Justice
NIMBYs Dominate Local Zoning Meetings
A study of the Boston area shows that those who participate in planning and zoning board meetings are older, wealthier, and much more NIMBYish.
The late Jane Jacobs never much liked forums for community participation in zoning and housing issues. She thought they were usually a sham to harness community sentiment in ways that benefitted powerful government and development interests. She personally told me the story of how Robert Moses dismissed her and her colleagues at one critical meeting as “nobody but a bunch of mothers!”
But the reality today is that community participation is effective—as a mechanism for creating and reinforcing NIMBYism and the accompanying restrictive zoning and land use policies.