NIMBY

Critics of development are sometimes accused of having a knee-jerk reaction to proposed projects, characterized as Not in My Back Yard (NIMBY). Required public services are often not desirable neighbors. Many people understand the need for homeless shelters, half-way houses, Department of Sanitation transfer stations, and the like, but don’t want them in their neighborhoods. And it is often suggested that this NIMBY attitude extends to all manner of projects, regardless of the merits. Alexandra Lange, in New York Magazine, wrote: “On one level, this is simply the mother of all NIMBY (not in my backyard) battles—since Gehry’s stadium and its accompanying towers will literally be built in some Brooklynites’ backyards. And Brooklyn’s potent, sometimes cloying nostalgia for the way things were—dese and dose, egg creams and spaldeens—can fuel a knee-jerk rage at any change at all.” See the full article here. In the same article, Gehry is quoted as suggesting that citizens’ groups “should back off when somebody knows what they’re doing”.

But to dismiss the concerns of the community as merely nostalgic and self-serving is to misunderstand the unique perspective that locals have. We know our streets better than others do, and care for our streets in a way that transcends our artistic values. Others may want great work and not care about our streets, we want great work only if we can still have our streets. Has this stopped us from getting great architecture? Maybe it’s the price we pay for having a great city.