Yesterday a friend of mine sent me this NY Times article covering a site called New York YIMBY.
I’ve spoken about the term YIMBY before and this site is exactly that: a site dedicated to “saying yes in my back yard” to new development in New York. It was founded by 23 year old Nikolai Fedak and currently receives 75,000 monthly visitors. He has plans to expand to other cities and I’ve already emailed him to see if he has any plans for a Toronto YIMBY.
At a time when it’s common to hate on developers and new developments, it’s refreshing to see a site dedicated to the exact opposite. That’s not to say that all developments are good (New York YIMBY has no problem blasting the ones that suck, as it should), but it’s certainly framing development as a positive thing for cities.
In growing cities like New York and Toronto, development is going to happen. And so I would rather we focus on how to make it happen in the best way possible instead of just saying no.
