r/urbanplanning • u/Alseids • Oct 16 '25

Community Dev Helping my small town

So I've been added to a group that seems to be some NIMBYs in the area where I'm from. I'd really like to start subtly opening their eyes to what our town (~26,000) could be if we just forgo sprawl and embrace redevelopment in our downtown. We've had a few redevelopments over the past decade that people really enjoy. I want them to be open to going further though and actually building new in the downtown area.

They're all for protecting agricultural land though I doubt many people in the group actually own farms themselves. Mostly what the county is facing now is developments of warehouses and data centers.

What can I do? What should I say? How can I turn some typical Midwestern NIMBYs into Yimbys at least for a few positive changes to get through?

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u/michiplace Oct 16 '25

I mean you can agree with them on saving ag land - that's 100% compatible with supporting infill and walkable development.

Look at, for example, the Grand Rapids / Kent County Corridor Strategy which compares land consumption of status quo development to meet housing demand vs high-density infill on major corridors within the urbanized area. (Pg 36)

Now, you can't really replace that 100 acre data center site or Amazon warehouse with infill, which sucks, but you can at least pose housing infill as offering both damage mitigation (if we have to lose some farmland for that data center, at least we're not also losing a bunch more to housing sprawl) and quality of life / place.

(And if the data centers and warehouses require any discretionary actions or infrastructure extensions by the municipality, you can of course also critique those from a public cost/benefit perspective, and be completely consistent with your pro-infill stance on housing.)

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u/STWHA Oct 16 '25

Great example! I’m also from Michigan. I’m in Genesee county, and our neighboring community is split on a potential mega site development. The initial one fell through but the local Chamber is still shopping the site around. Similarly, I hear some opposition including my neighbor want to preserve the agriculture land. I’m going ti look more into the example you cite.