is stronger would predict NY YIMBY should be weak - which it is.
28. American YIMBYism, with its center in San Francisco, is steadily taking over as the voice of the national educated class.
29. It speaks to people whose oyster is the entire Boston-Seattle-San Diego-Miami quadrilateral (and helps immigrants as a byproduct).
30. It substitutes for its lack of local social capital by leveraging national social networks (often of tech workers, but not only them).
31. While superficially disconnected from civil rights, it relies on the civil rights notion that local governance can be bigoted.
32. This way it weds civil rights concerns with liberal economics, opposing nationally weaker forces (the far left, local community groups).
33. European YIMBYism is a necessary and good but small movement. American YIMBYism is becoming the voice of middle-class liberalism. /end
