For sure. When the paradigm of environmentalism has been stopping bad things from being built your entire life it's tough to switch to a paradigm of building good things.
It's hard even for leftists to get past "greedy developers" and loss of trees and gentrification fears and the experienced reality that most of the stuff that is visibly getting built kind of sucks.
People have also sunk their entire working lives into houses that they love (and cannot meaningfully profit from selling) and many decades into communities whose character *does* mean something to them.
The promise of a pleasant new urbanism is a really hard sell to people who have watched those kinds of promises fizzle, over and over, into subscription model abandonware.
Corner cutting, bait-and-switch and great projects abandoned with the next budget cycle seem to be Seattle's signature moves. I'm not sure I can work up any big hope for change right now, even though it is desperately needed.
Sure it is, however, “selling” building under the guise of affordability just so developers can make ill-gotten profit, mayors get kickbacks and ppl STILL remain homeless (as well as homelessness growing bc of it), is worse.
Liars are deplorable.
That’s a wild narrative you’re telling yourself.
1. Boomers (or more likely their kids) will make vastly more ill-gotten profits than developers.
2. call me naive, but I think people should be paid fairly for their work.
3. People remain homeless largely because we don’t build enough housing
I guess I wouldn’t describe this group as hard core anti-density advocates to begin with but I’ve had some chats with my friends parents and my parents friends who are thinking about things differently now that they see that “the kids” can’t afford to live close.
I also think we over index on who shows up in a lot of ways. 100 people in a council meeting is a lot of people. 100 people in our communities is a rounding error.
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It's hard even for leftists to get past "greedy developers" and loss of trees and gentrification fears and the experienced reality that most of the stuff that is visibly getting built kind of sucks.
Liars are deplorable.
1. Boomers (or more likely their kids) will make vastly more ill-gotten profits than developers.
2. call me naive, but I think people should be paid fairly for their work.
3. People remain homeless largely because we don’t build enough housing
In my line of work I don't get to write any demographic off.