NIMBY is Beautiful: Cases of Local Activism and Environmental Innovation Around the World

NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) protests are often criticized as parochial and short-lived, generating no lasting influence on broader processes related to environmental politics.  This volume offers a different perspective.  Drawing on cases from around the globe, it demonstrates that NIMBY protests, although always arising from a local concern in a particular community, often result in broader political, social, and technological change. Chapters include cases from Europe, North America, and Asia, engaging with the full political spectrum from established democracies to non-democratic countries. Regardless of political setting, NIMBY movements can have a positive and proactive role in generating innovative solutions to local as well as transnational environmental issues. Furthermore, those solutions are now serving as models for communities and countries around the world.

Carol Hager is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Social Sciences at Bryn Mawr College.  She is the author of Technological Democracy:  Bureaucracy and Citizenry in the German Energy Debate (Michigan 1995) and has published articles in German Politics, German Studies Review, and the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.

Mary Alice Haddad is Associate Professor of Government at Wesleyan University.  Her publications include Politics and Volunteering in Japan (Cambridge 2007), Building Democracy in Japan (Cambridge 2012), and articles in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Democratization, Journal of Asian Studies, and Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.