Why are people so afraid of change?

More and more cities are rethinking the dominance of single-family residential zoning amid a worsening housing shortage and growing dissatisfaction with car-dependent living. But they’re finding a hornet’s nest of opposition that illustrates how people kick and scream against change of any sort.

The latest local example may be Royal Oak, home to a growing number of mid-rise, mixed-use buildings and sleek multi-family developments. These new hotels, loft apartments and office buildings have sparked a predictable NIMBY reaction from people upset that their Royal Oak of old is being subsumed by tall buildings, bike lanes and multi-unit dwellings.

There is now an entire plank of candidates running for mayor and city commission in the Nov. 4 election under the “Save Royal Oak” banner. On their website, the candidates write that the city “is far more than just a downtown area on the southernmost edge of the city.

“It is a sprawling and thriving city of diverse neighborhoods made up of people who have invested in starting a life here, or raising a family here, of growing old in place here.” The site goes on to decry a city government in thrall to “big developer dreams and schemes, or various rezoning requests that defied appropriateness for the neighborhood being impacted.”

In other words: Keep Royal Oak 100% the way it is. No change, ever. The rhetoric on another site called Protect Royal Oak is even worse, alleging the city hired a consultant with a “radical agenda.”

Contrast those accusations with the city’s official statement after city commissioners in May unanimously adopted a draft master plan following more than two years of opening it up to community feedback:

“Royal Oak’s 2050 Master Plan envisions a city that is safe and easy to navigate, with quality neighborhoods, a vibrant downtown, walkable residential-commercial areas, and housing that meets current demand in a way that preserves the unique character of existing neighborhoods.”

In its master plan, city officials write that automobile-centric urban planning hurt the city’s historic charm and led to the decline of commercial districts. “This master plan envisions a Royal Oak that is safer and easier to navigate, with a more dynamic downtown whose vibrancy extends to additional, walkable Main Street districts more easily accessible from the city’s neighborhoods. It aims to elevate the quality of smaller, existing neighborhood commercial areas, provide housing that aligns with current demand in a thoughtful and predictable way, and achieve these goals while preserving the unique character of existing neighborhoods.”

The horror.

A tale of two cities

Photo via Creative Commons.

Royal Oak in some ways is a tale of two cities: its southern portion, defined by its downtown and the steadily urbanizing neighborhoods surrounding it, and a much more traditionally suburban northern half. The entire city, however, is zoned overwhelmingly for single-family housing .

One of the master plan’s stated goals is to provide more housing, both by diversifying dwelling types and increasing supply. And that’s an undeniable good thing. For example, housing prices in Austin, Texas mushroomed during the pandemic as demand skyrocketed but have dropped nearly 15% in three years as supply has risen, per CBS News:

A boom in building also boosted housing supply in those regions during the COVID-19 pandemic, when demand for markets like Austin, Denver and Miami exploded, (Realtor.com senior economist Jake Krimmel) added. Part of the reason construction in those cities took off, Krimmel added, was that the laws in their respective state make it easier to build during big influxes in demand.

“[Builders] we’re actually able to get things permitted, get shovels in the ground and get buildings built,” Krimmel said. 

Meanwhile, housing markets in the Midwest and Northeast remain squeezed by  tight inventory and high prices, CBS reported. Sound familiar?

According to Realtor.com, the median listing home price in Royal Oak was $375,000, which is flat year over year, while the median sale price was $365,000. That compares with $278,000 and $227,500, respectively, in Ferndale, where the median listing price was up 11.2% year over year.

Change and grow, or stagnate and decline?

The kind of multi-unit residential building some Royal Oak residents are afraid of, apparently.

Cities are organic entities; they change because they have to. They respond to demand, and people want different things from their cities as times change. The alternative to this adaptation is disinvestment, stagnation, decay, depopulation and slow death — something we should all be all too familiar with in this region.

Here in the Detroit area, where our housing stock is among the oldest in the nation, we need more housing to attract more residents, grow the population, boost economic vibrancy and increase our tax base.

But what’s most interesting to me in this battle to preserve the status quo of single-family housing, like the one in Ferndale before it, is why so many people are so resistant to change in any form.

It’s undeniable that Royal Oak, or Detroit or Ferndale, are much better places than they were 20 years ago, with new types of housing, new ways to get around town that don’t involve a car, more commercial business investment in the neighborhoods and greater vitality. And yet Ferndale just went through its own wrenching and narrow approval of ending single-family zoning hegemony. I still hear people gripe about what they see as the inevitability that multi-family condos or lofts will rise on their street and somehow ruin the neighborhood.

We’re afraid of progress

I’m focusing here on housing and cities, but the very American resistance to change has ramifications that echo well beyond those things. It’s at the heart of so many contentious, divisive issues today — think immigration, climate change, clean energy, trans rights, gay marriage (again), and on and on. We’re a nation that once prided itself on inventing the future but is now actively afraid of it. We’re shutting the door on people who don’t look or behave like we do. In so doing, we shut the door on ourselves. In our fear, we act is if we can freeze things in amber — “If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any,” as the convicted felon-in-chief once famously said about COVID-19.

I believe there are many factors that contribute to our fear of change — racism, homophobia and xenophobia chief among them, though I also think the decline of both the news media and reading also play major roles.

I believe this fear is at the heart of why the United States, long considered the globe’s leading economic superpower and exemplary democracy, is turning inward, away from the rest of the world. “America First,” or whatever.

As a nation, the United States used to be a progressive leader, an innovative, technological powerhouse. The place where ambitious people from around the world wanted to come learn, work, experiment and invent the future.

Now, we’re like the people who move to pristine countryside and believe they should be able to shut the door to anyone else, arguing they would spoil their view.

We’re afraid of trying new things, and we’d rather stick our heads in the sand and cling to a status quo that isn’t working.