Suburban NIMBY issues and their merits

 

The merits of local issues 2/13/23

On the face of it, local issues are about discreet things: traffic, parking, congestion, fire evacuation, drought, density, zoning, design standards, building height, neighborhood character, greedy and unethical developers, Development Code, crime etc. However, underlying any of these specific issues are class and material interests which serve to frame how these issues get spun.

 

Framing, spin, and material interests are strongly linked. A working-class renter who can’t find an affordable place to live in Sonoma Valley is going to see all of the above issues in a different light than an aging property owner.

 

Is it divisive, bullying, hate speech, shaming, or name calling to identify NIMBYism as a demographic, territorial defense pattern and bring a class analysis to the table? Not really. A past Sonoma City Council even set a goal to consider interests before positions and called it “the Sonoma Way.”

 

A class/ race analysis of suburban property owner’s interests, that overwhelmingly conforms to a NIMBY pattern, can bring a defensive reaction that seeks to deflect the validity these frames and turn the debate into one where NIMBYs are simply the victims of mean people. Herein lies a framing battle to define the terms.

 

Here’s a frame: The US suburbs are territory that was discovered on the impetus of white flight, colonized, and now dominated by unfairly privileged, white, Boomer conquerors. Decision-making in the suburbs is a power and control battle against “growth” that might threaten low-density homeowner’s hegemony. City and County staff, new conquerors desiring new homes, and working-class high-density housing projects are all conflated with “growth” and are the enemies. Developers are all avatars of evil and “sprawl.” Saving the environment is the unifying battle cry that conveniently elides an underlying systemic segregation. Hence a raft of new teg housing laws that seeks to bust open this regime suburban protectionism, i.e., NIMBYism.

 

Working class servants and essential workers go against long odd to fight for any inclusion here. The conquerors have all the cards, just like colonialism.  

 

When we look at the history of Sonoma and Sonoma Valley development issues, from Cows Not Casinos to SDC and Hanna, one thread stays constant: the aggregate land use issues add up to a long-term fight to maintain an exclusive suburban stasis. This is a classic, suburban NIMBY pattern. It all adds up. The shoe fits.

 

What we have now is an increasingly aging Sonoma Valley population, of Boomer homeowners and a dearth of working class and young families. Everyone may agree that a better-balanced society is desirable but no one wants this balance near them. A class analysis is apt to deconstruct what’s going on in suburbia and Sonoma Valley. Such an analysis calls for more inclusion along the lines of the specific issues listed in the introductory paragraph.