Disagreeing with NIMBYs is not Gaslighting
A new academic paper has been released with three authors including Dallas Rogers, the head of Urbanism in the Sydney Uni planning department. Over the course of 10,000 words they form a definition of “structural gaslighting” and accuse Sydney YIMBY of being a perpetrator.
We have members of our committee and membership who have experienced homelessness and protracted domestic violence situations, and this informs their advocacy for more safe homes for women and their children to live. They are devastated at seeing this kind of language used to describe them.
the activists described “being confused and feeling bad” for opposing a luxury one- and two-bedroom high-rise development, which was unsuitable for local demand for larger and non-traditional family units. The media tactics of property lobby groups resulted in local activists doubting the integrity of the grounds for their opposition, and they reported they were “made to feel guilty”, in the words of one activist, as if their opposition was in fact to blame for the city's lack of housing affordability
We are a grassroots pro-housing community organisation. We do support building more housing in Sydney, including public, affordable and market housing, in the places people want to live. We do not represent, answer to and are not funded by any property developers. Describing us as a “developer” or “property” lobby group dishonestly implies that this is not the case. All of our funding comes from membership fees paid by our hundreds of members (average contribution $20) and a small number of t-shirts we sold last year.
We believe in housing abundance because it’s the only way to solve the housing crisis. We’re a group of volunteers all working, studying and trying to raise our children in this city and create some community. Every time one of us appears at an inquiry someone is having to take annual leave from their day job. Being at council meetings means juggling kids’ bedtimes to advocate for their future.
The other “community groups” referenced in the article feel bad because they’re having a mirror held up to them and they don’t like what they see in it. It’s not hard to see why they’re asking themselves uncomfortable questions - rants about new apartments being ghettos full of transient drug dealers are a mainstay of anti-development politics.
We can see this sentiment embedded in the paper itself - one- and two-bedroom units are ‘unsuitable for local demand’ because some community groups don’t want the sort of neighbours who’d populate them.
a new community group, Sydney YIMBYs (yes-in-my-backyard), was inaugurated by a private planning consultant, and quickly enjoyed widespread favourable media coverage, for their criticism of local “NIMBYs”
Our inaugural committee had one planner on it, as a general committee member - it’s a misrepresentation to claim that this comes about as an offshoot of the planning industry. We’ve spoken about our reasons for getting involved and they’re all personal.
The planner in question is a single mother living in a rented apartment on the same street she grew up on, where she’s unlikely to ever be able to afford to buy.
Another committee member was 7 months pregnant and stuck in a mouldy, heritage conserved terrace while your local MP is in the streets campaigning against a 6 storey apartment development 5 minutes from the city.
We had a local artist turn up to an event organised by the local MP the same day he was evicted and pushed out of the inner west - who copped a bunch of abuse from a planner in the audience who told him he didn’t deserve to live here in the aftermath.
These are all stories we could have told you. It’s hard to say whether the decision not to speak to us was bad faith or laziness, but it reflects pretty poorly upon the state of planning academia and it is depressing that these people are educating the next generation of urban planners.
-Sydney YIMBY Committee, March 2025
