As state governments unroll plans they hope will combat the housing crisis, and Australian suburbs face profound changes in their appearance and population, there has been a groundswell of grassroots community action to influence how these changes do — or do not — take place.
The NSW government has been accused of “toxic masculinity” for its plans to build a new train station and raise building heights at Woollahra in Sydney’s affluent east, while the Victorian government’s similar upzonings sparked protests in the bayside suburb of Brighton.
Many members of these organisations — and even their founders and leaders — have never taken part in any form of activism before.
Lockwood said Sydney’s YIMBY community had grown “massively” in recent years and she has seen the conversations around housing solutions become far more commonplace.
Many who oppose development reject the label of anti-development NIMBYs (which stands for ‘Not In My Backyard’). Save Marrickville is part of the Better Future Coalition, a group of inner-west community groups that advocate for a ‘Better in my backyard’ — or BIMBY — approach, which calls for appropriate scale and density of developments, as well as meaningful community consultation.
