General Urban Cambridge Updates and Rumours

[Bjays93]

Do we have any actual evidence (ie. not anecdotes and personal impressions) that being white has anything to do with being a NIMBY? I suspect if you look at the data, that any well-off and, critically, well-established person, regardless of race, is more likely to be a NIMBY.

What exactly is describing the NIMBYs as white in this particular case supposed to communicate? I can think of two possibilities:
- that being white and being NIMBY are somehow inherently interlinked. We know that's not true, because there are NIMBYs who are not white.
- that opposition to these towers has a racial component to it (ie. the NIMBYs want to preserve the whiteness of their community). This seems absurd on the face of it, but it seems a sufficiently inflammatory allegation to require pretty strong evidence.

The reality is that NIMBYs can have a lot of motivations. The general link in all cases is an opposition to change, but that might be rooted in racism, in classism, or even in a desire to preserve a community they love - moving a large number of people into a community is inevitably going to bring other changes, and if you're happy with the community the way it is, opposition is not unreasonable.

If I can offer up an alternative profile of a NIMBY, it is someone who is well-established and well-connected to their community. If you don't care about your community, there's no motivation to preserve or protect it. Secondly, they are more than likely well-off. It is difficult for less-well-off people to be politically engaged. That demographic will skew to being white in Canada, but it's definitely not their exclusive domain. Critically, I don't think understanding opposition in terms of race as opposed to class, or more generously, the desire to preserve a community, adds anything useful to understanding the situation (outside of very specific cases) and instead seems like a rather disgraceful way to imply that the people opposed to the development are racist.

I'd actually guess most of the people opposed to this development in Cambridge aren't NIMBYs at all (the implication of NIMBY is that it belongs elsewhere), and simply just like their neighbourhood the way it is, or don't want to have busier streets on their drive to work, or some other run-of-the-mill opposition to development.

Thank you for a well thought out level headed response. You articulated perfectly what I was more or less trying to say but did a really poor job at.