"All Of Us"

Pretty much everything about a NIMBY group complaining that a five-story building is a "mammoth" structure that will "block light and air" is ridiculous. But the most ridiculous part is this rhetorical slippage at the end:

The land of the Hine School site belongs to all of us, the citizens and taxpayers of the District of Columbia. The developers were awarded the right to propose how to develop that public land, but we believe that the current concept design is not congruent with, does not harmonize with, and potentially threatens the historic character of Capitol Hill. The massive, block-sized building plan evokes corporate standardization, anonymity and conformity, and, per the changes outlined at the beginning of this letter, we call upon the developers to create an alternative concept more responsive to the neighborhood in which it will sit for decades to come.

There's an enormous contrast here. The Hine School site belongs to all of us not just to a subset of wealthy homeowners on Capitol Hill. I'm trying to write less about this kind of land use issue because I'm hoping to get together a book project on these issues, but I wanted to call attention to the general shape of this controversy. Should planning over the site be dominated by the interests of the city at large (larger tax base, more housing stock, etc.) or by the interests of rich nearby landowners? And is enhancing the ability of rich nearby landowners to maximize the value of their estates really a progressive stand? I'm not immune to the impulse toward greed. I own property. I kinda sorta hope that all real estate decisions in my neighborhood are governed by the principle "what's best for Matt Yglesias' investment." But ultimately I think people in all neighborhoods would benefit from an effort to take a less narrow view of the interests at stake.