NIMBY Aesthetics: Thoreau, Transcendentalism, “Walden Ponding”

Walden Pond in Concord, MA. This is where Henry David Thoreau spent many of his years writing and formulating his ideas about individuality and “Civil Disobedience”. (His mom would come by once in a while and drop off some snacks for him, of course! Thanks mom!)

Housing politics is a weird place. When it comes to housing issues, liberals turn into conservatives (yes, I support low-income housing, BUT…), conservatives into socialists (yes, I support individual property rights, BUT…), anarchists into organizers, libertarians into collectivists, and just about every self-contradiction in between. Hypocrisies are a gold-mine for arts projects since it’s the source of what we call “interest”, but it can be a bit much at times, even for me.

Ever since starting the YIMBY Arts project I’ve been looking for ways to talk about aesthetics in housing issues in a more coherent way. If this hasn’t been said already, I think it’ll be good for YIMBYs to explicitly identify themselves as “urbanists” since it’s been a useful keyword for outreach, alliance-building, and networking purposes, at least for me. YIMBYism is sometimes referred to as the “New Urbanist” movement and I think if we embrace the title there it would help to give the movement a common thread for its members to hold onto across the globe.

That aside, as the YIMBY movement grows and starts to gain more support from mainstream candidates, I’m fairly confident that we will start to see governments take a more pragmatic approach towards addressing the housing crisis, even at the local levels. The obstructionists, however…