The ‘missing middle’ of zoning code reform

Beyond the battles between NIMBY and YIMBY, a third option— call it “QUIMBY”—offers a promising path forward.

NOTE: This blog post first ran in CNU Public Square, and it includes topics we will discuss at the 63rd International Making Cities Livable (IMCL) conference in Riga, Latvia, July 6-10, 2026. Thanks to CNU Public Square.

Michael Mehaffy

Executive Director, Lennard Institute / IMCL

Imagine that you’re a parent with a couple of quarrelsome kids. You give them some slices of cake, and perhaps not surprisingly, they fight over who got the bigger slice. Now imagine instead that you tell one of the kids to slice the cake, and let the other kid pick the first slice. Watch how accurately that kid will surgically slice that cake! And then there can no longer be a dispute about the fairness of the result. Remarkably, your “rules of the game” are rewarding cooperation instead of infighting.

The story illustrates an important point: sometimes the resolution of conflict is not downstream where the outcomes are almost sure to be in dispute, but rather upstream, in the setting of the rules and frameworks that determine the outcomes. And sometimes, it’s critical to get the participants to understand and agree on those upstream conditions ahead of time. 

So it is with zoning code reform and the other regulatory streamlining changes that almost everyone agrees are necessary to achieve better housing production and lower costs, as well as other important goals for livable cities and neighborhoods.

This comes at a time when we have clearly dysfunctional public involvement and regulatory processes—seemingly very good at delivering the worst of both worlds: slower and more expensive projects, yet still managing to leave citizens unhappy.  Only those who are expert in gaming such an irrational system are likely to come out well. Meanwhile, the urban challenges of unaffordability, displacement, homelessness, and lower-quality urban growth persist. That’s why more and more jurisdictions are working toward code reform and looking for ways to gain public support in the process. 

Granted, local residents often oppose new development for predictable reasons—traffic, parking, safety, and the catch-all, “density.” Then they become “NIMBYs,” short for Not In My Back Yard. To be fair to them—and we must, since after all, it is their lives being affected—what they often fear is not “density” in the abstract, but negative impacts on their neighborhoods and their quality of life from “space invaders”—noise, shadows, loss of sky view, safety and quality of life issues, and often, just plain ugliness.

How can we break through this NIMBY impasse? One alternative is the YIMBY movement, known as “Yes In My Back Yard.” That approach seeks to expedite housing production over the objections of NIMBYs, largely on the theory that more housing production will lower home prices. But as research increasingly shows, supply is only one factor in housing costs. 

In fact, overall supply in the US is actually more than the demand: 148.3 million total units, of which 15.2 million are vacant, according to the Census Bureau. (About 770,000 people are currently homeless, according to HUD.) The deeper problem lies in the mismatch in both location and unit type, as many of the vacant units are in depopulated areas, or they are not matched to the needs (wrong size, type, condition or cost). This indicates an urgent need for more housing of specific types, in specific locations.

A second point is that it’s not only the up-front cost of the home, but also the monthly cost of living in a given location—commuting, utilities, maintenance and so on—that make a home truly affordable. There is also the related question of the value for money: is it a livable, good-quality place? Or is it “affordable” only in a narrow sense, while it carries another kind of cost, in degraded quality of life? Perhaps the NIMBYs are telling us something worth hearing. 

This is why we need not just housing quantity, but also housing quality, and place quality. Yes, we do need zoning reform and permit streamlining, urgently—but also innovative construction systems, financial incentives, and creative mechanisms like community land trusts. We need not just one “silver bullet” of deregulation, but the “silver buckshot” of coordinated tools and toolkits. Above all, we need to clearly define the quality of the outcome, within a fair and functional democratic process. 

That’s the aim of what we call the “QUIMBY” methodology—short for “QUality In My Back Yard,” and employed by us in a number of community planning processes with encouraging results. It seeks to address the “missing middle” between NIMBYs and YIMBYs, by calling on citizens to become part of a proactive upstream process, rather than a reactive downstream one. We point out that the question is not whether the community will grow, but how – and what role those citizens will play in advance, in defining and achieving a win-win outcome. Instead of NIMBY opponents, or (less likely) YIMBY boosters of any projects regardless of character, they become participants in co-creating zoning reforms, streamlined regulations, and pre-approved plans and specifications in advance. 

How does the QUIMBY approach work in practice? In White Salmon, Washington, following completion of our Housing Needs Analysis and Housing Action Plan, we conducted a number of stakeholder meetings to discuss community visions of good development, and the many barriers that infill builders were experiencing in delivering it. From there, we developed an online visual preference survey for all citizens, showing pairs of alternative development types based on alternative zoning models, e.g. smaller setbacks, garage configurations, specific building types and sizes, etc. (The images were carefully selected to match weather, lighting, and other “apples to apples” factors.)

Based on the results of these collaborative processes, we developed a series of proposals for zoning code reform and regulatory streamlining, as well as a model form-based code. Following additional feedback, these proposals were developed into draft ordinances, and taken through the Planning Commission and City Council into adoption. The process went smoothly, with remarkably little opposition. The City of White Salmon is now a small-town leader in allowing more units, smaller setbacks, reduced offsite parking mandates, and other innovations. 

Following the adoption of the zoning code reforms, we also circulated an online visual preference survey for pre-approved plan candidates, and for affordable manufactured housing units. From these, the participating citizens selected sixteen “middle housing” plans and six manufactured homes for pre-approval, based on preferred aesthetics. These residents pre-approved those candidates as acceptable neighbors demonstrating “Quality In My Back Yard”.  (This pre-approved plan strategy has also been deployed in a number of other communities, with equally encouraging results.) 

In West Richland, Washington, we followed a similar process for a large greenfield urban extension of the city, developing a sub-area plan and zoning code. In that case we also used a visual preference survey, coupled with in-person meetings with stakeholders. We also used another tool in our toolkit, the pattern language methodology—a series of interrelated planning and design elements, following a method developed by architect Christopher Alexander. We used the results from the community survey and stakeholder interviews to generate a draft pattern language, using it to form the outline specifications for an innovative new zoning code. The pattern language was reviewed and edited by the City staff and City Council with public feedback, and it was recently finalized. The resulting zoning code, which includes form-based elements shaped by the patterns, is now being completed.

We have also used the pattern language methodology in other projects in the US and internationally, with very encouraging results. One of the timely applications has been in projects for climate adaptation and resilience, including patterns for thermal comfort, urban greening, walkability, multi-modal transportation, and many other elements of urban livability. We have found the patterns to be user-friendly and very effective as a shared vision tool for quality outcomes.

Some of the patterns also focus on specific implementation processes and mechanisms. We are currently working with UN-Habitat to develop patterns for implementation of the “New Urban Agenda,” the outcome document of the Habitat III conference that was adopted by acclamation by all 193 countries of the United Nations, including the US. That documenttracks remarkably closely with the Charter of the New Urbanism—a remarkable milestone for the Congress for the New Urbanism. Yet in both cases, implementation remains a looming challenge. 

Therefore, the point of all this work is to overcome the barriers, and find a more “agile” pathway to getting better results: one that brings conflicting parties (and too often, conflicting requirements) into a coordinated public process where we all can collaborate effectively, and deliver what’s needed by the community. 

Like the parent in our example, we can do so best by shifting key decisions upstream, aligning incentives toward agreement rather than veto, and rewarding communities and builders alike for targeting quality before conflict hardens into opposition. Based on the evidence to date, this approach offers a very encouraging way forward through the current regulatory and political thicket.   

Note: Mehaffy will be leading a session at CNU 34 in Northwest Arkansas on “Small Towns Leading the Way on Zoning Code Reforms,” and discussing the QUIMBY methodology along with White Salmon Mayor Marla Keethler and others.​

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The 63rd International Making Cities Livable will take place in Riga and Jelgava, Latvia, July 6-10, 2026, with a significant track devoted to development of pattern languages and related insights. Other tracks will include urban resilience, climate-friendly planning, housing afforability, walkability, transportation choice, health and well-being, architectural quality and the edges of public space, and other frontier topics of city livability today. For more information, or to submit an abstract to join the conference as a presenter, please visit https://www.imcl.online/latvia.