Labour has announced exciting new plans for 1.5m desperately needed new homes, but some are determined to get in the way. Here’s City A.M.’s guide to how to be a Super Yimby and get Britain building again

It’s a renter’s worst nightmare. First, the fences go up around an unassuming plot of vacant land in an area ripe for new development. Almost within seconds, someone on Nextdoor has noticed. The placards start appearing. A local meeting to launch a petition is called. John from Guildford, who inherited his home and works in oil, develops a sudden and intense interest in the local flora and fauna. “The lizards are under threat!” he insists.

That’s right, the Nimbys are here.

How do you counter this insanity? By metamorphosing from a casual pro-housing advocate into a Super Yimby (for the unfamiliar, that stands for super yes in my backyard) by taking the following steps.

Get real about the ‘green belt‘

Leafy, lovely and beloved by Lib Dems, the green belt is the Super Yimby’s ultimate foe. Denounce it at every opportunity. The special status denoted by the area currently makes approximately 13 per cent of English land essentially off limits for significant development, and 22 per cent within the Outer London boundary. Designed to act against ‘urban sprawl’, the green belt itself is rooted in a nonsensical belief: that people don’t want London to be bigger.

For the purest of Super Yimbys, for whom grass is something to be tolerated not celebrated, bulldozing over the whole of the green belt is a no brainer. However, we understand that for some this may feel severe. For that contingent, it’s important to remember that much of the green belt is not green at all, with only 59 per cent of London’s green belt actually agricultural land. The 2016 Draft London Plan for the Green Belt itself conceded that parts of the protected area had become “derelict and unsightly” and did........

© City A.M.