I feel like I'm nuts but I think everyone in this thread is misreading this article entirely. He is not saying "NIMBYism is a myth" in that it doesn't exist. He's saying the premise the NIMBYism is a way to protect property value is wrong. Hence, if NIMBY's are really motivated by economics, they'd be advocating for massive increase in density. And yes, the post is all napkin math and glosses over the actual process of converting suburbs to urban, but the point is still pretty clear and he's almost certainly correct. I don't think he expects the Palo Alto government to approve 800 building permits tomorrow, but resetting people's expectations is certainly possible. Silicon Valley thinks we can extend life indefinitely, upload our brain to the cloud, colonize Mars, create intelligent machines, but not build big apartment buildings and trains? Of course we can. We broke the climate in 100 years without even trying.
NIMBY = property values is almost certainly wrong.
NIMBYs use property values as one of the arguments, but if you countered it (for example, with a dedicated buy offer at some fraction above expected appreciation) they would just find another argument.
They're literally conservative, in that they are rejecting change.
