The NIMBY Monitor

Wind Farms: Cape Cod, Meet Upstate New York

I have written before that I think the benefits of wind farming -- producing nearly pollution-free domestic energy such as electricity from windmills -- is in general a laudable effort.

The people who get in the way, often, would sacrifice these attractive benefits to protect the view out their back window or front door -- be it a view of Nantucket Sound off Cape Cod (see this article and also this article, as well as this missive in past postings on NIMBY Monitor) or a view of the wilds and lakes of upstate New York. And they are wealthy enough or powerful enough to make noise and get heard. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but meanwhile a clean way to produce energy to turn the axle gets shorted.

Now it's time for the view protectionists on Cape Cod to meet their counterparts in upstate New York.

How Dense Thinking Avoids NIMBY -- Really! We're Not Kidding!

Years ago, high density was the scurge of the suburbs. Today, it's the in thing.

I covered planning and zoning in the early 1980s for the Raleigh (N.C.) Times, a period when the Research Triangle area was in the midst of a building boom happening so fast that planners downtown could barely keep ahead of developers in the suburbs.

The best way to kill off a proposed development: Claim its density was too high.

Nowadays, that's likely to get a project approved, says an article in this month's issue of Professional Builder magazine. The article is titled, "Manifest Density."

As a frame for the topic, that title isn't far off.

NIMBY Strikes My Home, in Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.A.

NIMBY gets personal when it's in the NIMBY Monitor's backyard.