YIMBYism and the economies of fantasy: affect,psychoanalysis,and the critique of U.S. ‘pro-housing’ discourse

Abstract

This article makes a cultural-geographical contribution to the growing critique of ‘Yes in My Back Yard’ or ‘YIMBY’ movements, which invoke (neo)liberal supply-side economics to advocate for increased urban housing production as a means of resolving a host of social and environmental crises. The article argues for a turn to affect theory and psychoanalysis as supplements to critical political economy that can help more fully explain the appeal of YIMBY movements. Drawing on the works of Sara Ahmed, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Slavoj Žižek, the article scrutinizes YIMBYist discourse’s deep affective investment in the hated figure of the anti-development ‘NIMBY’ and its resonant framing as a ‘reparative’ response to social and ecological crises. To avoid playing into the hands of a YIMBYist narrative that frames its critics as ‘paranoid’, critics of YIMBYism would do well to lift up transformative and moving counterproposals coming from unhoused and tenants’ rights movements, embracing the risk of an alternative reparative optimism.