文献原文
NIMBY and the Civic Good
Timothy A.Gibson
George Mason University
Policy scholars dedicated to efficient urban and industrial planning have long tried to understand the“ NIMBY syndrome” in order to overcome local resistance to controversial land uses. However, environmental policy scholars have begun to rethink the NIMBY syndrome, arguing that the concept is authority-centered and reduces land-use disputes to a moral struggle between rational/civic-minded planners and irrational/self-interested opponents. After describing a struggle over locating homeless services in Seattle, this paper extends this larger critique to disputes over human ser-vice facilities and argues that the NIMBY syndrome framework fails to capture the political and ethical complexities of locating human services. A conclusion examines how critical sociologists can still critique imbalances of political–economic power in the planning process without deploying the NIMBY syndrome nomenclature.
Imagine for the moment that you have been charged with the task of building a state-run hazardous waste site .All the experts agree: the state desperately needs the facility to deal with its expanding stockpiles of toxic waste. After a laborious process, the list of alternative sites has been narrowed down to the most cost-effective and least dangerous. At long last, it’s time to deal with the problem. But then, local residents who live next to the proposed site catch wind of the proposal. They get angry. They organize. They make a lot of noise. They file lawsuits. Although these local opponents agree that “something needs to be done ”about hazardous waste, they do not want the facility in their community.“Not-in-my-backyard, ”they say. Before you know it, you become embroiled in a bitter political dispute. Eventually, the politicians wilt under the pressure. The “NIMBYs”—the“not-in-my-backyard” opponents—are victorious. The project is axed, and the problem of hazardous waste continues to worsen.
Now imagine that this sort of NIMBY opposition begins to occur with increasing regularity all across the country. More and more, local opponents to much-needed but controversial facilities—everything from nuclear power plants to homeless shelters—are successful in killing these important projects. What you face as a state or industrial planner, then, is not just an isolated case of NIMBY opposition, but rather an accelerating NIMBY syndrome—that is, an emotional, irrational, and systemic distrust of public and corporate expertise that threatens to undermine the state’s ability to solve important environmental and social problems. At this point, academic researchers rush into the breech. Through case studies of successful NIMBY movements and surveys of local opponents, these researchers begin to explore the motives and strategies of local opposition movements(Dear,1992; Dear and Takahashi, 1997; Gaber,1996; Inhaber, 1998; Piller, 1991; Yarzebinkski,1992).In this emerging line of scholarship, these researchers define a NIMBY movement as extreme opposition to local projects characterized by(1)parochial and localized attitudes toward the problem[to be addressed by the facility],which exclude broader implications;(2)distrust of project sponsors;(3)limited information about project sitting, risks, and benefits;(4)high concern about project risks; and(5)highly emotional responses to the conflict.(Smith and Marquez,2000,p.273)
With this definition of NIMBY groups in hand, these anti-NIMBY scholars—let us call them the “conventional perspective” on local opposition movements—then analyze the motives and tactics of local opponents. In the end, they draw on their analyses to offer state planners advice on how to “handle” and “overcome” the NIMBY syndrome. The ethical rationale for this sort of anti-NIMBY research is simple: by mobilizing against desperately needed facilities (like waste incinerators or homeless shelters), irrational local opponents are preventing the state from realizing a clear civic good. They are acting against the public interest, and they must be stopped .From the vantage point of state and corporate planners—and their allies in the academic community—it all seems fairly straightforward. It is the civic good versus the special interest, pure and simple. But are the issues at stake in such land-use disputes truly so cut and dried? Do local opponents to controversial environmental or human service projects—the much-reviled NIMBY groups—always deserve to be dismissed with such vitriol? As it happens, an emerging network of public policy scholars has begun to rethink this conventional perspective on local opposition movements and its aggressive condemnation of the NIMBY syndrome. As Wexler(1996),Lake(1993,1996),and McAvoy (1998,1999) argue, when you take a close look at specific land-use struggles, the central arguments of the conventional perspective begin to break down. Most importantly, consider the clear division the conventional perspective draws between the general “civic interest” and the narrow “self-interest” when analyzing outbreaks of localized NIMBY opposition. As Wexler(1996) notes, conventional NIMBY scholars often assume what should first be proven: that the experts in government and business indeed represent the civic interest and that these experts, and the institutions they represent, are the embodiments of rationality, untainted by any hint of self-interest in the decision to build controversial facilities. Yet who is to say that the arguments of local opponents, however emotionally presented, do not at times represent the civic interest? In fact, one can easily imagine instances when, by preventing the state from pursuing ill-conceived and costly projects, local opposition movements could be doing the public a big favor (McAvoy, 1998). Indeed, as more recent scholarship asserts, once you start pulling apart the arguments articulated within specific land-use struggles, and once you tease out the interests from which those arguments emerge(on all sides of the debate),the uncontested rational-civic-good becomes harder to find.
This rethinking of the NIMBY syndrome, already well underway among scholars studying environmental disputes, unfortunately has yet to inform scholarship on local opposition to human service facilities, including homeless shelters, halfway houses, and mental health centers. For the most part, critical scholars working on local opposition to human services continue to embrace a conventional perspective on opposition movements, one that encourages scholars to understand local opponents only to overcome them through strategic political action. To be fair, it is not difficult to understand why scholars working on environmental disputes would be more apt than human service scholars to rethink the conceptual categories of the NIMBY syndrome. What could be more heroic than local residents fighting against the odds to prevent the state from building an ill-conceived hazardous waste incinerator? Conversely, what could be more contemptible than a neighborhood banding together to prevent the construction of a nearby soup kitchen? Yet, in both cases, the NIMBY label would seem to apply with equal force. Our political sympathies aside, why are some local opponents public-minded heroes and others selfish villains?
This paper therefore represents an attempt to extend this rethinking of the NIMBY syndrome to the literature on local opposition to human service facilities. In doing so, this paper argues that, for both analytical and strategic reasons, the time has come for critical sociologists and advocates to abandon the conventional perspective on local opposition movements. First, as an analytical framework, the conventional perspective on local opposition movements—indeed, the very notion of the NIMBY syndrome itself—harbors simple and unsustainable dichotomies between the rational/civic interest on the one hand and the irrational/special interest on the other. As we will see, such binary dichotomies are simply not up to the task of analyzing the social and spatial complexities of land-use disputes.
This being said, one might still argue that, even if it fails on analytical grounds, the concept of the NIMBY syndrome might still be an effective strategic tool for community nonprofits that are struggling to locate human services in a hostile political environment. In short, despite its conceptual shortcomings, might not the NIMBY label nevertheless function rhetorically in ways that advance the interests of marginalized communities and nonprofit advocates? It certainly seems plausible that framing opponents to human services as irrational and selfish obstructionists might indeed be an effective political strategy. For this reason, it is argued , perhaps we should hold onto the concept of the NIMBY syndrome—not because it helps us understand local opposition movements, but rather because it helps us overcome them. Against this notion, this paper argues instead that the tactic of labeling opponents as unthinking NIMBYs carries important and often unacknowledged political costs. Each time human service organizations use the NIMBY label to describe local opponents, they enhance the concept’s cache in the public sphere. And for critical scholars worried about the imbalance between powerful political and economic institutions and local grassroots organizations, the continuing political purchase of the NIMBY label should be a cause for great concern. Today, in other words, using the NIMBY label may help a nonprofit to build a homeless shelter. Tomorrow, however, urban elites will deploy it to plow a new freeway through a low-income neighborhood, or they will use it to marginalize opponents of a publicly financed major-league baseball stadium. In short, in the long run, the conceptual binaries of the NIMBY syndrome would seem to do little more than foster a dangerous assumption that accredited experts and centralized planning agencies always represent the forces of rationality and the pursuit of the common good, while grassroots groups toil forever in the hated terrain of the “special interest”(McAvoy,1998,1999;Personal Communication, No Baseball Stadium in Arlington, 21 October 2003). For this reason, this paper concludes that, in addition to failing as an analytical framework, the concept of the NIMBY syndrome can fail on purely strategic grounds as well, particularly when it is deployed as a rhetorical tool by grassroots human service groups .As we will see, not only does NIMBY discourse privilege centralized expertise at the expense of local community voices—a condition that does not always work to the advantage of marginalized communities—but, more importantly, NIMBY rhetoric, especially when advanced by human service nonprofits, can often be easily deflected by opposition groups who argue that it is they who represent the civic “majority” against the self-interest of human service organizations and their “outsider” clients. To illustrate the analytical and strategic inadequacies of the conventional perspective on local opposition movements, this paper will begin with an analysis of the recent rethinking of the NIMBY syndrome in the environmental dispute literature. The paper will then analyze a recent struggle over human services in downtown Seattle. As we will discover, on the face of it, this dispute over homeless services seemed to showcase a self-interested and parochial group defending its turf at the expense of the public good—a classic case of the NIMBY syndrome at work. Yet, drawing on this analysis, I argue instead that ,however objectionable the politics of the opponents might be,the case nonetheless reveals the basic inadequacy of the NIMBY syndrome as a framework for understanding complex human service land-use disputes. My concluding remarks will discuss how critical sociologists and nonprofit advocates can retain a commitment to egalitarian and democratic social values, while at the same time jettisoning the conceptual and strategic inadequacies of the NIMBY syndrome framework.
In other words, if opponents of human services cannot, or should not, be habitually vilified as NIMBYs, then on what grounds might critical scholars critique the ability of
powerful local groups to out-thrust human services from their neighborhoods? In the end, I will argue that, even if it is difficult to locate the(singular)public interest within such debates, one can nonetheless criticize and work to redress the process through which land-use decisions get made—a process that is too often distorted by unequal distributions of economic and social power.
Timothy A.Gibson
George Mason University
Policy scholars dedicated to efficient urban and industrial planning have long tried to understand the“ NIMBY syndrome” in order to overcome local resistance to controversial land uses. However, environmental policy scholars have begun to rethink the NIMBY syndrome, arguing that the concept is authority-centered and reduces land-use disputes to a moral struggle between rational/civic-minded planners and irrational/self-interested opponents. After describing a struggle over locating homeless services in Seattle, this paper extends this larger critique to disputes over human ser-vice facilities and argues that the NIMBY syndrome framework fails to capture the political and ethical complexities of locating human services. A conclusion examines how critical sociologists can still critique imbalances of political–economic power in the planning process without deploying the NIMBY syndrome nomenclature.
Imagine for the moment that you have been charged with the task of building a state-run hazardous waste site .All the experts agree: the state desperately needs the facility to deal with its expanding stockpiles of toxic waste. After a laborious process, the list of alternative sites has been narrowed down to the most cost-effective and least dangerous. At long last, it’s time to deal with the problem. But then, local residents who live next to the proposed site catch wind of the proposal. They get angry. They organize. They make a lot of noise. They file lawsuits. Although these local opponents agree that “something needs to be done ”about hazardous waste, they do not want the facility in their community.“Not-in-my-backyard, ”they say. Before you know it, you become embroiled in a bitter political dispute. Eventually, the politicians wilt under the pressure. The “NIMBYs”—the“not-in-my-backyard” opponents—are victorious. The project is axed, and the problem of hazardous waste continues to worsen.
Now imagine that this sort of NIMBY opposition begins to occur with increasing regularity all across the country. More and more, local opponents to much-needed but controversial facilities—everything from nuclear power plants to homeless shelters—are successful in killing these important projects. What you face as a state or industrial planner, then, is not just an isolated case of NIMBY opposition, but rather an accelerating NIMBY syndrome—that is, an emotional, irrational, and systemic distrust of public and corporate expertise that threatens to undermine the state’s ability to solve important environmental and social problems. At this point, academic researchers rush into the breech. Through case studies of successful NIMBY movements and surveys of local opponents, these researchers begin to explore the motives and strategies of local opposition movements(Dear,1992; Dear and Takahashi, 1997; Gaber,1996; Inhaber, 1998; Piller, 1991; Yarzebinkski,1992).In this emerging line of scholarship, these researchers define a NIMBY movement as extreme opposition to local projects characterized by(1)parochial and localized attitudes toward the problem[to be addressed by the facility],which exclude broader implications;(2)distrust of project sponsors;(3)limited information about project sitting, risks, and benefits;(4)high concern about project risks; and(5)highly emotional responses to the conflict.(Smith and Marquez,2000,p.273)
With this definition of NIMBY groups in hand, these anti-NIMBY scholars—let us call them the “conventional perspective” on local opposition movements—then analyze the motives and tactics of local opponents. In the end, they draw on their analyses to offer state planners advice on how to “handle” and “overcome” the NIMBY syndrome. The ethical rationale for this sort of anti-NIMBY research is simple: by mobilizing against desperately needed facilities (like waste incinerators or homeless shelters), irrational local opponents are preventing the state from realizing a clear civic good. They are acting against the public interest, and they must be stopped .From the vantage point of state and corporate planners—and their allies in the academic community—it all seems fairly straightforward. It is the civic good versus the special interest, pure and simple. But are the issues at stake in such land-use disputes truly so cut and dried? Do local opponents to controversial environmental or human service projects—the much-reviled NIMBY groups—always deserve to be dismissed with such vitriol? As it happens, an emerging network of public policy scholars has begun to rethink this conventional perspective on local opposition movements and its aggressive condemnation of the NIMBY syndrome. As Wexler(1996),Lake(1993,1996),and McAvoy (1998,1999) argue, when you take a close look at specific land-use struggles, the central arguments of the conventional perspective begin to break down. Most importantly, consider the clear division the conventional perspective draws between the general “civic interest” and the narrow “self-interest” when analyzing outbreaks of localized NIMBY opposition. As Wexler(1996) notes, conventional NIMBY scholars often assume what should first be proven: that the experts in government and business indeed represent the civic interest and that these experts, and the institutions they represent, are the embodiments of rationality, untainted by any hint of self-interest in the decision to build controversial facilities. Yet who is to say that the arguments of local opponents, however emotionally presented, do not at times represent the civic interest? In fact, one can easily imagine instances when, by preventing the state from pursuing ill-conceived and costly projects, local opposition movements could be doing the public a big favor (McAvoy, 1998). Indeed, as more recent scholarship asserts, once you start pulling apart the arguments articulated within specific land-use struggles, and once you tease out the interests from which those arguments emerge(on all sides of the debate),the uncontested rational-civic-good becomes harder to find.
This rethinking of the NIMBY syndrome, already well underway among scholars studying environmental disputes, unfortunately has yet to inform scholarship on local opposition to human service facilities, including homeless shelters, halfway houses, and mental health centers. For the most part, critical scholars working on local opposition to human services continue to embrace a conventional perspective on opposition movements, one that encourages scholars to understand local opponents only to overcome them through strategic political action. To be fair, it is not difficult to understand why scholars working on environmental disputes would be more apt than human service scholars to rethink the conceptual categories of the NIMBY syndrome. What could be more heroic than local residents fighting against the odds to prevent the state from building an ill-conceived hazardous waste incinerator? Conversely, what could be more contemptible than a neighborhood banding together to prevent the construction of a nearby soup kitchen? Yet, in both cases, the NIMBY label would seem to apply with equal force. Our political sympathies aside, why are some local opponents public-minded heroes and others selfish villains?
This paper therefore represents an attempt to extend this rethinking of the NIMBY syndrome to the literature on local opposition to human service facilities. In doing so, this paper argues that, for both analytical and strategic reasons, the time has come for critical sociologists and advocates to abandon the conventional perspective on local opposition movements. First, as an analytical framework, the conventional perspective on local opposition movements—indeed, the very notion of the NIMBY syndrome itself—harbors simple and unsustainable dichotomies between the rational/civic interest on the one hand and the irrational/special interest on the other. As we will see, such binary dichotomies are simply not up to the task of analyzing the social and spatial complexities of land-use disputes.
This being said, one might still argue that, even if it fails on analytical grounds, the concept of the NIMBY syndrome might still be an effective strategic tool for community nonprofits that are struggling to locate human services in a hostile political environment. In short, despite its conceptual shortcomings, might not the NIMBY label nevertheless function rhetorically in ways that advance the interests of marginalized communities and nonprofit advocates? It certainly seems plausible that framing opponents to human services as irrational and selfish obstructionists might indeed be an effective political strategy. For this reason, it is argued , perhaps we should hold onto the concept of the NIMBY syndrome—not because it helps us understand local opposition movements, but rather because it helps us overcome them. Against this notion, this paper argues instead that the tactic of labeling opponents as unthinking NIMBYs carries important and often unacknowledged political costs. Each time human service organizations use the NIMBY label to describe local opponents, they enhance the concept’s cache in the public sphere. And for critical scholars worried about the imbalance between powerful political and economic institutions and local grassroots organizations, the continuing political purchase of the NIMBY label should be a cause for great concern. Today, in other words, using the NIMBY label may help a nonprofit to build a homeless shelter. Tomorrow, however, urban elites will deploy it to plow a new freeway through a low-income neighborhood, or they will use it to marginalize opponents of a publicly financed major-league baseball stadium. In short, in the long run, the conceptual binaries of the NIMBY syndrome would seem to do little more than foster a dangerous assumption that accredited experts and centralized planning agencies always represent the forces of rationality and the pursuit of the common good, while grassroots groups toil forever in the hated terrain of the “special interest”(McAvoy,1998,1999;Personal Communication, No Baseball Stadium in Arlington, 21 October 2003). For this reason, this paper concludes that, in addition to failing as an analytical framework, the concept of the NIMBY syndrome can fail on purely strategic grounds as well, particularly when it is deployed as a rhetorical tool by grassroots human service groups .As we will see, not only does NIMBY discourse privilege centralized expertise at the expense of local community voices—a condition that does not always work to the advantage of marginalized communities—but, more importantly, NIMBY rhetoric, especially when advanced by human service nonprofits, can often be easily deflected by opposition groups who argue that it is they who represent the civic “majority” against the self-interest of human service organizations and their “outsider” clients. To illustrate the analytical and strategic inadequacies of the conventional perspective on local opposition movements, this paper will begin with an analysis of the recent rethinking of the NIMBY syndrome in the environmental dispute literature. The paper will then analyze a recent struggle over human services in downtown Seattle. As we will discover, on the face of it, this dispute over homeless services seemed to showcase a self-interested and parochial group defending its turf at the expense of the public good—a classic case of the NIMBY syndrome at work. Yet, drawing on this analysis, I argue instead that ,however objectionable the politics of the opponents might be,the case nonetheless reveals the basic inadequacy of the NIMBY syndrome as a framework for understanding complex human service land-use disputes. My concluding remarks will discuss how critical sociologists and nonprofit advocates can retain a commitment to egalitarian and democratic social values, while at the same time jettisoning the conceptual and strategic inadequacies of the NIMBY syndrome framework.
In other words, if opponents of human services cannot, or should not, be habitually vilified as NIMBYs, then on what grounds might critical scholars critique the ability of
powerful local groups to out-thrust human services from their neighborhoods? In the end, I will argue that, even if it is difficult to locate the(singular)public interest within such debates, one can nonetheless criticize and work to redress the process through which land-use decisions get made—a process that is too often distorted by unequal distributions of economic and social power.
