Nimby (Not in My Backyard) Phenomenon

NIMBY is an acronym for Not In My Back Yard. It has two distinct usages and categories of users. First, it connotes the selfish unwillingness of individuals to accept the construction by corporations of large-scale projects nearby, which might affect their quality of life and their properties' value. Project proponents, usually consisting of the sponsoring corporation, construction labor unions and contractors, and the like, use the term in this way. Second, it implies a lack of social conscience and a class, race, or disability-based opposition to the location of social service facilities in neighborhoods. Social service and environmental justice advocates use the term in this sense.

The phrase seems to have appeared first in the mid1970s. It was used in the context of the last major effort by electric utilities to construct nuclear-powerfired generating stations, especially those in Seabrook, New Hampshire, and Midland, Michigan.

NIMBY's negative connotation comes from the fact that those opposing high-impact projects on environmental grounds tend to be of middle-class or lower-class origins. It is therefore a wedge issue used by project proponents.

The phrase has a double edge, which makes it difficult to cope with for people so labeled. It implies [Page 1507]that project opponents want poor people and poor neighborhoods to bear the burdens of toxic waste facilities or quarries. Also, it hints that opponents are willing to sacrifice the blue-collar jobs that construction and operation of the facility would, arguably, generate.

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 term and reinforced the class-based implication of NIMBY. Now, it applies particularly to the location of group homes for people with developmental disabilities or to drug-treatment facilities.