New York’s best kept secret is Fire Island1, a small barrier island a few hours outside NYC in Long Island. It’s one of my favorite places on earth in the summer and way better than the Hamptons, Jersey Shore or similar places my friends go near NYC. I’ve come almost every year I’ve lived in NYC.

On its face, Fire Island is a "New Urbanist"2 paradise. It’s left me with no doubt that walkable mixed-use neighborhoods3 are incredible, especially ones like Fire Island which have banned cars. But it’s also deeply conservative in many ways: highly insular, does not approve any new housing, and has pretty strict rules. My experiences there have made me more sympathetic to NIMBYism and I think New Urbanists and YIMBYs need to more seriously reckon with Fire Island’s lessons.

Fire Island shows the promise of walkable neighborhoods

Ocean Beach, Fire Island

Going to Fire Island has reinforced one core New Urbanist view of mine: walkable communities are so much better than car centric ones. On Fire Island, cars are banned during the summer and the main way people get around is by walking or biking. There are lots of benefits to this:

1. Walkable neighborhoods: Because there are no cars, streets are much narrower and the area is pretty dense despite it being mostly single-family homes. From the top to bottom of the island it’s only a 10-minute walk at its longest. From the east edge to the west edge of the area I stay in4, it’s only a ~30-minute walk. Biking is simple and safe with no cars too, so everyone has a cheap single-speed bike to get around (see the video below!). To move large items across the island, everyone has a wagon.

Wagons used to carry things around

2. Peace and quiet: The lack of cars makes it extremely quiet on the island, bringing a sense of calm wherever you go and making you feel like you’ve really transported away from NYC. Only when entering an environment like this do you realize how much ambient noise is caused by cars or trucks wherever you are.

3. Safety: Partly because there are no cars, kids can run around freely on the island without parents worrying about them running into traffic and getting hit by a car.

Because Fire Island has no cars, it has to be "mixed-use." You can get everything you need at all the shops along the north most road of the island. It’s so dense that you never have to walk more than 5 minutes to find what you need between groceries, restaurants or bars.

The beaches are also amazing and not crowded!

As a result, my days on Fire Island end up feeling a bit like adult summer camp. Sports (tennis, basketball) interspersed with going to the beach, grabbing food and going out to bars. All within walkable distance.

Text from a friend after a weekend in Fire Island this summer

Fire Island is deeply NIMBY and conservative too

Fire Island is not a straightforward tale of a New Urbanist paradise that liberals can point to though. The more time I spent there, the more I realized it’s also very NIMBY and conservative. Fire Island prevents new housing developments, restricts access to the island and opposes change in general.

Fire Island has virtually no crime or homeless people, and I believe its residents keep it that way in part by making it very difficult to get to the island. Because cars are banned on the island, the only way to get to Fire Island in the summer is by ferry. To get to the ferry you need to take a 1.5hr train from NYC to a small town; it's not impossible but it requires clear planning. If the only way in and out is on a boat, you are creating a huge deterrence for criminals or anyone else residents don’t want coming. And this, not just the lack of cars, a big reason you can send your kids roaming around the island without having to worry.

Additionally, Fire Island is very NIMBY and largely resistant to development, preserving its community for mainly wealthy families. The area consists almost entirely of single-family homes and rarely allows new construction, which drives home prices into the multi-millions. Specific towns like Seaview are private, with the HOA controlling all spaces and often restricting public access to many parts (ex: the park is only for residents). Point O’ Woods goes even further - it has a fence preventing any non-resident access from the west border of its town and requires approval to buy property.5

How important are these types of policies to keeping Fire Island a great place to live? I definitely don’t think they are the only reason, but I’m guessing they have an impact. And for residents who love the community they’ve built there, why risk any changes which could disrupt it? I don’t blame them - I’m in general a huge YIMBY, but I’d probably be a NIMBY if I lived there too.

Taking NIMBY concerns more seriously

Is there an inherent contradiction to Fire Island’s liberal New Urbanist and conservative NIMBY sides? I’m not sure, but I do think there are lessons to be learned for New Urbanists from Fire Island.

Building better communities is not just about building more housing and making communities more walkable, though that’s definitely part of it. New Urbanists need to also develop a more broad view of how to ensure we build communities that are safe, family-friendly and have strong communal bonds. Today, they are often lacking answers and NIMBYism has filled the void in the public debate.

The NIMBY answer to this is not my preferred solution. It’s not scalable to make places great to live only by making it harder for people to get to and too expensive for the average person to afford to live there. It’s even less practical to do this in cities (vs suburbs or exurbs), which New Urbanists are most interested in transforming.

But New Urbanists have not focused on coming up with better options. Instead of taking NIMBY concerns seriously, they’ve resorted too often to insults and disdain. Do we need strict Fire Island-like rule enforcement in cities to make them as attractive places to live (a la Singapore)? What can we do to make cities more family friendly? These are the types of questions that need to be discussed as much as building more housing.

If New Urbanists don’t come up with better options, and people believe the only way to create great communities is by walling them off and preventing a lot of change, then NIMBYism will unfortunately remain popular and win out in the end.