Nimbyism

Cilj je ovoga rada društvena i etička kontekstualizacija NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) sindroma i prikaz suvremenih problema i etičkih dilema po-vezanih sa sustavom zbrinjavanja otpada u Hrvatskoj. Intervencije u okoliš koje lokalna zajednica smatra opasnima i ne želi ih »u svome dvorištu« dovode do obrambene (NIMBY) reakcije. U radu se govori o društvenom značenju sindroma i definiraju se njegova temeljna obilježja. Analizira se i proces stigmatizacije mjesta do kojeg dolazi zbog rizične instalacije. Lo-kalna se zajednica u takvim slučajevima smatra nepravedno zdravstveno i/ili materijalno ugroženom. Ugroženost podrazumijeva i izraženu potrebu za etičkim promišljanjem u procesima donošenja odluka. Učestalost NIMBY reakcija u Hrvatskoj upućuje na to da stupanj povjerenja građana u objek-tivnost i profesionalnost donošenja odluka nije na najvišoj razini.

The aim of this article is to present the social and ethical contextualization of the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) syndrome and the contemporary problems and ethical dilemmas related to the waste management system in Croatia. Environmental interventions that are considered dangerous by the local community lead to a defensive (NIMBY) response. The paper addresses the social meaning of the syndrome and defines its basic characteristics. The process of stigmatisation of the space created by the risky installation is also analysed. In such cases, the local community is wrongly considered to be at risk in terms of health and/or material. The threat implies the need for ethical reflection in the decision-making processes. The frequency of NIMBY reactions in Croatia indicates that the citizens' trust in professional decision-making is not very high.

La legge 19/2001 della Regione Campania permette di costruire parcheggi interrati pertinenziali che, specie in Penisola Sorrentina, ha consentito frequenti e imponenti scavi per realizzare box-auto sotto gli agrumeti. Con la motivazione della diminuzione del traffico automobilistico, è stata avviata una nuova forma di speculazione cementizia, avversata da un movimento popolare trasversale denominato “Stop Boxlandia”. Negli anni, si sono avuti molteplici effetti deleteri: il numero di auto non è diminuito, gli agrumeti sono stati sradicati e molti vani realizzati sono rimasti invenduti o sono, impropriamente, adibiti ad altri usi. Una sentenza del 2013 del Consiglio di Stato, però, precisa che il piano paesaggistico sorrentino prevale su qualsiasi legge in materia urbanistica, per cui non si possono autorizzare opere in contrasto con esso.

The project involved interviews, focus groups and interview-surveys with a range of stakeholders in affordable housing developments, as well as residents located in suburbs affected by them, in Brisbane, Cairns, Melbourne and Sydney. The researchers also statistically modeled the influence of affordable housing on property values, and analysed submissions made against affordable housing proposals by member of the public.
Most affordable housing proposals are not controversial but the high-profile opposition to a small number of proposals can give a different impression to the general public. Only 22 per cent of surveyed local residents near recently-completed affordable housing projects in Sydney had noticed negative effects from the development.
Most negative effects of affordable housing development identified by residents were to do with parking, and to a lesser extent anti-social behaviour, crime and amenity and much less to do with impact on property values.  The modeling showed that the impact of proximity to affordable housing on property sales values can be positive or negative, but it is likely to be minimal either way and to be outweighed by other factors to do with the characteristics of the property and its location.
The level of opposition to affordable housing development tends to be greater in neighbourhoods that are affluent or aspirational, and where there is already anger and/or fear in the community.  Opposition to affordable housing proposals is usually most fierce and most widespread early on, usually subsiding as time passes and disappearing once a decision has been made.
Prejudice also plays an important role.  There is widespread confusion about what affordable housing is, with many believing it to be another name for public housing.  Objectors to affordable housing development sometimes use planning-related issues (parking, built form etc.) to mask their concerns about the characteristics and behaviours of future tenants.
However a perception that governments, developers and politicians are dismissive of community concerns about affordable housing development can increase anger and resentment, intensifying the opposition.
While developers can locate developments in areas less likely to face opposition, both developers and governments need to develop a range of strategies for mitigating and addressing community opposition to affordable housing.  Developer strategies could include getting positive messages about affordable housing out through tours of projects and the media, recruiting supporters from local councils and the community, and building within planning controls.
Governments can ensure compatability between local and state policies, develop parking standards for affordable housing, involve residents in development assessments to improve development outcomes, and provide education about affordable housing for community leaders, council officers and politicians.

In Italy, movements designed to delay, block, or permanently disable large infrastructure projects get often put under the same category as anti-vaxxers, in that both rebel against impositions from above, and happen to be accused of being intolerably selfish. In this paper I show that that they are very differently vulnerable to the accusation of selfishness. It is contingently true that almost any specific case of opposition to large infrastructure projects is prima facie selfish, but when we take into consideration the arguments used to defend them, selfishness fades away most of the time. When it persist, however, – as in the Nimby case – it turns out to be a morally legitimate kind of selfishness. On the contrary, not every form of the anti-vax position is prima facie selfish. But the forms that are prima facie selfish are unamendably so; and those that are prima facie not selfish do become immorally selfish, or at least generically immoral, when one tries to concretely argue in favour of them.

Le posizioni No Tav e No Vax sono spesso equiparate perché entrambe accusabili di essere intollerabilmente egoistiche. Lo scopo di questo articolo è mostrare che, contrariamente alle apparenze, la loro vulnerabilità all’obiezione dell’egoismo è molto diversa. La posizione No Tav è prima facie sempre imputabile di egoismo, ma quando si va a supportare No Tav con argomentazioni specifiche, o l’accusa viene spazzata via, o (come nel sottocaso Nimby) si tratta di un egoismo moralmente legittimo. D’altra parte solo alcune forme che No Vax assume sono prima facie imputabili di egoismo, ma in questo caso non c’è redenzione morale che giunga dalla loro difesa argomentativa. Quanto alle forme di No Vax che non sono a priori accusabili di egoismo, esse diventano immorali, e in parte rilevante immorali perché egoistiche, proprio in virtù delle argomentazioni che vengono invocate per suffragarle.

Do positive messages regarding the benefits of increased housing density influence resident stated housing development preferences? We employ an experimental research design to test the efficacy of positive messages regarding increased housing density to reduce observed NIMBYism (NotInMyBackYard). Using a survey-based experiment, we compared four messages: a notification of the public benefits; the private benefits; a social comparison drawing on expert knowledge of housing preferences; and a control stating
recent trends in the municipality. Our sample of 202 residents of a mid-sized Canadian city indicates that messages regarding the public benefits of increased density reduced NIMBYism by four times the control message. We find some evidence in favor of the efficacy of the social comparison treatment as well. We
discuss these findings with reference to the literature on smart city growth, and the policy implications that emerge.

Germany’s about-face in energy policy, the »Energiewende«, requires massive extension and new construction of fossil and renewable fuel power plants, as well as grid and transmission line extension. Acceleration of planning and permission processes is a high priority for government and industry. It stands in contrast to growing citizens’ and interest groups’ demands for participation. Siting and environmental concerns often lead to controversies and protest with considerable political risk. The article discusses resistance and confl ict potential in energy project environments and evaluates resources and strategies of environmental groups, whose negotiating position has been strengthened by a May 2011 European Court of Justice decision. / GERMAN Die deutsche Energiewende erfordert einen massiven
Aus- und Neubau von Kraftwerken auf fossiler wie regenerativer Energiebasis sowie den Netzausbau. Die Beschleunigung der Planungs- und Genehmigungsverfahren hat für Regierung und Wirtschaft hohe Priorität. Dem stehen wachsende Beteiligungsansprüche von Bürgern und Interessengruppen gegenüber. Standortwahl und Umweltschutz führen oft zu Kontroversen und Protesten mit beträchtlichem politischem Risiko. Der Beitrag erörtert Widerstands- und Konfliktpotenzial im Umfeld von Energieprojekten und bewertet die Ressourcen und Strategien der Umweltverbände, deren Verhandlungsposition durch ein Urteil des Europäischen Gerichtshofs im Mai 2011 gestärkt wurde.

This conversation took place in a busy café in Ridgewood, Queens, where we talked about the AEMP’s “counter-cartography” work: the use of mapping technologies to aid tenant struggles against displacement. We also discussed the YIMBY (“Yes in My Backyard”) movement, a pro-growth formation that originated in the San Francisco Bay Area and has recently taken hold in cities nationwide (including, to a much lesser extent, New York). YIMBYs embrace the increased construction of market-rate apartments as a solution to the housing crisis. The YIMBYs conflate opponents of market-rate and luxury housing—including working-class and POC tenant groups—with NIMBY (“Not in My Backyard”), a term generally referring to obstructionist, exclusionary, and usually white homeowners opposed to homeless shelters and multifamily housing in their neighborhoods. McElroy rejects both NIMBY and YIMBY, and refers to the latter group’s approach as “all housing matters.” As our discussion turned to the role of technology and tech firms in driving displacement, we were interrupted by patrons plugging in laptops beneath our table.

Gis of my backyard. Critical history of NIMBY with GIS spatial analysis.

NIMBY is a word which is going to find a place in dictionaries of all languages, and in those of academic geography as well. This article reviews the term NIMBY, when and where it came out and how it entered into geographical debate. A term often abused but which does not cease to attract attention (see the business sector). A suspected case of NIMBY has been described through participant observation and through GIS spatial analysis. Although from both kinds of investigations some signs of NIMBY spatial effects emerged, evidence is weak and induces to look for more complex explanations.

NIMBY è una parola ormai destinata a restare nei dizionari di tutte le lingue, anche in quelli della geografia accademica. L’articolo prende in esame il termine NIMBY, quando e dove nasce, e come entra nel dibattito geografico e delle scienze del territorio. Un termine spesso abusato ma che non cessa di destare interesse (anche da parte del business). L’analisi di un ipotetico caso  NIMBY viene affrontata in chiave metodologica confrontando l’osservazione partecipante e  l’analisi spaziale GIS. Sia attraverso la prima, sia attraverso la seconda investigazione, sebbene vi siano segni di incidenza della variabile spaziale che fanno pensare ad un caso NIMBY, emergono evidenze molto blande che inducono a cercare spiegazioni più complesse.

The Danish island Samsø is world-famous as Denmark's Renewable Energy Island. 21 wind turbines supply the island's electricity. Today, public hostility toward a projected nearshore wind farm off the island's preserved northern coast is growing. This paper takes its main theoretical cue from Gomart and Hajer's (2003) call to open up political questions to empirical inquiry and to pay attention to the material settings in which political questions unfold. The paper seeks to make sense of the islanders' unexpected opposition to a new wind farm, and it does so through a critique of the unexperimental and depoliticizing attitude – found in the empirical case as well as in some academic scholarship – of the NIMBY (Not In My BackYard) logic. Replacing the NIMBY logic of closing down deliberation with an empirical and 'cosmopolitical' (Stengers, 2005) approach to open up the space of politics to close investigation, the paper focuses on the empirical settings which give the controversy its specifi c shape and asks how the projected wind farm is interrogated, negotiated and recast as it travels through the socio-material politics of the wind controversy.

Nonostante i conflitti ambientali vengano abitualmente descritti come scontro fra interessi (interesse nazionale/NIMBY), o basati sulla conoscenza scientifica, il paper tenta di mostrare come essi rappresentino piuttosto dispute tra framework normativi spesso incommensurabili. Dietro ad ogni problema presentato come meramente tecnico si nasconde sempre un quadro valoriale ben preciso, probabilmente in contrasto con altri quadri valoriali presenti nella società. I conflitti ambientali rappresenterebbero una delle più rilevanti policy issue attualmente interessate da dispute di carattere normativo, sulla direzione che debba prendere lo sviluppo economico. Prendendo come caso di studio il decision-making relativo alla linea Torino-Lione, il paper sostiene, attraverso la policy analysis diacronica e comparativa col caso francese e la frame analysis testuale dei claim prodotti dagli attori, che in esso si fronteggerebbero due visioni normative principali: quella ufficiale, tecnica e fondata sulla crescita economica, e quella oppositiva, ecologica e fondata su un’economia a misura d’uomo. Il lavoro si propone di far luce sulla vera natura dei conflitti ambientali, suggerendo che le arene negoziali sarebbero inadeguate (pur a fronte di forti interessi coinvolti), e che anche la discussione evidencebased non sarebbe sufficiente se usata trattando come mero problema tecnico ciò che in realtà è una scelta normativa. Facendo riferimento critico alla letteratura, le arene decisionali utilizzate nel caso di studio sono quindi classificate tentando di mostrare limiti e potenzialità rispetto alla risoluzione di ciò che è stato descritto come conflitto di valori.

"The field of development is subject to shifts in paradigms, and it is important to examine how some new approaches are
present in this partial change. The relationship between different forms of local participation and local knowledge is
interesting for a new approach to the sustainable development. In this paper the attention is pointed on the different
forms taken by local participation and knowledge in the practice of development, with regard to the politics of waste
management. Two cases in the Campania region are studied: Ariano Irpino, in the province of Avellino, and Acerra, in
the province of Naples. The general goal is to point in evidence how some forms of informal participation can produce
and stimulate different and deeper knowledge about local environmental issues."

"Si nous voulons être crédibles, il existe des changements à opérer chez vous. […] les gens que vous êtes sont vus comme étant d'un côté : celui de la rationalité, de la norme, de la centralité. Si vous voulez acquérir confiance et écoute dans le débat public, il faut faire un effort pour ne pas renier ce que vous êtes et vos origines mais montrer que vous êtes capables de vous en distancier pour prendre en compte d'autres choses, être plus loin de la norme. Cet effort de combinaison ne peut être entrepris que s'il existe au départ un changement d'attitude."

In 2014 the UK government announced plans to reduce opposition to housing development by making a direct payment to households in England. 1 This was part of a wider experiment with behavioural economics and financial inducements in planning policy. In this paper, we explore this proposal, named ‘Development Benefits’, arguing it offers important insights into how the governing rationality of neoliberalism attempts to govern both planning and opposition to development by replacing political debate with a depoliticised economic rationality. Drawing on householder and key player responses to the Development Benefits proposal we highlight significant levels of principled objection to the replacement of traditional forms of planning reason with financial logics. The paper therefore contributes to understandings of planning as a site of ongoing resistance to neoliberal rationalities. We conclude by questioning whether Development Benefits represent a particular strand of ‘late neoliberal...

"Il discorso politico e giornalistico e, in parte, la ricerca sociale tendono ad interpretare i conflitti ambientali locali con il ricorso all’acronimo-concetto ‘nimby’. In questo modo, viene attribuito un carattere egoistico, particolaristico ed irrazionale alle forme di opposizione sociale che si manifestano verso specifiche politiche o scelte localizzative determinate in una località, prescindendo dalle motivazioni che esse esprimono. L’utilizzo di questo concetto, inoltre, generalizza ed omogeneizza la definizione pubblica dei diversi conflitti locali, spesso attivi su questioni ambientali, comprimendone l’eterogeneità delle ragioni e dei caratteri manifestati.
Il presente contributo ha l’obiettivo di guardare criticamente al concetto in esame, confrontandosi con una parte della letteratura disponibile. Specificamente, nella prima sezione del testo si affronta l’incertezza del concetto, proponendone una definizione che prende in esame le sue diverse possibili componenti ed articolazioni. Nella seconda parte si mostra la scarsa appropriatezza di questo concetto per la comprensione dei conflitti sociali di natura ambientale, con riferimento ad una serie di valutazioni di carattere specifico e generale. Si pone in risalto, infine, una diversa direttrice analitica attraverso cui guardare ai conflitti ambientali locali, che ne riconosce il carattere situato ma non, per questo, limitato, utilizzando la categoria di ‘particolarismo militante’."

ABSTRACT This research investigated the causal roots of local opposition to affordable housing projects in Australia. It shows that planning concerns can mask prejudice against low-income residents. However community opposition can be exacerbated by dismissive attitudes by government. Developers and government both have roles to better explain to the public what affordable housing is, target more receptive communities for affordable housing, allay community fears through education, and ensure planning processes are clear and fairly implemented.

Many policymakers, researchers and commentators argue that hospital closures are necessary as health systems adapt to new technological and financial contexts, and as population health needs in developed countries shift. However closures are often unpopular with local communities. Previous research has characterised public opposition as an obstacle to change. Public opposition to the siting of wind farms, often described as NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard), is a useful comparator issue to the perceived NOOMBYism (Not Out Of My Back Yard) of hospital closure protestors. The analysis of public attitudes to wind farms has moved from a fairly crude characterisation of the 'attitude-behaviour gap' between publics who support the idea of wind energy, but oppose local wind farms, to empirical, often qualitative, studies of public perspectives. These have emphasised the complexity of public attitudes, and revealed some of the 'rational' concerns which lie beneath protests. Res...

In response to a deepening housing affordability crisis and an impending economic downturn, governments in Australia recently introduced a host of policy initiatives and legislative mechanisms in an effort to boost the supply of affordable housing. In NSW, most proposals for affordable housing development in recent years were uncontroversial, but there was fierce and highprofile opposition from community members in a small number of Local Government Areas (LGAs). Here, opposition campaigns received widespread media coverage and gained significant political traction. While there is an extensive inter-disciplinary literature on NIMBYism and the factors that underlie community opposition to affordable housing, particularly in the US context, almost no research has sought to examine the reasons that community opposition escalates in some places but not others. Through a mixed-methods retrospective case study of an ‘extreme’ instance of community opposition to affordable housing developm...

This report summarises the findings of research into the use of financial payments on planning for new housing. The study was commissioned to help inform the government’s approach to piloting Development Benefits (DB). The research focuses particularly on whether direct financial payments to individuals who are likely to oppose house building might reduce local opposition to housing development.

The research employed a case study approach and made use of qualitative methods. Structured interviews were undertaken with 109 households who would be likely to oppose development across six local authority areas in England. Although this work does not constitute a representative survey of the population, the respondents provide a substantive evidence base of the views of households in opposition to new housebuilding across a range of local authorities. The numbers of interviews achieved have provided significant depth and spread of views of different types of households across a range of different contexts. Complementary interviews were undertaken with 3-5 ‘key professionals’ (local authority officers, elected members, developers and other stakeholders) in each of the six case study areas (n=22) to help contextualize the household interviews and provide evidence on the likely impact on the planning system. In total the research involved 131 in-depth interviews conducted over a six week period between October and November 2014.

A recent application for an eight-room boarding house in the leafy north Sydney suburb of Cromer attracted over 800 objections from residents and the school community.

Proponents of the project, including governments, may be tempted to dismiss these residents as NIMBYs – members of the not-in-my-backyard brigade.

Our research, however, found that ignoring residents' concerns and failing to allay their fears helps nobody – least of all those in dire need of affordable housing options.