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The Victims Of Nimby, Michael B. Gerrard
The Victims Of Nimby, Michael B. Gerrard
Faculty Scholarship
It is a syndrome, a pejorative, and an acronym of our times: NIMBY, or Not In My Back Yard. It has a political arm, NIMTOO (Not In My Term Of Office), an object of attack, LULUs (Locally Undesired Land Uses), and an extreme form, BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone). Acronyms aside, however, the question remains as to whether or not NIMBY has victims. Is anyone hurt by NIMBY?
Many leading voices in the environmental justice movement believe that minority communities are victims of NIMBY. For example, Professor Robert D. Bullard has written that "[t]he cumulative effect of not-in-my-backyard …