NIMBYism, Urban Development, and the Public Involvement Solution

NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) activists are one of the most important and least understood issues in contemporary American urban planning. A recent national survey found that roughly one-quarter of all Americans reported they or someone in their family has actively opposed a development project. Although opposition to development is widespread and use of the term common, like gentrification, the word can elude definition. To some, NIMBYs are people who oppose environmentally harmful facilities like garbage dumps, to others they are people who oppose development perceived to lower their property values, and some think they’re just people with “unreasonable” complaints about development. One article I read argued we needed lots more NIMBYism to force capitalism to rethink the very necessity of things like waste incinerators.

I think the term implies a failure of urban planning and public participation. But first, let’s take a look at how it’s usually viewed.

The term barely makes a mention in some of the field’s standard texts. The Practice of Local Government Planning, a bestselling standard reference manual for urban planners, mentions it only in connection to siting facilities with a large environmental impact, like waste treatment plants. Donald Elliott’s reformist A Better Way to Zone mentions the term, but provides no help grappling with the concept. Elliott describes NIMBYism as when “elected officials deny a proposed development that substantially meets all applicable standards because of the opposition of immediate neighbors.” Writing from his perspective as a land use lawyer, he argues there is “usually” a technical reason for rejection, but concedes “they sometimes deny even without a good reason.” He divides NIMBYism into two flavors, early and late. The first is to be expected and weighed by the elected officials making the decisions, the second prevented. The author argues the solution to the problem is to eliminate opportunities for public involvement. After all, an administrative reviewer would simply correct the technicality and allow the entire project to pass. In order to “depoliticize” the zoning approvals process, citizen input opportunities should be trimmed. “Not holding a public hearing when it could easily be abused is as much a part of good governance as holding public hearings at the planning, zoning, and initial review stages.”

I disagree with his definition and solution. First, focusing on technicalities misses the point. Urban development is sufficiently complex and politicized that determined opponents have no shortage of methods to block development, the legal facts of the case aside. The problem has to do with the character of the opposition. Second, cutting some hearings would certainly ease the burden on public officials who have to sit through them and listen to complaints, but it does nothing about the underlying frustrations. His proposal begs the question: if there is no hearing, will anyone be disgruntled? I tend to believe they will. If people are unhappy a highly technocratic process would simply intensify opposition earlier or through other channels, such as lawsuits.

Samuel Stanley thinks that the problem is to distinguish between “legitimate concerns” and “reactionary hostility to anything that might upset the status quo,” arguing “The role of the planning board chair and planning staff is to guide the members of the planning board and city council through this process to ensure that community benefits are maximized and external costs minimized.” This characterization also misses the essence of the problem. What is a legitimate concern to one person is an irrational hostility to another.

The key to understanding NIMBYism comes from political science, not the technicalities of zoning. NIMBYism occurs when a politically unrepresentative minority exacts unreasonable costs on the larger community, up to and including blocking otherwise supported developments. This definition comes from a provocative article by Morriss P. Fiorina titled “Extreme Voices: A Dark Side of Civic Engagement” that appears in this text.

In the article he describes the case of a private school in Middlesex, Massachuessets, that sought a modest expansion of their campus for new athletic fields. He estimates the plan would have originally won approval through a general referendum by a margin of perhaps two or three to one, however “the subsequent proceedings were dominated by a small group of citizens implacably opposed to the Middlesex plan.” Over a seven year process of which he estimates 1/2 to 1% of Concord’s 10,800 voters participated in meetings the school spent at least $400,000 and the city over $10,000 in consultants and fees. He concludes “to some, the preceding case illustrates grass-roots democracy … to others, the preceding case illustrates the opposite of grass-roots democracy: a few ‘true believers’ were able to hijack the democratic process and impose unreasonable costs–fiscal and psychological–on other actors as well as the larger community.” According to a 2006 Boston Globe article, the plan was still being debated 13 years after the original proposal.

To Fiorina, the problem with the events lies not in the minutia of zoning, but the unrepresentative outcome. He concludes that “the kinds of demands on time and energy required to participate politically are sufficiently severe that those wiling to pay the costs come disproportionately from the ranks of those with intensely held extreme views. Given that people cannot be forced to participate, the alternative is to get the costs down.” Ironically, the solution to the “extreme voices,” empowered by participatory processes is more participation: “Thus, the only possibility is to go forward and raise various forms of civic engagement to levels where extreme voices are diluted.”

Understandably, the people who suffer the financial consequences of NIMBYism have the clearest understanding of the problem — and its solution. The Urban Land Institute (where I am working this summer) is a professional organization made up mostly of real estate developers. The institute has published two separate works for the benefit of their members on opposition to development, Winning Community Support for Land Use Projects in 1992 and Breaking the Development Logjam in 2006. The first identifies three sources of opposition to development: a lack of information, a lack of involvement, and a true conflict of interests. The manual identifies the remedies for each source: public information, public participation, and negotiations. The more recent Breaking the Development Logjam comes from a similar perspective, observing

The guardedness, disillusion, and cynicism in evidence will not be put to rest by standard procedures that call for a public hearing or two. Citizens know that such hearings typically offer few opportunities for understanding the real effects of proposed developments, and almost no chance for reasonable discourse about the pros and cons of a proposed project.

The book argues its “premise is that when people are well informed about community development in general, and proposed project in particular, the likelihood of securing their support for a project greatly increases.”

I’ll discuss the implications of this conclusion for the planning profession in a subsequent post on Planetizen. The bottom line here is that people serious about changing the status quo in American cities must have a robust understanding and strategy for handling NIMBYism. Thanks to rapid changes in the mechanics of planning — the goals of written plans and character of the zoning — higher density, pedestrian and transit-oriented neighborhoods are increasingly legal again. What remains is the public engagement strategy to minimize the size and ranks of the vocal minority and convince American communities they’re the right form of development for our communities.

Biking Friday

Today for the first time in my adult life, I biked to work. My 2 mile commute from Shaw to Georgetown makes for an ideal bike commute distance. However, I usually take the G2 bus across P Street which usually takes 30 to 45 minutes since I get off at P and 30th Street in Georgetown and walk several blocks south. Today, I made the trip in just 15 minutes, meaning my average speed was around 8 miles an hour. My route took me by the ghost bike above, a memorial to Alice Swanson.

I’m not the only one with biking on my mind. Richard Layman posted this morning a roundup of various biking news. As for the much-discussed D.C. bike sharing program, although I posted about it in April and the Post reported bikes would hit city streets in May, WashCycle reports we will have to wait until sometime in August.

An aspiring planner I met with yesterday asked me whether there’s a massive effort afoot to make every American city more bikable. While I can’t say it’s “massive,” it does seem like I hear about biking at every turn. After Alice Swanson’s tragic death, I was invited to a grassroots meeting to talk about ways to make DC more bike friendly. The bike lane network continues to expand here, and I noted with satisfaction that one graces the street in front of my new apartment in Cambridge (on the right, seen complete with bikers!).

Meanwhile, I’m noticing more and more bikers on D.C. streets. While I may just be more attuned to them, it’s reasonable to assume increased gas prices, more bike lanes, and crowded public transit may be causing a noticeable mode shift towards bikes. From a planning point of view, we have much work to do, both in the way of transforming our cities to be more accommodating to the bike and understanding the dynamics of biking better. Transportation planners regularly record automobile traffic volumes on city streets using automated devices, often reporting the results on maps. I’ve never heard of something similar for biking, but it seems it’s only a matter of time before bike lanes feature devices quietly counting their users, allowing planners to fine-tune the network with every bit the care we spend on automobiles.

Top photo by Rudi Riet

The Internet as a Participation Tool

This post is Part 4 of my public participation in urban planning series, adapted from my urban planning final paper, Citizen Participation and the Internet in Urban Planning

While the Internet makes possible new types of interactions between citizens and government, the purpose and structure of these interactions are not new. The section creates a road map for the use of the Internet as a civic participation tool by describing the technical implications of participation history and theory.

Despite scholarly interest of the web’s potential to improve e-democracy, most have viewed it as simply digitizing existing processes. Instead of corresponding with government officials through mail, citizens can use email. Instead of requesting pamphlets or reports they can download digital copies online. A 2004 study of the websites of 582 U.S. cities with a population of 50,000 or more in the 2000 Census found 35% provided an email address for citizens to contact the office, 74% offered the zoning ordinance and 55% had plans, and 37% had minutes of planning meetings.(1)

Most planning agencies have placed large amounts of information online, viewing it as something analogous to newspaper notices or the creation of an official record for public review in person. This means planning board agendas, meeting minutes, and a wide range of planning documents are posted online, often in PDF format. Furthermore, many have adopted web GIS systems allowing visitors to view GIS data and create their own maps.

The discussion above demonstrates a gap between the current theory regarding public participation and the state of government planning websites. While we have a historical basis for widespread outreach and education about planning processes, information is scarce and often missing. This section seeks to apply the historical and theoretical lessons to suggest a path for use of the Internet for participation. As a framework, it adopts the five choice areas advocated by Brody, Godschalk, and Burby for participation in general.
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Catholic U. Launches Urban Planning Degree Program

This fall Catholic University will begin to offer a Master in City and Regional Planning through their School of Architecture and Planning. The 48-credit hour program requires a planning studio and a master’s thesis. It features an optional design focus through a 12-credit summer session. The program is not eligible for accreditation through the American Collegiate Schools of Planning until it graduates 25 students.

The Catholic U. program brings the total of urban planning graduate programs in the Washington metropolitan region to three, the others being at the University of Maryland - College Park (where I just graduated), and at Virginia Tech’s Alexandria Center.

See also: So You’re Interested in Becoming a Planner

Transistasis: A Plan for Dallas’ Cedars Neighborhood

Last January I was a member of a student team at the University of Maryland that entered the Urban Land Institute Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition. Interdisciplinary teams of students were given two weeks to create a master land use plan and proposed ten-block development for a neighborhood just south of downtown Dallas, known as Cedars.

This year 96 teams from 34 universities entered the competition. Our team selected the number 1856, the year of the founding of the University of Maryland. The team was composed of Dorien Couch (real estate), myself (planning), Nandor Mitrocsak (architecture), Eric Raasch (real estate), and Elizabeth Vetne (architecture). Our entry, mounted on seven 11 by 17 sheets, looked like this:

We also had to work up a full financial proforma on the project to prove it was financially viable:

Although developed at the turn of the century as a residential neighborhood, today very few people call Cedars home. The neighborhood is home to an eclectic combination of light industrial uses, a community college, a few residences, a city park, and even a honky-tonk. I had the opportunity to drive through the neighborhood during a subsequent trip to Dallas, and here’s a few views of what it looks like.

We conducted research into demographics, infrastructure, and the natural context of the site. In these diagrams, the entire site is designated in lime green. Downtown is just to the north of the site, and contains many high rise office buildings and new housing. (See this Google Map for more context.)

Although separated from downtown Dallas by a sunken freeway known as “the canyon,” the site has excellent access to downtown, features a station on the city’s rapidly expanding light rail system, and features a unique eclectic character. Calling our plan Transistasis (the property of a system to reform its functions to maintain a meaningful existence), we organized our proposal around the themes of reconnecting, rethinking, and renewing the neighborhood. We proposed extending the M-Line historic streetcar from the city’s main arts district north of downtown (where the art museum and symphony are located), and develop Cedars into an alternative arts district as a counterpoint to this formal arts activity. We allowed artist studios by-right, and allowed a density bonus for the creation of new arts venues along Lamar Street. Instead of adopting an unrealistic decking plan, we focused on creating an activity spine extending from city hall into the Cedars neighborhood, and along Lamar Street from the convention center into the neighborhood. Our development, outlined in purple on this map, proposed mixed-use urban development near the DART station.

Our plan proposed three major anchors for the neighborhood. We proposed creating a new amphitheater in the Old City Park, providing a venue featuring a dramatic Dallas skyline. The visitors will spill out onto Cedars streets, investigating artist studios and galleries, and passing through our development on Belleview street on the way to the light rail station and parking. The second anchor, a magnet arts middle school, would be just a short ride from the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, now under construction in the arts district north of downtown. The third anchor, a restaurant and craft brewpub would serve as a hub of activity at the Cedars DART Station. The Belleview Redevelopment plan also includes a new supermarket, housing, and retail space.

Although we were not a finalist, the judge’s comments we received back were generally favorable. The finalists’ plans, and the plan created by the competition winner, a University of Pennsylvania team, are available on the competition website.

Nonetheless, we are proud of our plan. In the course of our research, we found that the tree for which the neighborhood is named, the Eastern Red Cedar, is known as a pioneer species often found on damaged land. Early in Cedars’ history it was home to pioneering forms of urban life — Belleview Place, Dallas’ first apartment building, was constructed in 1890 at the corner of Sullivan and Browder streets. Redevelopment of the neighborhood (whether according to our plan or another) could return the pioneering Red Cedar and pioneering new forms of sustainable living to Cedar’s streets, a good thing for the city of Dallas.

> ULI Hines Urban Design Competition
> Dallas Morning News: “Dallas’ Cedars area is focus of urban renewal contest for students,” “Cedars - Buzzing with Activity“

A Brief History of Public Participation in Urban Planning

This post is Part 2 of my public participation in urban planning series, adapted from my urban planning final paper, Citizen Participation and the Internet in Urban Planning.

In order to describe the potential uses of the Internet in public participation in planning, this section will begin with a short history of public participation in planning. The history seeks to challenge the profession’s view of participation as simply the public processes designed and controlled by planners. Public participation includes not only the deliberate hearings, but also the role of politicians, civic activists, business leaders, the media, and others in engaging in or forcing public conversation about planning topics. Before the advent of modern urban planning regulation, American urban planners directly communicated with the public in order to implement their plans. The framers of early zoning laws sought to engage the public through an open and transparent process. Given the increasing power of citizen groups and growing complexity of urban development, contemporary planners crafting outreach strategies can learn from this history to achieve consensus about and the coordination of new urban development.

Participation to Realize Burnham’s Plan of Chicago
The Plan of Chicago of 1909 is an important document in the early history of American city planning. A group of Chicago business leaders commissioned architect and planner Daniel Burnham to create a plan for the city’s development. The plan reacted to the congestion and pollution created by industrialization and rapid urban growth by calling for new infrastructure, parks, and establishing a framework for future development. Noted for its comprehensive approach, the plan was adopted by city government, who created one of the country’s first city planning commissions to oversee its implementation. Although the plan’s creation is widely cited for helping to spark the planning movement in America, it is also associated with an important early example of public participation in urban planning.(1)

In 1909, city governments did not yet have the legal authority implement plans through zoning and an official planning commission. As a result, plan advocates turned to an unprecedented publicity campaign to win public support for the plan. Although the plan was commissioned by elites and presented to citizens through a propagandistic publicity campaign, plan advocates viewed public education as integral to the practice of planning itself. Voting citizens held direct power over the plan, since plan implementation depended on the approval of public bonds at the ballot box for road expansions, parks, and other initiatives. Therefore, before planners obtained the legal authority and institutionalized power to implement plans, the success of the nascent field depended on voluntary public and private coordination, created through broad public communication.(2)
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Urban Planning and E-Government

This post is Part 1 of my public participation in urban planning series, adapted from my urban planning final paper, Citizen Participation and the Internet in Urban Planning, which received the University of Maryland Urban Studies and Planning Larry Reich Award for Best Final Paper.

Since the advent of information technology, there has been intense interest in its potential use to enhance and improve government functions. Despite innovations in many areas of governance, the use of the information technology in general and the Internet specifically to facilitate citizen involvement in urban planning has been limited. Two fundamental reasons explain this: the unique character of public participation has made it difficult to replicate online, and professionals have hesitated to work on the Internet due to the unequal distribution of Internet access. These reasons also serve to describe the obstacles that must be overcome before effective online participation can be realized. New tools and expanding Internet access address these concerns.

Limited Online Work by Planners
The Center for Technology in Government defines e-government as “the use of information technology to support government operations, engage citizens, and provide government services.” The four broad government functions reflected in this definition are: the electronic delivery of services (e-services), use of information technology to improvement management (e-management), use of the Internet to facilitate citizen participation (e-democracy), and the exchange of money for goods and services over the Internet (e-commerce).(1) Although e-services and e-commerce have spread rapidly, the development of e-democracy tools has lagged behind. To the extent there has been innovation in the area of participation, it has been to facilitate individual communication (e.g. email) to government officials.

Although enhanced participation in government decision-making has long been a theoretical goal of e-government advocates, its actual implementation has been limited. By 2008, the vast majority of planning departments and commissions had at least posted plans and other information online, many posted contact information to government officials, agendas and minutes from government meetings, and many have also begun to experiment with putting geographic databases online.(2) Consultants have emerged specializing in workflow management, online document production, and even receipt of public comments for proposed plans in electronic formats.(3) Despite broad adoption of some level of Internet use by public sector planners, few have elevated it to an important place in their work. A 2003 study of 60 urban planning processes in Florida and Washington states found just 5 percent used web sites as a “central role in providing information.”(4)
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