Reimagining Albuquerque

At 9:00 a.m. on a weekday, the Environmental Planning Commission met to consider a small but revealing change: removing two parcels, an empty city-owned lot and a Burger King, from the Martineztown–Santa Barbara Character Protection Overlay (CPO). The lots sit at the northwest corner of Lomas and Broadway, squarely within the Downtown Metropolitan Redevelopment Area (MRA).

The proposal, advanced by Council Services on behalf of Councilor Baca’s office, aimed to align these sites with Downtown policy, the Comprehensive Plan, and allow future mixed-use and residential development. On paper, it was a technical housekeeping step. In practice, it became a microcosm of Albuquerque’s planning gridlock, where decades-old overlays, weekday hearings, and procedural culture collide with a new generation’s demand for outcomes over procedure and NIMBY placation.

The CPO Legacy and Planning by Nostalgia

As Council Services planner Matthew Cox explained, character protection overlays were inherited wholesale from the city’s old sector plan system. These relics were meant to preserve neighborhood “character,” but in reality, they often froze parcels in amber. They cap building heights at 26 feet and restrict reinvestment, even along major transit corridors like Lomas and Broadway. As Cox told commissioners, CPOs “were generally brought over when the sector development plans were repealed and the IDO was created,” adding that they simply “mimic the existing pattern” of an area rather than plan for its future.

Cox’s presentation made the tension clear: a site zoned for light manufacturing, vacant for decades, positioned at a major gateway to Downtown, but bound by a CPO written to mimic an invented single-family past. He noted that the area is missing roughly 1,500 rental units for low-income residents and 500 for higher-income residents—a striking data point that underlines the housing shortfall in central Albuquerque.

The CPO may once have reflected legitimate preservation goals. Today, it reflects a city struggling to outgrow a defensive, reactive form of planning, a form of planning that treats new homes and development as threats rather than opportunities and amenities.

The Neighborhood Association Problem

Neighborhood associations again dominated the opposition. Loretta Naranjo-Lopez, president of the Santa Barbara Martineztown Neighborhood Association, framed the amendment as another in a long line of city betrayals, declaring that it was “impossible to remedy the decades of mistreatment and deterioration,” and, “the association requests this amendment be deferred or denied.”

Her testimony, both emotional and legalistic, captured the tone of opposition: distrust of city institutions, procedural suspicion, and the feeling of being perpetually under siege. Her words reflected deep hurt over urban renewal but also a refusal to imagine reconciliation or shared progress.

The North Valley Coalition’s Peggy Norton echoed procedural grievances from supposedly missed deadlines, incomplete meetings, and the fear that removing parcels from a CPO “sets a precedent that endangers every one of them.” May we be so lucky. Yet staff repeatedly confirmed that all notice requirements were met, and that the amendment was purely textual and not a zone change as asserted, even if the change could facilitate future necessary zone changes.

The contrast was stark: where Council Services described proactive planning, neighborhood representatives saw conspiracy and loss of control. The “public” that appeared on screen was not the public most affected by housing scarcity, but a narrow, organized subset empowered by structure and timing.

This dynamic is baked into city law. Albuquerque’s Neighborhood Association Recognition Ordinance (NARO) is one of the most lopsided in the country, granting small, unrepresentative affinity groups quasi-governmental authority to represent entire communities. These associations receive privileged notice, formal standing in land-use cases, and institutional legitimacy far beyond their size or accountability. In practice, they function as permanent lobbyists for the status quo with the ability to delay, appeal, and obstruct projects even when the broader public supports change. Reforming NARO would almost certainly require state-level preemption, since the imbalance it creates isn’t a procedural fluke but a structural one that local policy makers are too timid to address directly.

Process as a Weapon

Commissioners sought clarification from staff on whether the application was complete and properly noticed; planners confirmed it was. The discussion underscored a familiar rhythm: public testimony invoking process errors that didn’t exist, and staff carefully walking through each checkbox of compliance. Both opposition speakers demanded deferral and additional “facilitated meetings.” Yet as staff explained, this type of amendment doesn’t require one. The neighborhood had already met with Council staff, and most residents contacted were neutral or supportive.

This episode exemplifies what journalist Jerusalem Demsas calls the tyranny of the minority: the idea that “more public input” inherently yields better democracy, when in fact it often amplifies the loudest, most entrenched voices. Here, the request for “more process” became a tactic to delay, not to deliberate. As noted in the applicant presentation, a majority of neighborhood residents were in favor or neutral. This is common in land use and zoning debates. As Demsas states:

We’re used to thinking about the tyranny of the majority. We don’t have to imagine what happens when majority voices vote to trample on individual rights.

That fear so animated the Founding Fathers that they designed a system to restrain it: a bicameral legislature with one chamber—the Senate—insulated from electoral pressure by staggered six-year terms, and lifetime appointments for judges to shield them from the shifting tides of public opinion.

They spent far less time thinking about the opposite problem: tyranny of the minority.

Yet today, much of my own work is thinking through the ways that well-organized interest groups and strategically placed individuals have managed to take hold of the systems of power throughout government and enact their minoritarian preferences.

From land use, permitting, and zoning abuses by homeowners associations to police unions, gun-lobbying groups, and environmental groups fighting against popular opinion in favor of a niche ideological perspective—once you start looking for undue power wielded by a minority, it’s all you can see.

When every disagreement must be mediated, when every decision demands another meeting, planning becomes impossible—and paralysis becomes the policy.

The Democratic Deficit of 9 A.M. Hearing

Even beyond the substance, the format itself is exclusionary. EPC hearings happen on weekday mornings when most working residents cannot attend. The result is procedural democracy without representative democracy. It embodies an anti-democratic performance that filters out renters, young professionals, and anyone not retired or professionally involved in planning.

When the only people who can show up are those least affected by the housing shortage, decisions tilt toward inertia. Commissioners hear testimony from a sliver of the city and are asked to treat it as “community consensus.”

But this hearing also revealed something new. Some have recognized that moving toward outcomes-based planning means also engaging the processes that shape it. Several residents, including urbanists, developers, and Downtown residents, spoke in favor of the change, marking a small but significant shift. Their presence challenged the idea that intransigent voices alone define “the community,” and reminded staff and commissioners that the public is far more diverse, forward-looking, and solution-oriented than the traditional process tends to capture. In places like Downtown Albuquerque, where overlapping histories and communities converge, this balance matters profoundly.

Toward Outcomes-Based Planning

As staff attorney Matt Myers clarified, the EPC’s task was narrow: to determine whether the amendment was “more advantageous to the community” and consistent with the comprehensive plan. By that metric, the case was clear. The parcels sit at a major gateway, within an area of change, and in the city’s own housing-need maps. Even within the exclusionary framework of the city’s IDO, moving forward was the only option that made sense.

When a neighborhood association treats every procedural step as an existential threat, it reveals how far Albuquerque still is from outcomes-based planning. The goal of planning is not endless consultation—it’s results. It’s homes built, corridors revitalized, and communities healed through inclusion, not paralysis.

Moving Beyond the Old Order

The EPC’s debate over two small parcels at Broadway and Lomas wasn’t just about boundaries; it was about identity. Will Albuquerque continue to let inherited overlays and procedural vetoes dictate its future, or will it embrace the responsibility of building a city for everyone?

YIMBYs, urbanists, and a growing share of ordinary residents are done with nostalgia zoning and process theater. They’re asking for something simpler: a city that plans for outcomes, not optics and a planning process that sees participation not as obstruction, but as a step toward a better, more inclusive Albuquerque.

Demsas shows that Albuquerque’s struggle isn’t unique. It’s the predictable outcome of a localist system that empowers the few at the expense of the many. When city planning becomes a patchwork of micro-vetoes, minority voices with time and access can block decisions that serve broader public needs. What results is a kind of democratic distortion: neighborhood associations gain the power to say “no,” but no one is accountable for saying “yes.”

This is where state leadership must step in. Local government alone can’t solve problems that are regional in nature, like housing affordability, climate resilience, or sustainable transportation. State governments have both the moral and structural responsibility to balance local concerns with collective outcomes, ensuring that vital needs like housing, transit, and sustainability are not hostage to parochial politics.

For Albuquerque to move forward, we’ll need not only cultural change but institutional reform: rules that reward building over blocking, coordination over isolation, and long-term stewardship over short-term fear. The city’s future depends on shifting from neighborhood protectionism to civic responsibility—recognizing that inclusion and growth are not competing values, but the same unfinished project.