Here we'll disagree. I think the choice to center housing abundance around infill over the preferences of existing homeowners in already sought after places is the quintessence of a bad, teeth-pulling decision. 1/

It was a kind of original sin that's distracted us from more fruitful approaches, which would involve more overt public risk-bearing by building on initially less-sought-after greenfields, and trying to turn those into new desirable places. 2/

The anti-NIMBY trench warfare approach to me has been a catastrophic enemy of the good. Because great places aren't inherently scarce, but the approach implicitly accepts existing scarcity (of neighborhoods and cities that are desirable) and has us fighting over control of those. /fin