# How influential are your city's NIMBYs



## MILIUX (Sep 13, 2002)

Just how powerful and influential is your city's NIMBY in over-turning planning and project decisions? 

In Sydney NIMBYs does have influence especially in the suburbs. They generally turn up in council meetings and demand the council to over-turn their decision or completely reject the proposal set by developers. But the state (provincial) government are in favour of development and would let it pass without local government consultations. Sometimes developers go to state government instead of local to try and get approval because knowingly there would be NIMBY resistance. 

There are NIMBYs in city as well especially though who want to retain their waterfront/skyline view.


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## Westsidelife (Nov 26, 2005)

They rule the city. NIMBYs along with dumb, self-serving politicians have been responsible for setting LA back 30-50 years. It's unbelievable.


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## dmarney (Jul 26, 2008)

What are nimby's??


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## nemu (Jan 19, 2008)

^^
Not-in-my-back-yard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY


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## FREKI (Sep 27, 2005)

MILIUX said:


> Just how powerful and influential is your city's NIMBY in over-turning planning and project decisions?


The bastards here are omnipresent and omnipowerful


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## nordisk celt83 (Dec 2, 2008)

Lived in Oslo, Norway for 10years when I was a kid, and I thought the NIMBYS there were bad until I moved to Dublin, Ireland. Anything above 4floors here is described as a monstrosity, and any type of redevelopment is shouted down. This leaves lots of dereliction and ugliness around the city.

Here's a picture illustrating the reaction a woman in a wealthy, Dublin suburb to a proposed 37storey building. (it was refused planning permission)


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## AAL (Sep 13, 2007)

nordisk celt83 said:


> Lived in Oslo, Norway for 10years when I was a kid, and I thought the NIMBYS there were bad until I moved to Dublin, Ireland. Anything above 4floors here is described as a monstrosity, and any type of redevelopment is shouted down. This leaves lots of dereliction and ugliness around the city.


Sounds like Athens to me, 27 meters is the limit here! :bash::bash::bash:


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## socrates#1fan (Jul 1, 2008)

NIMBY’s have damaged development; however they have also preserved many important neighborhoods in our city.
Lockerbie Square is very similar to what it was like (architecturally) because of NIMBY’s who have preserved the single family homes and churches.
So, in a way they just balance things out, allowing our city to develop gracefully somewhat, so that at the end of the day we have development but the city still has the same feel. 

^^ 
Dude, I don’t know about the demands, but having skyscrapers isn’t all that glamorous.
Here, we had a height limit that produced a very European looking skyline of government structures, churches, and monuments, but we decided our city wasn’t good enough and removed the height limits creating for 30 years a strange skyline and then now we have vacancy issues and massive parking lots to fill the skyscrapers needs.
The glamour fades really fast.
Athens is beautiful the way it is.


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## philadweller (Oct 30, 2003)

Philadelphia almost had the UN. Nimby's killed it. The city is lucky to have broken the gentlemen's agreement and now allows supertalls. NIMBY's are good for historic preservation but sometimes they are selfish when it comes to their own little piece of the pie.


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## philadweller (Oct 30, 2003)

"Dude, I don’t know about the demands, but having skyscrapers isn’t all that glamorous."

I agree unless they are old pre war skyscrapers. Keep the old and build the skyscrapers in undeveloped areas but keep them together. Shiny new downtown Minneapolis is a good example of what was.


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## diz (Nov 1, 2005)

NIMBYs prevented a Wal-Mart from being built near our city, because of the homeless people its parking lot will attract.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Hong Kong's NIMBY movement is starting to grow, especially for more contentious projects lately such as landfill expansion, dynamite depots for subway construction, and facilities to rejuvenite problematic juveniles. This stems from a growing movement to restore our historic heritage and to reduce density through stopping big skyscraper projects. People now are more concerned with developments, how they fit in their neighbourhoods, and their sustainability.


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## gm2263 (Sep 11, 2002)

I cannot imagine Hong Kong without NIMBYS. What more could have been there, like mile-high buildings or something? :lol: 

Hong Kong is a proud tall city symbolizing the rise of China and its prominent position in the contemporary world. Well done chaps!!!

As for Athens and skyscrapers, dear Socrates fan, it is a phobic situation whose extremes now belong to the well deserved attention of psychoanalysts. One or two clusters might have solved lots of the contemporary city's problems without spoiling the traditional view, in the same way it happened in Vienna, Paris and elsewhere. Not in the same scale, but in the context of a similar philosophy.


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## Skyrazer (Sep 9, 2009)

gm2263 said:


> Hong Kong Shanghai is a proud tall city symbolizing the rise of China and its prominent position in the contemporary world. Well done chaps!!!


There fixed for ya...


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## kato2k8 (May 4, 2008)

We actually have a sorta NIMBY party built around resisting projects in a small part of the city. Scored 2.8% and got one of the 40 seats in the city council last election. They were aiming for 3 seats


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## DiggerD21 (Apr 22, 2004)

Next sunday are state parliament elections in the german state Brandenburg. And among the tiny parties is a party called "Die-Volksinitiative gegen die Massenbebauung Brandenburgs mit Windenergieanlagen und die verfehlte Wasserpolitik" (literally: Popular initiative against the large-scale construction of wind energy plants and the failed water policy in Brandenburg).

Although they won't succeed in entering the state parliament, it shows how far Nimbys can go here.

BTW: Brandenburg is one of the least dense german states (86 inh/sq km) with lots of space between the settlements.


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## Mr Bricks (May 6, 2005)

They own the place..


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## el_norte (May 31, 2008)

In vancouver, they give homeless people one-way tickets to the interior of BC and basically force them onto the bus! Homeless people are routinely arrested in upper-crust neighbourhoods in west vancouver and kerrisdale on trumped-up charges of loitering... thankfully that kind of insanity hasn't yet made it to kitsilano. They're talking of forcibly "institutionalizing" (i.e imprisoning) the homeless and addicted during next year's joke of an olympic games...


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## whizz_pat (Jul 30, 2008)

diz said:


> NIMBYs prevented a Wal-Mart from being built near our city, because of the homeless people its parking lot will attract.


That is pretty bad.

In Auckland, NIMBYs prevented an urban intensification project in the fear that their suburb would loose its 'village feel'. As if a city of 1.3 million has a 'village feel'


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## AAL (Sep 13, 2007)

socrates#1fan said:


> ^^
> Dude, I don’t know about the demands, but having skyscrapers isn’t all that glamorous.
> Here, we had a height limit that produced a very European looking skyline of government structures, churches, and monuments, but we decided our city wasn’t good enough and removed the height limits creating for 30 years a strange skyline and then now we have vacancy issues and massive parking lots to fill the skyscrapers needs.
> The glamour fades really fast.
> Athens is beautiful the way it is.


I am only talking about areas outsidethe historical centre. Many many other European cities, most of them better preserved than Athens, have done that. 
Here, we have let the developers have their way even in the historical centre, as long what they build is not too tall...

In a business area in the suburbs for instance, I'd rather have 10 20-storey buildings than 40 5-storey buildings of equivalent office space, and use the rest for greenery. It seems self-evident to me.


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