NIMBY

NIMBY, a colloquialism signifying one’s opposition to the locating of something considered undesirable in one’s neighborhood. The phrase “not in my backyard,” shortened to “NIMBY,” seems to have appeared first in the mid-1970s. It was used in the context of the last major effort by electric utilities to construct nuclear-powered generating stations, especially those located in Seabrook, New Hampshire, and Midland, Michigan.

The term NIMBY has two distinct usages and categories of users. In some circumstances, it connotes the unwillingness of individuals to accept the construction of large-scale projects by corporations or governmental entities nearby, which might affect their quality of life and the value of their property. Project proponents (which usually consist of the sponsoring corporation, construction labor unions and contractors, etc.) tend to use the phrase in this manner. The phrase is also used by social service and environmental justice advocates to imply an absence of social conscience expressed by a class-, race-, or disability-based opposition to the location of social-service facilities in neighborhoods.

The negative connotation of “not in my backyard” comes from the fact that those opposing high-impact projects on environmental grounds tend to have middle-class or lower-class origins. As a result, NIMBY may be used by project proponents as part of a wedge issue (a political issue that divides a candidate’s supporters or the members of a party). The term has a double edge, which makes it difficult to cope with for people so labeled. On one hand, it implies that project opponents want poor people and poor neighborhoods to bear the burdens of toxic waste facilities or quarries, whereas, on the other, it suggests that opponents are willing to sacrifice the blue-collar jobs that would be generated by the construction and operation of the facility.

Some environmentalists have tried to turn NIMBY into a positive. They have argued that the very basis of environmental awareness rests on caring about what happens in a person’s own locale. They have also pointed out the logical discrepancy of a corporation’s playing on social class in order to win its project.

While undoubtedly true, the “NIMBY as positive” argument has had little traction because in the 1990s environmental justice advocates and other social justice campaigners generally adopted a negative usage of the phrase and reinforced its class-based implication. In the present day, it is used as a response by those opposing the location of group homes for people with developmental disabilities or of drug-treatment facilities.