Reimagining a City that Builds for People, Not Paperwork
Albuquerque is ready for its next era. We already have the raw materials: a breathtaking climate, world-class institutions, vibrant culture, and people with grit and heart. And yet, we’ve allowed ourselves to be governed by fear, inertia, and the slow suffocation of paperwork.
We’ve tangled the future in layers of overlays. We’ve privileged procedure over possibility. We’ve built a city for cars and called it progress. Reactionary voices have been given the microphone while bold ideas have been asked to wait politely in the hallway.
That ends now.
The brightest possible Albuquerque is a YIMBY city. One where leaders act with urgency, build with intention, and refuse to apologize for saying: yes, everyone deserves housing. Yes, opportunity belongs to all. Yes, cities are meant to grow.
Because here’s the truth: when we delay change, we don’t preserve equity—we entrench exclusion.
I. The Case for a YIMBY Albuquerque
Let’s not sugarcoat it. The current system is broken.
We’re in a housing crisis. Opportunities are evaporating. Young people are leaving because we’ve given them no compelling reason to stay. And somehow, we keep responding with more meetings, more studies, and more procedural detours.
“Neighborhood character” has become the velvet rope at the club of housing access. It sounds quaint. What it usually means is: “not here.” And that’s not even acknowledging the feelings the bouncer has for people he doesn’t like.
But there’s another way.
A YIMBY Albuquerque—Yes In My Backyard—isn’t reckless. It’s responsive. It means opening the door to newcomers. It means making sure our children can afford to live here. It means welcoming prosperity instead of shielding ourselves from it.
Slow and careful has failed us. At one end, we have people sleeping on the streets. At the other, we’re losing out on concerts, businesses, and jobs that skip us entirely. The process is broken. Writers like Jerusalem Demsas and Yoni Appelbaum have put it plainly: endless input often empowers those most organized to block what everyone else needs.
It’s time to move on.
II. End the Obstruction: Reform the IDO
The Integrated Development Ordinance (IDO) was supposed to be a breath of fresh air. Instead, it still smells faintly of the past.
Character Protection Overlays—CPOs—are supposed to protect the look and feel of neighborhoods. What they actually protect are outdated fears. They restrict housing, slow timelines, and enshrine a status quo that no longer serves us.
One overlay even protects mountain views from a 50-mph stroad lined with fast food signs. Truly, the pinnacle of civic aesthetics: the Sandias, framed by Arby’s.
This isn’t planning. It’s ornamental obstruction. It’s bureaucracy as performance art.
We need to simplify. The IDO should be a tool to build good places, not a puzzle to trap good projects. By-right development should be the norm. Discretionary approval should be rare. Let’s unlock walkability, affordability, and actual housing & development.
III. Retire the NIMBY Power Structures
No other group in Albuquerque has appeal rights as broad as neighborhood associations. Not business groups. Not housing advocates. Just them.
And they use this privilege. Frequently. Frivolously.
What was meant to be a guardrail has become a weapon. Developers walk on eggshells. Planners waste months. Projects stall or die.
This isn’t democracy. It’s obstruction with a polite name tag.
We need to align with national legal norms. End automatic standing. Let residents participate meaningfully and early, but not endlessly. One bite at the apple is enough.
IV. Build the Future: Zoning for Abundance
It’s time to say goodbye to single-family zoning. Fully and finally.
We should legalize duplexes, fourplexes, low-rise and mid-rise apartments across the city. People want to live here. Let’s make that possible.
Height limits like “neighborhood edge” rules are sold as compatibility tools. But in reality, they push people into louder, hotter, more polluted corridors. That’s not equity. That’s aesthetic displacement.
Yes, we should build near transit. But people in apartments also deserve quiet streets, tree cover, and schools they can walk to.
Mixed-use zoning should be legal citywide. Let homes rise above corner stores. Let coffee shops bloom next to clinics. Let life happen closer together.
And yes, build the soccer stadium Downtown. Not on the fringes. Not in a sea of parking. Let’s invest in places people can actually reach—whether by bus, bike, or foot.
This is how we reduce costs, encourage integration, and give people real choices.
V. A Connected, Transit-First City
You cannot be a walkable city without a transit system that works.
That means expanded ART service, more frequent buses, and a Rail Runner that functions like real regional rail—not a novelty for tourists or a commuter escape hatch from Santa Fe.
Congestion across the river? The world has solved this. Add bus lanes. Toll the crossings. Use the money to fund the future, not pave over it.
If you choose to “drive until you qualify,” fine. But the rest of us shouldn’t be subsidizing that decision or choking on its consequences.
A YIMBY Albuquerque invests in transit, bike infrastructure, and walkable streets. It doesn’t just move people—it connects lives.
And did we mention? It’s cheaper than another I-25 expansion. Imagine that.
VI. A City of Belonging and Opportunity
This isn’t just about zoning. It’s about justice.
A city with abundant housing is a city where no one is left on the street. Where young professionals can put down roots. Where families of all kinds can stay together.
But it’s also about what happens beyond the home. Opportunity must be part of the architecture. That means adult education, adult literacy classes, reentry programs, and real job pipelines from CNM and UNM into creative industries, healthcare, art, and tech.
It means public schools that prepare students not just to graduate, but to flourish.
A child in the International District should have just as much access to the future as one at Albuquerque Academy.
This isn’t utopia. It’s what happens when we say yes.
VII. Beyond the Stroad: Design a Safer, Saner City
Stroads are a design failure. They are roads that act like streets and kill like highways. They are ugly, dangerous, and everywhere.
Let’s replace them with boulevards. Trees. Bike lanes. Public space.
Let’s fix our grids and free our intersections from the tyranny of speed.
Safety is not just a traffic statistic. It’s a design choice.
VIII. Just Build, Dammit
We’ve talked this to death. We’ve studied it. We’ve consulted. We’ve hosted public comment periods. And while we’ve been busy doing all that, opportunity has packed its bags and left.
We know what works. The time is now.
Let’s build housing that welcomes. Transit that connects. Streets that breathe. Let’s make public spaces that come alive.
No more endless appeals. No more performative meetings. No more bureaucracy dressed as virtue.
And if you need proof that the system needs a reboot—look no further than Monday night.
City Council had a chance to say yes. Yes to culture. Yes to economic revitalization. Yes to a Downtown Performing Arts Center that voters could decide on. Picture it: the lights, the cameras, the high drama of parliamentary procedure. Albuquerque’s City Council had the chance to do something visionary. Let the voters decide. Embrace ambition. You know, all the things healthy cities do.
They blinked.
They forgot their line.
They stumbled on stage and folded faster than a discount futon from Big Lots.
Instead of trusting the people or embracing bold vision, they clung to procedural safety blankets and shrank from the future. What we witnessed wasn’t democracy in action, it was local theater. And not the good kind.
What should have been a moment of leadership turned into a civic séance, summoning the spirits of hesitation, cynicism, and status quo protectionism. Some councilors seemed less interested in Albuquerque’s future than in preserving the delicate feelings of westside parking lots and mid-rise panic attacks.
This wasn’t governing. It was performance art. Not the “Mariah Carey at the new cultural center” kind. More like Waiting for Godot, if Godot were a site plan and nobody filed it correctly.
Honestly, if some councilors need to work through their fear of nice things, they should do it with a therapist—not live on camera at the dais. Just because your mom told you you didn’t deserve beautiful things doesn’t mean the rest of us have to live by that script.
This is why we say: just build, dammit.
IX. Say Yes—At the Ballot Box
Monday night was a preview. November 4 is the main event.
This fall, Albuquerque voters have the chance to do what the Council wouldn’t: say yes to a city that invests in itself. Yes to leaders who understand that growth is not a threat—it’s a necessity. And yes to retiring the gatekeepers who have confused delay with wisdom and fear with caution.
Say yes to the future. Say yes to abundance. Say yes to the Albuquerque we deserve.
And to those standing in the way?
Let’s get them off the stage.
Reimagining Albuquerque 
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