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Notes -
Very little of the NIMBYism in, say, Berkeley, CA is coming from the federal government, though. Some of it comes from the state. Even in California, however, much of it is local.
If we're talking about nimbyism as a movement by residents to block local building, then yeah by definition it's a local issue. But state and federal regulations most certainly raise obstacles and costs to building; often they are the very tools that give local NIMBYs their power in the first place. To use your example of Berkley for instance, a federal judge blocked construction of their supercomputer laborotory because the University of California hadn't gone through the nationally required environmental impact assessment. More recently, Berkley's attempt to build more (desparately needed) student housing was blocked under California's state level Environmental Quality Act.
My argument isn't that local roadblocks aren't important, it's just that the solution isn't as simple as shifting authority to higher and higher levels, when you look at their track record thus far.
I think the point is that federal issues are more tractable. If most restrictions were at the central level, and politician X wants to build more houses, he can quietly abolish some of the more onerous ones, and there you go, national housing stock will increase. With restrictions at the local level, that kind of action will never be co-ordinated nationwide.
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