Monday, May 09, 2011

Things They Should Invent: measure the non-NIMBY vote

In Local Motion, there are two stories of excessively NIMBY behaviour. In one case, a family put up a fence in their yard so the kids could play safely, and the neighbours objected because the norm in the neighbourhood was not to have fences. In another, a family wanted to tear down their old house and build a new accessible one to accommodate member of the household's disability, and the neighbours objected because of the historical nature of the house being torn down.

Both of these cases ended up having public meetings held about them, and it occurred to me that this is inherently unfair. Do you want to go to a public meeting about the Jones's fence? If you think their fence is an outrage, your answer is going to be "Hell yeah!" But if you don't care either way about their fence, your answer is going to be "Of course not, I don't care if the Joneses build a fence!" The vast vast majority of the neighbourhood might be completely indifferent, but the Joneses still find themselves in a public meeting facing dozens of angry opponents. No one is going to bother to go all the way to a public meeting and stand up in front of people just to say "Really, I do no care one bit," but most of the neighbourhood probably feels this way.

Non-NIMBYs often truly don't care, and may even think the issue is none of their business. This makes them harder to count, but we really do need to come up with a way to have the indifferent vote counted without requiring too much effort by the indifferent.

3 comments:

laura k said...

You point out one of the many stupid things about leaving those kinds of issues up to public meetings. The affected families would have to expend a lot of effort cajoling and begging neutrals to become supporters, and then supporters to make their support public.

Things like this have to be written into laws and bylaws. Kids' safety? Accessibility? Those are too important to leave to public discussion.

laura k said...

I had never heard of Local Motion, but I went to your link. Coach House Books! I toured their printing house with my History of Books & Printing class. It was great fun. I was envious of the press people, earning a living through this meticulous, anachronistic craft.

impudent strumpet said...

That would be cool! I never thought about it because I'm always thinking more about the content, but imagine actually MAKING books!