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Originally Posted by counterfactual
You're absolutely right that NIMBY complaints are present in any city in Canada. I hear about NIMBYs in Toronto, Edmonton, certainly Vancouver, Montreal, etc, etc.
It just seems to me, that NIMBYs tend to win the day much more often in Halifax than in comparable urban environments in Canada.
I might be wrong, but this seems to be one of the factors that accounts for the face we spent TWO decades with ZERO downtown development and NEAR ZERO (comparatively speaking) downtown public sector investment.
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Oh, I dunno. I think it's partially the media over-covering NIMBY-ism in Halifax.
I can't speak for Calgary 'cause I haven't lived there in a long time, but in Toronto, there are entire neighbourhoods controlled by NIMBYs (Forest Hill and the Beaches come to mind). Hell, a small crew of neighbourhood activists freaking out about a six-storey condo successfully got a new, hyper-local, more restrictive planning document approved for just their downtown ward with the support of the local councillor.
From what I've heard, NIMBYism definitely had something to do with the until-recent stagnation of the inner city in Halifax, but probably a so-so economy were more to blame. The economy is doing decently now, planning has improved, and the city--which was late-to-the-game with the whole North American inner-city revitalization thing--has gotten on track there as well.
It doesn't help when reporters go out to information meetings and come back with quotes from Joe Ignorant, and don't contextualize them.