Pro-growth ‘YIMBY’ conference arrives in Boston, faces pushback from tenant activists

I can understand these "tenant activists" who would rather Boston not get further gentrified, but the fact is, that isn't happening, regardless of whether or not we build some extra luxury condos.

The luxury condos do seem to accelerate it in certain areas, though. And we don't really know when people will stop coming.

Not while our state and local governments actively court top corporations to move here,

Valid reason.

not while we have some of the world's top educational institutions

Been true for a long time, so a less compelling explanation. Also, look at New Haven.

and especially not when generational trends are pointing at further migration to the urban life (young people preferring urban to suburban, retiring boomers looking to downsize their suburban homes to walkable urban environments).

Sure.

YIMBY policy atleast gives me some hope that by reducing burden on developers we can see non-luxury* developments become profitable, and thus be built.

*Probably still not "affordable" yet, but we have to start somewhere.

Or maybe the city should fund rich person tax dollars into subsidizing cheap housing.

It's not like a world class city is inherently expensive, for example several in Japan are quite affordable. It's just that these cities have tons of housing through their entire transit map, which needs to be extensive. If we had a walkable village with several midrise apartment towers and a few blocks of townhouses surrounding every commuter rail stop, the housing crisis would be over, period.

Maybe. Japan also keeps costs low by not making land inherited really and allow for continual demolishing of old housing.

It also is pretty costly in the mega-city that constitutes 1/3 of Japan's population, and a lot of people just live in smaller units.

/r/boston Thread Parent Link - commonwealthmagazine.org