The increase of Yimbyism on Planning Alerts

Australia’s most recent housing turf war has found its way into the comments section of Planning Alerts. A look into the Yimby movement and its presence on the site. 

In 2024, we observed a new trend on our site. Users supporting individual Development Applications were commenting not only how a particular application would benefit their local area, but also how it would be a salve to the housing crisis more generally. 

These comments seemed to be largely coming from users who either self-identified or were identified by other users as “Yimbys”. 

Around the same time, we received a couple of complaints from users that these Yimbys were overtaking Planning Alerts or even using bots to spam the site. 

Curious into what was going on, we decided to dig a bit deeper. 

Yimbyism or “Yes-In-My-Backyard” is a global pro-development movement which calls for the creation of more housing stock as a solution to housing unaffordability. The movement was established as a response to Nimbyism or “Not in My Backyard”, a blanket term referring to community advocates opposed to development in their suburb. 

Policies vary from group to group, but common Yimby themes include a push for urban design that supports social infrastructure, public transportation, and pedestrian safety. The movement is often associated with millennials concerned with rising cost of living and unaffordable housing prices and seeking change in their local community. 

In Australia, the movement has gained popularity in the last two years, emerging as as two Australian academics put it, out of the “the post-pandemic housing crisis and policy debate”, as housing prices continue to rise. 

Leading the Australian Yimby movement is the Abundant Housing Network, an alliance of four state-based groups working to create “sustainable, liveable and affordable” cities. 

Policy focuses for the network include the removal of zoning and heritage laws that prohibit construction, creation of “gentle density” development in suburban areas and an increase of urban sustainability in town planning. The exact political ideology of Yimbyism remains ambiguous, with members from all sides of politics. While often touted as progressive or left-leaning, critics have been quick to point out the ideologies’ foundations in right-wing economics and policies. As one American housing group described it, “From the get-go, YIMBYs embraced trickle-down economics or what’s now called “trickle-down housing” policy.”

The movement has also been criticised for an overemphasis of housing stock as a solution to housing insecurity and the movement’s ongoing connections to private property industry, which can be at odds with the Yimby’s local, grassroots persona.

So, how prevalent is Yimby & Nimby discourse on Planning Alerts?

We identified a combined 70 mentions of the terms “yimby” and “nimby”, here’s some trends we noticed: 

• The terms have been used on Planning Alerts since 2014. The earliest example we found was in April that year. 

• Overall usage of both terms remains low on the site. There has been an uptick in the last few years with at least 15 mentions of the terms on the site in 2021, and 10 mentions in 2024.  
• ‘Nimby’ was the most used term, accounting for 94% of all identified mentions (66). The term was used to criticise other user’s submissions or to defend and explain their own standpoint. It was also often used to clarify a standpoint: “ E.g. “I’m not a Nimby but”. 
• The remaining four references were made either by users self-identifying as ‘Yimby (1)’ or by others criticising the ‘Yimby squad’ for being uncritical in their support of proposed developments (3)

In the majority of cases, the terms were referenced as a general comment made by a user discussing the Yimby/Nimby perspectives towards a developmental application without particular reference to another individual user (81%). 

7% were directed comments, in which a user responded or argued with another user’s perspective on a proposed development.

Only 11% of the total references involved individual users self-identifying as belonging in either camp, and again, this was skewed towards those identifying Nimby (7) as opposed to Yimby (1).

Outside of our sample, we found evidence of Yimby groups using Planning Alerts to organise and campaign, using social media posts such as this one by Sydney YIMBY to encourage users to make a submission on the site. 

We also found comments published to social platforms encouraging members to speak out in support of specific Development Applications or against anti-development submissions published to Planning Alerts.

We found a number of users sharing the same name as registered Yimby members who have submitted comments on Development Alerts.Some of these users commented across multiple local council areas and even interstate. We cannot confirm these users are Yimby members, as Planning Alerts does not collect data outside of the registered name and email address.

We did not find any evidence that Yimby comments were the product of automated bots. Suspected Yimby submissions were tailored to individual development applications, and while some users were regular commenters, there was nothing extraordinary in the volume of submissions that would suggest an automated process.

Thoughts & conclusions

Planning Alerts is not invested in vetting Yimby or Nimby ideology. As an open source community platform that aims to enable residents to participate in their local development processes, we try to keep moderation of comments to a minimum.

This being said, our feedback section is designed as an easy interface to submit comments to the local council, not as a public comment section to debate other users. We caution users from using the forum as a platform to argue with other users as this can discourage people from having their say. 

Comments that are abusive, unlawful or harassing — in other words, where people are going out of their way to harm another user — will not be tolerated as part of the feedback and you should report them. 

We also remind users that the Planning Alerts is intended for commenting in your local area, not across multiple jurisdictions.

As an established movement, Yimbyism does have organisational power compared with individual community advocates active in campaigning, resourcing and engaging with other avenues of community feedback (for example: here and here). 

The movement has supporters from the private property market, pro-development politicians and some state governments and while we did not find evidence that Yimby members with more established connections to developers and planners are active on the site, we want to remind users that this site local opinions, not a campaigning outlet for groups that already have a platform. 

We will continue to monitor comments to ensure this remains the case as we want to ensure our platform remains a platform for genuine community feedback and not coordinated efforts to influence development outcomes or to attack other community members.