‘Emergency’ can mean many things. It can mean breaking a 30mph speed limit by a small amount to rush a desperately sick person to the hospital or it can mean driving recklessly and potentially mowing down a pedestrian. The hardliners of the YIMBY movement are of the second kind. Sixty stories is frankly ridiculous and speaks to a weirdly childlike obsession with size. Maintaining such gargantuan buildings is a nightmare. Much better to follow the path of gently densifying suburban and exurban areas. Building a 3-8 story apartment block to last on a single family lot will do more for the environment and society than a mega tower. (Especially if it’s built in a style people actually like and aren’t screaming to tear down but that’s an even harder pill for the YIMBY extremist to accept.)
Your response was so informed and thoughtful!
Thank you! That’s what I aim for
Bottcher is better-than-replacement on the issue but I agree that he should say that he’s “Yimby-lite” or something similar.
‘Emergency’ can mean many things. It can mean breaking a 30mph speed limit by a small amount to rush a desperately sick person to the hospital or it can mean driving recklessly and potentially mowing down a pedestrian. The hardliners of the YIMBY movement are of the second kind. Sixty stories is frankly ridiculous and speaks to a weirdly childlike obsession with size. Maintaining such gargantuan buildings is a nightmare. Much better to follow the path of gently densifying suburban and exurban areas. Building a 3-8 story apartment block to last on a single family lot will do more for the environment and society than a mega tower. (Especially if it’s built in a style people actually like and aren’t screaming to tear down but that’s an even harder pill for the YIMBY extremist to accept.)
Opposing on height alone looks suspect, considering more housing in NYC basically implies more height. The twitter dunks wrote themselves.
More reasoning in the original tweets would've helped.
I'll be interested to see how this conversation evolves, and the reasoning along with it.