Thursday, July 2, 2009

More Regressive Progressives

You know the type, those who think that having a hybrid car alone will help their environmental credentials but don't do much else. They are also the ones that push against new development just because they don't like how it looks or feels, and they'll cry traffic! Those are the folks that got called out in the aptly named article: You're Not an Environmentalist if You're a NIMBY. So true. The hardest part is taking folks seriously who want to stop growth on high capacity transit corridors or in the core cities themselves. Yet with the climate that we have, San Francisco and Oakland are the best suited for emissions reducing development.

4 comments:

kenf said...

I love this! I posted it on Facebook, and my neighborhood email list. Many of my neighbors think that owning a Prius absolves them of any and all other responsibility to protect our environment.

crzwdjk said...

Ah yes, the San Francisco/Berkeley "liberals" who are really conservatives at heart, they just have a different set of signals for membership in their club.

Christopher Stefan said...

Wow, I thought some of the NIMBY types in the Seattle area were bad. The commenters on that article are just out there.

I suspect some of those nuts would even oppose replacing surface parking lots or auto-oriented businesses like car lots or gas stations with a 6 story apartment buildings.

As to the article I find it amusing to see Seattle's zoning for 75 foot wood frame structures being held up as some sort of a model. They are somewhat hated here as being boring, ugly, and too cookie cutter. On the other hand most of the critics are trying to find ways of getting better buildings with the same or greater density rather than saying "not one single square foot of new construction". The Stranger's Slog or Hugeasscity often have some discussion of this.

Matt Fisher said...

When will this tomfoolery stop?