Tommy Washbush / Freepik assets
Protest signs switching from "NIMBY" to "YIMBY."
I think the vast majority of Madisonians can agree on these three things.
Housing is too expensive.
Sprawl is bad.
Mass transit is good.
And, of course, all three issues are intertwined. Building up instead of out will use less land and create the densities that support transit. Greater densities also should reduce housing costs in the long run if supply can catch up with demand. Moreover, total living costs are lower in places served by transit when you take into account the cost of housing and transportation combined.
The trick is to turn those three points of general agreement into specific policies that accomplish the goals most of us share. And the trickiness of this is playing out right now in a couple of places.
First, there’s the Hill Farm Swim Club, a private pool on the city’s west side. For now the water is just fine. Nobody is proposing filling it in and building a 10-story apartment building, but that’s just the specter that Capital Times publisher and columnist Paul Fanlund raised in a piece a few weeks ago. His cause for concern was the city’s new proposed plan for the Hill Farms neighborhood and surrounding areas which calls for making infill development easier. Low density places, like the land the pool sits on, would be upzoned for more intense uses.
The plan that Fanlund worries about would not, in itself, result in rezoning the land. That would need to be accomplished in what planners are calling “proactive rezonings,” and those would need to be approved in separate votes by the city council. Proactive rezoning means bringing zoning in line with land use plans before there’s any specific proposal for a development. What’s gone unrecognized in all this is that the plan also calls for the proactive rezoning of some parks that are currently zoned for housing — in other words, protecting the parks. And the plan calls for the establishment of three new parks and the improvement of existing ones.
So, to characterize the city’s efforts as some sort of wholesale sellout to developers is inaccurate and unfair. Nobody is going to roil the chlorinated waters as long as the community supports the pool. And simply changing the zoning to conform with the long-term plan doesn’t make anything happen by itself.
In any event, Fanlund’s column got people worked up and, as Eric Murphy reported, they took out their fears on city staff who came to the neighborhood to discuss the plan. Staff members took a lot of heat, when in fact all they were doing was taking the broad community consensus on affordable housing, restraining sprawl, and support for mass transit and turning that into specific, tangible public policy. The rumor of Hill Farm's demise had been greatly exaggerated.
Several miles away, on State Street, another related drama is playing out next door to Elizabeth Link Peace Park. There, a developer proposes to tear down three undistinguished two-story buildings and replace them with a six-story building containing ground floor retail and 25 units of housing. To my eyes the proposed structure looks better than what’s there now and it would provide more of the infill housing we say we want.
But the Plan Commission twice rejected a demolition permit for the project, most recently at the end of March. Now, Ald. Juliana Bennett, who represents that block as part of her 2nd District, is challenging that decision and asking the full city council to override it. Supporting her move are two of her colleagues who also happen to sit on the Plan Commission and who voted to grant the permit, Alds. Yannette Figueroa Cole and John Duncan.
This is a remarkable thing because not so long ago three of the most powerful political interests in the city were neighborhood associations, preservationists, and the city’s citizen-led commissions and committees. For any alder to challenge any of the three was virtually unheard of. The unspoken rule — well, it was often spoken — was that one could not “respect” these groups without also agreeing with them.
So, what Ald. Bennett is doing is a sea change in city politics and, from my point of view, a welcome one. Of course, neighborhood associations, preservationists and city committees should have input. But there’s a difference between taking their views into account — and trying to accommodate them to the extent practicable — and letting them call the shots. It’s often the case that a community can agree on broad goals, but then conflicts arise when we start to figure out what it will take to make those goals on-the-ground realities. Usually, it’s the policy makers at a broader level who can see above the more narrow concerns of specific interest groups and narrowly focused committees.
But as for accommodation, in the case of the Hill Farm pool, perhaps that parcel could be left alone. It’s become a symbolic flashpoint for what should be an otherwise popular plan, and I doubt it will make much difference to the overall thrust of it anyway. That pool’s likely to remain just as it is no matter what the plan says.
I don’t know what accommodations can or should be made in the case of the State Street project. Whatever minor historic significance the buildings might have is far outweighed, in my mind, by the more important goal of providing more housing. And, at least for my tastes, what’s proposed looks a lot better than what’s there now.
Along the way there’s another city ordinance that the council should change. Bennett’s challenge will require a 14-vote supermajority in order to prevail. That’s undemocratic because a council elected directly by the people should not have to summon a supermajority to overturn the decision of an unelected citizen body.
All this churn is part of a broader national movement, sometimes called YIMBY, for Yes In My Back Yard, a reference to the old NIMBY, which of course was just the opposite. YIMBY is a welcome recognition that, if we want to do what’s right by the environment and we want to reduce the cost of housing, we need to start saying yes to more development in our own neighborhoods.
Here’s what’s true. The city is growing. Change is inevitable. We can sprawl out into more of Dane County’s rich farmland or we can grow up — in more ways than one.
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
