NIMBY vs YIMBY: Balancing Neighborhood Stability and Dynamism

From gentrification to rent control and historic preservation, debates about urban policy hinge on how much weight we should give to residential and neighborhood stability. On the one hand, we want to let families remain in their homes over time, and we want to preserve the continuity and character of their neighborhoods. On the other, we also want to open up opportunities for new families to move into communities, to allow for choice and growth and to break up the segregated living patterns that characterize U.S. cities and suburbs. Drawing on both normative and empirical analysis, this paper explores how to balance these competing goals in the context of policy reforms addressing gentrification, growth controls and historic preservation.

Ingrid Gould Ellen, the Paulette Goddard Professor of Urban Policy and Planning, is a Faculty Director at the NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. She presently teaches courses in microeconomics, urban economics, and urban policy research. Professor Ellen’s research interests center on housing and urban policy. She is author of Sharing America’s Neighborhoods: The Prospects for Stable Racial Integration (Harvard University Press, 2000) and more recently editor of The Dream Revisited: Contemporary Debates About Housing, Segregation and Opportunity (Columbia University Press, 2019). She has written numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters related to housing policy, community development, and school and neighborhood segregation. Professor Ellen has held visiting positions at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution. She attended Harvard University, where she received a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics, an M.P.P., and a Ph.D. in public policy.

Free and open to the public.