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Sep 26·edited Sep 26

I only stumbled on the "musical chairs" video recently via twitter and it was by far one of the most concise, impactful simulacra of the YIMBY movement I've so far encountered. Further, I think it'd behoove the movement to lean strongly into this level and quality of winning memetic content.

I proffer we be proactive about loud and proudly celebrating all the "wins" already made - that is, cities in the global and national context that go above and beyond at having excellent urban planning, zoning conducive to growth, accommodating the forgotten children of their rural surroundings; and whose policies result in particularly fine execution of the style, capacity, cost of construction and ultimately resultant resident quality of life and all downstream effects like facilitating significant academic or cultural scenes. I am not sure how we would go about encoding all of this in a way that can be effectively crowd-sourced and arbitrated, but I am sure I'm not alone in beginning to imagine the blueprint of such an endeavour. The YIMBY movement can feel negativity as there is of course so much legitimate frustration to be voiced about the failures of the current system, and yet I also feel like those cities that are pulling so much more than their share of the weight in various ways and by achieving various fragments of success, should be rewarded in order to create appropriate feedback mechanisms and foster pride for the simple beauty of urbanism that has so far been meticulously engendered in the cities of the world as they currently stand.

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