Although the nationwide appetite for increasing residential density has grown in recent years, efforts to enact zoning policies that spur smarter, tighter housing development still face fierce opposition from people who see “upzoning” as a threat to their suburban lifestyles.

That clash is playing out in metro Atlanta, where municipalities are trying to balance rewriting their zoning laws so that they foster housing affordability—allowing accessory dwelling units, duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, and micro homes—but also preserve established neighborhoods’ history and culture by maintaining some districts zoned single-family. 

For municipal leaders who want to make housing more affordable as metro Atlanta’s population booms, “rethinking exclusionary single-family zoning may be the way of the future,” University of Georgia urban planning expert Sonia Hirt told Atlanta Civic Circle in an email.

As the city of Clarkston rewrites its zoning code, its city council is considering measures for more accessory dwelling units (ADUs)—like tiny homes in backyards or apartments over garages—and other nontraditional housing types, but they’re up against the not-in-my-backyard mindsets that Hirt said are proliferating in upzoning fights around the country.

“Opposition to upzoning under the umbrella of NIMBYism comes in the form of concerns that density would bring danger, traffic, pollution, [and] school overcrowding, and it will decrease nearby property values,” she said.

That’s exactly what’s happening in Clarkston, where city council members just deferred a vote on upzoning until May, according to Decaturish. City Councilmember Susan Hood, one of the proposal’s most ardent critics, did not respond to a request for comment.

Local pushback to upzoning is also happening in Atlanta, which is in the final phases of soliciting public input before it drafts an overhaul of its long…