There’s an emerging movement in urban politics across the country.
People are openly advocating for more development in their neighborhoods. And in response to the more common sentiment in cities – people who say “not in my backyard,” often pejoratively referred to as “NIMBYs” – members of the movement are instead calling themselves YIMBYs, as in, you guessed it, “yes in my backyard.”
The nascent movement held a national gathering last week in Boulder, Colo. Two San Diegans attended, and joined the show this week to tell us what they learned.
We asked Maya Rosas, a local land-use consultant, and Sam Ollinger, executive director of the nonprofit Bike San Diego, how they became part of the YIMBY movement, what divisions exist among environmentalists within the movement and whether San Diego has much of a YIMBY coalition compared with other cities.
In the first part of the show, Scott Lewis and I also covered arguments between liberals on SANDAG’s proposal to raise taxes for regional transportation projects, talk-radio host Carl DeMaio’s tax-free stadium proposal and what’s going on with the reinvented Tribune Publishing company, tronc.