[OKC] From NY Times: Green Development? Not in My (Liberal) Backyard

[Miles, Karen]

Green Development? Not in My (Liberal) Backyard
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/elisabeth_
rosenthal/index.html?inline=nyt-per> 
Last week, two groups of New Yorkers who live "on or near" Prospect Park
West, a prestigious address in Park Slope, filed a suit
<http://www.scribd.com/doc/50246661/NBBL-vs-NYCDOT>  against the
administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to remove a nine-month-old
bike lane <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/nyregion/08bike.html>  that
has commandeered a lane previously used by cars. 
In Massachusetts, the formidable opponents of Cape Wind
<http://www.capewind.org/> , a proposed offshore wind farm in Nantucket
Sound, include members of the Kennedy family, whose compound looks out
over the body of water. In Berkeley last year, the objections of store
owners and residents forced the city to shelve plans for a full bus
rapid transit system (B.R.T.)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/us/05bcshort.html> , a form of green
mass transit in which lanes that formerly served cars are blocked off
and usurped by high-capacity buses that resemble above-ground subways. 
Critics in New York contend the new Prospect Park bike lane is badly
designed, endangering pedestrians and snarling traffic. Cape Wind
opponents argue the turbines will defile a pristine body of water. And
in Berkeley, store owners worried that reduced traffic flow and parking
could hurt their business. 
But some supporters of high-profile green projects like these say the
problem is just plain old Nimbyism - the opposition by residents to a
local development of the sort that they otherwise tend to support. 
"It's really pretty innocuous - it's a bike lane, for goodness' sake -
their resistance has been incredibly frustrating," said Walter Hook,
executive director of the Institute for Transportation and Development
Policy <http://www.itdp.org/>  in Manhattan and an expert on sustainable
transport. He lives in Brooklyn and uses the Prospect Park West bike
lane to get around. 
Nimbyism is nothing new. It's even logical sometimes, perhaps not always
deserving of opprobrium. After all, it is one thing to be a passionate
proponent of recycling, and another to welcome a particular recycling
plant - with the attendant garbage-truck traffic - on your street.
General environmental principles may be at odds with convenience or even
local environmental consequences. 
But policymakers in the United States have been repeatedly frustrated by
constituents who profess to worry about the climate and count themselves
as environmentalists, but prove unwilling to adjust their lifestyles or
change their behavior in any significant way. 
In Europe, bike lanes crisscross cities, wind turbines appear in
counties with high-priced country homes and plants that make green
energy from waste are situated in even the wealthiest neighborhoods. So
what is going on here? 
Robert B. Cialdini <https://webapp4.asu.edu/directory/person/10913> , an
emeritus professor at Arizona State University who studies environmental
behaviors, points to two phenomena: 

To continue reading the article, go to: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/weekinreview/13nimby.html?ex=131580000
0&en=7c4f08d82351bac4&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=%20NYT-E-I-NYT-E-AT-0316-L18

 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sustainableokc.org/pipermail/okc-sustainableokc.org/attachments/20110322/940a52a5/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 2310 bytes
Desc: image001.gif
URL: <http://lists.sustainableokc.org/pipermail/okc-sustainableokc.org/attachments/20110322/940a52a5/attachment.gif>