Reading List 11/29/25
NIMBYism and aesthetics, defibrillator drones, railway track detonators, a proposed mach-23 space gun, and more.
Welcome to the reading list, a weekly roundup of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure, and industrial technology. This week we look at NIMBYism and aesthetics, defibrillator drones, railway track detonators, a proposed mach-23 space gun, and more. Roughly 2/3rds of the reading list is paywalled, so for full access become a paid subscriber.
NIMBYism and aesthetics
A common opinion I hear about opposition to new housing construction is that this opposition could be substantially reduced if developers would put in the effort to make buildings more aesthetically appealing, and that its “ugly buildings” that is driving a lot of NIMBYism.
In general I don’t particularly buy this theory, in part because jurisdictions exercise a lot of de facto control over how buildings look, but I’m willing to be convinced otherwise. David Broockman, Chris Elmendorf, and Josh Kalla have a new paper out arguing that in fact aesthetic judgments are actually a substantial reason for opposition (though part of what they classify as an aesthetic judgment is “not liking tall buildings” or “not thinking tall buildings are appropriate for the area”, which seems distinct to me). From the paper:
We support this argument with a variety of evidence. First, motivating our analysis, we show that homeowners in dense areas are highly supportive of new apartments in their neighborhoods, while they and other voters largely oppose new apartments in single-family neighborhoods. “Homevoter” and “NIMBYism” theories would predict the opposite: that homeowners in dense areas should be the most opposed to new housing construction in dense areas, as this creates new supply in these voters’ “own backyard.” But we show that owning a home in a dense area reveals a taste for density that may drive these voters to support further increases in density. On the other hand, renters and owners who live in neighborhoods of all kinds largely oppose building high-density housing in single-family-home neighborhoods, where it would not visually “fit in.”
We next show descriptively that measures of aesthetic tastes strongly predict support for dense development. A meaningful share of people state an aesthetic dislike for tall buildings in cities and that they perceive apartment buildings as ugly; in both bivariate and multivariate analyses, these aesthetic tastes are typically far more predictive of support for developing new apartment buildings than measures of other beliefs, attitudes, and preferences, such as beliefs about the relationship between development and prices or racial attitudes. Moreover, an experimental manipulation shows that opposition to development is actually stronger for similarly-sized office developments, suggesting that a broad class of explanations for opposition to development that are specific to housing—such as the demographics of its residents—are likely insufficient to explain opposition to new housing.
I haven’t read through the full paper yet, but I’ll likely look at it closer in a future newsletter post.
Constellation-class frigate cancelled
In the policy proposal Austin Vernon and I wrote for US naval ship acquisition, we called out the Constellation-class frigate as a ship that was far too expensive due to the numerous features crammed into it. In addition to this, the Navy’s attempt to speed up its procurement by starting construction before design was complete failed, and the program was years behind schedule and significantly over budget. Now the program has been cancelled. From USNI News:
The Navy is walking away from the Constellation-class frigate program to focus on new classes of warships the service can build faster, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan announced Tuesday on social media.
Under the terms negotiated with shipbuilder Fincantieri Marinette Marine, the Wisconsin shipyard will continue to build Constellation (FFG-62) and Congress (FFG-63) but will cancel the next four planned warships.
“We are reshaping how the Navy builds its fleet. Today, I can announce the first public action is a strategic shift away from the Constellation-class frigate program,” reads the statement from Phelan. “The Navy and our industry partners have reached a comprehensive framework that terminates, for the Navy’s convenience, the last four ships of the class, which have not begun construction.”
A senior defense official told reporters Tuesday that the cancellation of the ship program was part of the Navy’s latest effort to build and deliver new ship classes faster.
“A key factor in this decision is the need to grow the fleet faster to meet tomorrow’s threats. This framework seeks to put the Navy on a path to more rapidly construct new classes of ships and deliver capabilities our war fighters need in greater numbers and faster,” the official said.
Defibrillator drones
Here’s a cool drone use-case that I haven’t seen before. If you call 911 and they send an ambulance, that ambulance needs to travel over roads and navigate traffic, which slows down how quickly the ambulance can reach you. A drone travelling to the same location can fly directly to it, and might be able to get there much more quickly. A drone can’t bring an EMT with it, but it can carry small, lightweight medical equipment, such as a defibrillator. Via Gizmodo:
A Duke Health project is using drones to deliver treatment devices during real medical emergencies in Clemmons, North Carolina. Described as a “first-of-its-kind study in the U.S.,” the drones carry automated external defibrillators (AEDs—devices used to re-establish an effectual heartbeat rhythm in individuals experiencing cardiac arrest) to bystanders before EMS (emergency medical services) can get there, with the goal of decreasing cardiac arrest response times.
“Once the call goes in, the drone is launched to that location, the person is on the phone with a 911 operator, they’re guiding them, letting them know what to do, what to expect. The drone is in flight with the AED attached. Minutes later, the drone appears in the sky—not a bird, not a plane, not Superman—a drone and an AED,” Bobby Kimbrough, Forsyth County Sheriff and a partner on the project, told reporters on Wednesday, as reported in a Duke University statement. “The EMS is still coming. It’s just that the drone arrives, and when EMS gets there, they pick it up and keep moving,” he added.
That’s what the study is hoping to measure, anyway. Monique Starks, Duke Health cardiologist and study lead, said that the estimated median time for the drone’s arrival is around four minutes, which would bring response times down from a 6- to 7-minute average.
Iran moving its capital
We’ve previously noted that Tehran, the capital of Iran, is in the grips of a severe water shortage, and that without relief the city might become “uninhabitable”. Now just a few weeks later, the government apparently plans to relocate the capital. Via Scientific American ($):
Amid a deepening ecological crisis and acute water shortage, Tehran can no longer remain the capital of Iran, the country’s president has said.
The situation in Tehran is the result of “a perfect storm of climate change and corruption,” says Michael Rubin, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.
“We no longer have a choice,” said Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian during a speech on Thursday.
Instead Iranian officials are considering moving the capital to the country’s southern coast.
…Since at least 2008, scientists have warned that unchecked groundwater pumping for the city and for agriculture was rapidly draining the country’s aquifers. The overuse did not just deplete underground reserves—it destroyed them, as the land compressed and sank irreversibly. One recent study found that Iran’s central plateau, where most of the country’s aquifers are located, is sinking by more than 35 centimeters each year. As a result, the aquifers lose about 1.7 billion cubic meters of water annually as the ground is permanently crushed, leaving no space for underground water storage to recover, says Darío Solano, a geoscientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, who was not involved with the study.