# Was Jane Jacobs the first NIMBY?

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-argument-7510944/was-jane-jacobs-the-first-nimby
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-argument-7510944/was-jane-jacobs-the-first-nimby.md
Podcast: [The Argument](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-argument-7510944)
Published: 2026-07-09T07:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541989/episodes/19467118-was-jane-jacobs-the-first-nimby.mp3
Audio file: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2541989/episodes/19467118-was-jane-jacobs-the-first-nimby.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-argument-7510944/episodes/was-jane-jacobs-the-first-nimby
Duration seconds: 5165

## Resource

For this month's book club, Jerusalem Demsas and Matt Yglesias read The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the 1961 classic that changed how everyone thinks about neighborhoods. Rereading it as YIMBYs, they find a book that's right about what makes a street feel alive and wrong about almost everything that followed: Jacobs's push to devolve power to the neighborhood level became the veto that now blocks new housing everywhere. They also get into why Jacobs ignored the economics of citie...

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