“Not in My Backyard” is a common, if stereotyped, slogan of neighborhood and community groups opposed to locally unwanted land uses. Typically, NIMBY movements arise in opposition to perceived environmental threats such as toxic waste dumps, trash incinerators, recycling centers, or landfills; at the state level, they may oppose nuclear power plants or potential transportation routes for trucks or trains carrying dangerous chemicals. In the 19th century, urban locational conflicts erupted over the siting of slaughterhouses, rendering plants, and saloons. NIMBY alliances may arise against social (as opposed to environmental) categories of land uses they deem as undesirable, such as shopping malls, prisons, bridges or tunnels, low-income housing projects, transit systems, homeless shelters, drug rehabilitation centers, or halfway homes for mildly retarded people.

NIMBY movements reflect ...