NIMBYs

[wiggin]

I live in an urban-suburban neighborhood just west of Boston. The town is relatively affluent, though the portion I live in is the higher density more 'urban' area closer to the city (and public transit) rather than the southern reaches of the town that are full of wildly expensive mansions and famous country clubs and the like. Because we recently purchased a home (well, condo), we joined the local mini-neighborhood's association listserv. Most of it is boring giveaways of free stuff, discussions of minor logistical issues (plumber recommendations, changes to trash day, et al), etc. It's relatively harmless though the people who regularly post on such a listserv are a little crazy.

Now onto the fun stuff: Our specific neighborhood is also quite close to a major complex of hospitals, medical research, etc. inside the Boston city limits. This houses, among other things, three top notch hospitals, a rather well regarded medical school, and lots and lots of medical research. It's a sprawling, heavily trafficked and built-up area that provides a large number of jobs and training for the area (there's a massive flow of bikers/walkers/etc. going into this area from my town every day). There are also two medical office buildings that are built as offshoots of this healthcare nexus and extend into my little mini-neighborhood. They're on the other side of the train tracks from the main residential area and house lots of outpatient physician's offices - my kid's pediatrician, wife's OB/GYN, our fertility clinic, and a whole bunch of other things are all located there. In my eyes it's always just been a complex on the edge of the neighborhood of some convenience and little effect on my day to day life.

One of the buildings has been acquired by a developer, who is interested in replacing it with a somewhat larger tower (say, 10-ish stories) and filling it with medical research labs (biosafety level 2, which is pretty tame stuff I work with regularly with only minimal precautions). It's not surprising, since lab space in Boston is at a crazy premium and demand just keeps growing. The developer is starting discussions with the town about how the area can be zoned and what they will be allowed to build there.

Now, my listserv has had several extremely vocal folks (who are also elected members of our town's rather silly legislature) who have been posting diatribes against this possible development - talking about the absolutely horrible effects of shadows from the new development, the catastrophic effect the increased foot and vehicle traffic would have on the neighborhood's character, absurdly detailed discussions about the number of parking spaces they should require, and (this is my favorite!) the very scary hazards associated with a biosafety level 2 lab anywhere near our children. They're concerned that this is just the beginning of a creeping encroachment of the large healthcare nexus into our community, which will permanently ruin the area - and they want to make the developer build the tower anywhere else. The rhetoric has gotten mildly conspiratorial and super apocalyptic and I've found the whole thing somewhat off-putting and puzzling.

I don't have a super strong opinion on the issue, especially since plans are so soft a the moment. Yes, I imagine that the development would have some effect on my neighborhood - probably some positive and some negative, with the effects probably being relatively muted because it's replacing an already existing building used for not-dissimilar purposes. But the vehemence of the opposition is so weird to me. This kind of development brings jobs, customers, and tax revenue to pay for our wildly expensive public services... and it's frankly possible it could rejuvenate a pretty moribund corridor just south of my neighborhood - there's this long stretch of a major road just on the other side of the tracks that is sorely underdeveloped and would be ripe for commercial expansion. North of my area there's a super cute/fun area with huge amounts of foot traffic, restaurants, random stores, etc. but south of the area it's a desert with a handful of run-down stores and nothing much else. I actually think some thoughtful development down that heavily trafficked road would be a net plus for our neighborhood.

I've always known about NIMBYs in theory, and have been frustrated that towns like mine refuse to countenance e.g. increasing housing density (despite our proximity to public transit and jobs downtown) and instead drive up property prices so astronomically high that no one can afford to live there. But seeing it in action is another thing entirely. What strategies do you have to engage with NIMBYs and either better understand their position or try to moderate their rabid opposition to any and all development?

[Being]

... What strategies do you have to engage with NIMBYs and either better understand their position or try to moderate their rabid opposition to any and all development?

Dialog and facts.

[wiggin]

Dialog and facts.

[sic]

I'm not convinced that would work in this case. Someone did interject earlier on in the thread that they'd looked into the biosafety concern and had determined (a) BL2 is not really a safety concern to the community and (b) if there was a concern, it wouldn't get demonstrably worse through this building, since that kind of risk is already substantial from all of the other local medical research (including, I should note, a BL4 lab just a mile away, which is way riskier). Their comments were summarily dismissed.

When someone at a local planning meeting spoke up in favor of the development as a local resident, one of the NIMBYers looked up their job and said that because they work in biotech at Moderna, they couldn't possibly be unbiased. (Not that Moderna is looking to move into this space, nor that the guy talking had any chance of making decisions about lab space.) Their tone is quite alarmist and ignores or denigrates opposing viewpoints. I am not convinced that dialogue or facts would be particularly effective here.

And yet, I feel like there must be a way.

[Being]

[sic]

Doh! And I try sooo hard.

I'm not convinced that would work in this case.

I don't believe there are any options remaining unless you can find a legal way to bribe or intimidate (you know, Trump it).

[LittleFuzzy]

[sic]

I'm not convinced that would work in this case. Someone did interject earlier on in the thread that they'd looked into the biosafety concern and had determined (a) BL2 is not really a safety concern to the community and (b) if there was a concern, it wouldn't get demonstrably worse through this building, since that kind of risk is already substantial from all of the other local medical research (including, I should note, a BL4 lab just a mile away, which is way riskier). Their comments were summarily dismissed.

When someone at a local planning meeting spoke up in favor of the development as a local resident, one of the NIMBYers looked up their job and said that because they work in biotech at Moderna, they couldn't possibly be unbiased. (Not that Moderna is looking to move into this space, nor that the guy talking had any chance of making decisions about lab space.) Their tone is quite alarmist and ignores or denigrates opposing viewpoints. I am not convinced that dialogue or facts would be particularly effective here.

And yet, I feel like there must be a way.

It is genuinely the case that the only effective remedy to bad facts is the repetition of good facts. Is it a guarantee? Absolutely not. But nothing else works at all. You are never going to convince the NIMBY's at all. They're running on emotion and a hostility to change (those that aren't running on a purely selfish financial interest and knowingly lying) That's not the objective. The objective is to keep the NIMBY's from controlling the discussion with their bad facts and helping everyone else decide either way with good data.

[Steely Glint]

So, I have no experience dealing with NIMBYs but here's the approach I generally take with people who I feel are not acting in good faith, or a taking what you might call a vibes based approach to the truth.

1) Figure out the central idea behind their problems with the new development, come up with a rebuttal and stick to it. Don't get drawn on bullshit.
2) Especially, never, ever get drawn into writing long blocks of text/making long monologs quibbling over nonsense. Facts - good, bad, or indifferent - absolutely do not matter if the facts in question are not relevant to the central thing in dispute. If your main idea is sound, you don't want the discussion to veer away from it.
3) Don't let them interrogate you or control the flow of the discussion. If they say something without evidence, then dismiss it without elaboration, then make them explain why people should think it's true, don't let the conversation start on the presumption that what they say is true and that you have to rebut it.
4) They accuse you of having a vested interest, being a shill, a sheeple, brainwashed by the MSN, anything like that, just accuse them back. They only care about house prices, not the good of the area. They're just repeating stuff they saw on Facebook. Something like that.
5) Make everything as short and concise as possible. If your central point is hard to rebut, they won't want to engage with it and if you write/say a lot of other stuff they'll find something to object to in that and start going on about it instead and you're back to quibbling over nonsense.
6) If they've a long history of making doom-laden predictions that didn't come to pass, bring this up every time they say about the bad things that are going to happen if this development goes ahead. "Yes, you said the same sort of thing about the bus station (or whatever) and it never happened - why should we believe you this time"?

That said, if they have no realistic chance at stopping the thing going ahead, I would be inclined to just let them rant into the void.