About YIMBY Sydney
In 2021 I established YIMBY Sydney as a platform to inform, organise and support people who want to be proactive, positive voices in favour of change in the places they live: which might take the form of more housing, active transport connections like cycleways, walkability improvements like expanding footpaths and pedestrianising streets, and advocating for the social infrastructure we need to make our cities serve more of us.
About the YIMBY Movement
The YIMBY movement is about advocating for cities that are affordable, sustainable and inclusive: that means allowing density (done well) in the well-served inner suburbs, and investment and incentives for permanently affordable housing. It's not just about supply of more housing, which we desperately need in a housing crisis, but also about demanding more public and affordable housing of many different kinds to serve many different households (also known as housing mix or diversity). It's about providing the supporting infrastructure of schools, child care, aged care, separated cycleways, trees, green spaces and playgrounds, and investment in major transport that means we can live well, even as we live closer together.
It's as much about the older inner city suburbs - where we tend to have amenities and transport, but many opponents to higher density - as it is about the suburbs and urbanising satellite cities, where we're seeing density arriving without access to the public services and urban infrastructure that makes living in smaller spaces possible.
The YIMBY movement isn't just about opposition to those who say, "not in my backyard": it's a positive, proactive movement that shows up to be the voices that aren't usually in the room, residents of the future and those who are usually too busy to show up to council meetings. It's also about highlighting the structural barriers that are making our cities less fair, affordable and sustainable than they could be.
Get Involved
At the moment, I'm sending about one email a month with campaigns and opportunities to have your voice heard. Sign up here.
I'm also looking for people who have time, skills, ideas or connections to contribute. We're building a more extensive community network who can help shape the future of this movement, and help us achieve the impacts we need. If you want to contribute, sign up here.
YIMBY in the News
I spoke with the Sydney Morning Herald's Michael Koziol about YIMBY: read it here.
The new NSW Housing Minister, Rose Jackson has promised to take on NIMBYs told them to "get out of the way": she wants new medium- and high-density social housing developments built in Sydney’s north shore and eastern suburbs. ABC Radio National asked Jess Scully what this means for Sydney's growing YIMBY movement: listen in.
Did you know building infrastructure such as roads, electrical grids and communications in fringe suburbs (aka greenfield development) is up to four times more expensive than adapting infrastructure in established suburbs? Great Guardian Aus piece on the housing crisis and barriers nationally.
Iconic environmentalist Bill McKibben has penned a thoughtful essay about his journey from NIMBY to YIMBY on wind turbines, higher density affordable housing, and more. Bill says: "...we don’t just live in a community; we also live on a planet where carbon crosses jurisdictional boundaries shortly after we spew it into the air. And so protecting one’s backyard from any change has to be balanced against the cost it will impose on the larger whole."