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Up with NIMBY, down with NIMFY

Richard Register
Saturday March 09, 2002

Editor: 

 

Thanks to Peter Teichner for his history lesson editorial on the term NIMBY.  

It isn’t often you learn something in Berkeley neighborhood development politics so it was interesting to hear that it all started with people defending their homes and lives against pollution at Love Canal. 

That’s definitely something I can agree with; I’m a NIMBY too: in fact I say “Not In My Berkeley Back Yard - but in my front yard, yes.” 

Urban back yards are the low density housing areas. Urban front yards are the lively streets and city downtowns and neighborhood centers. 

Berkeley’s back yards are the lower density neighborhood areas too - they should stay essentially that way; they should not be the location of larger new building, they should become even quieter and more peaceful, more “rural” as we expand parks, community gardens and stretches of our biologically rich waterways.  

In these areas we can remove houses occasionally, especially in car-dependent areas, as they become old and run down. (Historic gems should be preserved.)  

For the sake of convenience to lower income people, cheaper housing prices, energy conservation, pollution abatement, less car dependence, more efficient transit and bicycle access, safer streets, stable climate and so on, we should build in Berkeley’s front yards: the centers where transit serves us best, and especially Downtown. 

Thus it’s the Not In My Front Yards, the NIMFYs I have a problem with, those who want to freeze the whole city in the past, thus continuing the dependence on cars and the oil industry. 

Let’s look at the urban ecology of it all, the chains of causes and effects and the networks of interrelated parts. Teichner pointed out that it was the petrochemical industry that was killing people at Love Canal, giving rise to the NIMBY movement, and that the petrochemical companies twisted the term into a pejorative. Rings true to me! But, who buys the millions of gallons of gasoline the petrochemical industry sells in order to pursue its nasty agenda?  

The people driving cars, and they, all around the world and in Berkeley too, are most prevalent in the lower density areas where it is simply difficult to get around easily without a car. That’s why it’s an international truism that cars, low-density housing and the petrochemical industry go hand in hand. On the other hand, more compact and diverse transit/pedestrian centers go hand in hand with energy conservation of such high efficiency that solar, wind and other healthy energy systems become practical. After almost 100 years of auto dominance we are all stuck in the city built for the car, so it is often difficult to do much without it.  

Don’t feel guilty – do something about it! We can rearrange the city on into the future, gradually moving out of car dependent areas and into more compact pedestrian/transit areas. It takes flexibility, which isn’t the strong card of the Berkeley land use conservatives and reactionaries, and imagination and a little bit of courage, also scarce commodities there. And the city built for people instead of cars is not for everyone, but everyone is aging and young people will grow up with tastes unpredictable to us. That we can’t plan for. But we can plan for more independence from the Love Canal type results of auto/sprawl infrastructure by planning for cities built for people rather than machines, pedestrians rather than cars. That’s what higher density pedestrian/centers – and making the city’s back yards even quieter – is all about. Long live the NIMBYs! Down with the NIMFYs! 

 

 

Richard Register  

Berkeley