My neighbors are currently organizing in opposition to a proposed 36-unit apartment building on a commercial lot. The developer held a community meeting, and the opponents impressed themselves by getting 150 attendees to show up. "We're tired of these NIMBY tropes!", they say.
I point out: "150 attendees is just 0.03% of the municipality, and in fact really only a small multiple of the number of people who will end up living in this new development".
They respond, "Why would you expect anybody who doesn't live directly adjacent to this planned development to attend? It's not going to be built in their back yard, so they won't care."
I'm not sure I understand - it's natural to care more about what is built closer to you than farther from you. It sounds like you're generalizing "NIMBY tropes" to mean "caring about what gets built near you". But that's natural and immutable. It's the base definition - not the trope subset. "NIMBY tropes" normally means "opposing what gets built near you to the point of hypocrisy, irrationality, selfishness, etc", which is obviously more specific and more reasonable to criticize.
If you think it's hypocritical simply to care more about what gets built near you than what gets built far from you with no other qualifiers, that's not realistic (or even reasonable, really).
Feels like a rhetorical trap. It's easy to brand someone "a nimby" because by nature people will care more about the building of things the closer they are to them. However it's just pointless dunking that doesn't engage the core issues of why people might disagree over what is being built and where.
For instance, ones reasons for opposing a landfill being built nearby are morally very different from opposing high density housing.
We should strive for policies that we'd want to be implemented everywhere and not defend different policies for ourselves. I'm inclined to see anyone who demands different treatment for themselves than they'd want for the system as a whole either as a moron or evil.
This is generally true, but policy is hard to define and individual cases are easy to have an opinion about. Specifically, what you're describing is sometimes literally impossible, because society is zero-sum. When situations between people are at odds due to no direct fault of either party, it's unreasonable to expect people to cede their own interests to those of others. Of course there's a limit - you shouldn't oppose nearby housing if it would help people in need and wouldn't hurt you in any appreciable way, obviously. Point is, it's subjective.
Also, I would suggest closely analyzing your thoughts and feelings when you run into a situation where you are broadly considering some category of people "morons or evil". Such categories obviously exist, but when you see them in the real world, the picture is often more complex than you might be willing to admit at first.
IMHO you should engage directly with the reason people are opposed rather than just seeking to label them hypocritical based on implicit reasons. In this case you believe high density housing is more important than their property value; either that or you just want them to accept the label that a political movement brands them with (no harm no foul, I like to argue on the internet too).
My point with the landfill is reductio ad absurdum. There is definitely something that you would oppose if proposed to be built near your home. I guess you are saying at that point you would be a nimby too? And I'm saying that's not a debate that gets us anywhere in terms of where to build things we need built, it just leads to further polarization.
Here we're talking about an apartment building, so I don't think the slope you're trying to slip the argument down really exists. We're talking about anti-housing advocacy.
What you describe reminds me of arguments about whether "TERF" is a slur (and therefore objectionable) or just a straightforward description a specific political stance.
Ironically, the "Radical" in "TERF" was never intended to be disparaging, but rather as a descriptive label within Radical Feminism. In fact, it could almost be read as begrudging respect from the perspective of non-TE radical feminists. Of course, the term "TERF" has now become so generic that the "R" is almost always a misnomer (and to a certain extent at arguable degrees so is the "F").
That's not what you said - you said they opposed NIMBY tropes. We use group names like this to mean specific things. It's OK to care about what gets built near you. "NIMBY" normally has more negative connotations than that.
I disagree - the parent only said that these people disapproved of the plan and acknowledged that people who live closer to it will obviously care more than other people (the latter being an inoffensive truth that it is unreasonable to persecute people for). That information isn't enough to determine whether they are being unreasonable or not, and "NIMBY" colloquially refers to people being unreasonable about what is built near them. You're falling into the trap of "it sounds like these people are a member of a group I dislike".
At this point, the contours of the argument you're trying to have here are abundantly clear. You'd like me to believe that the term NIMBY doesn't mean "opposition to new things being built in proximity to people's houses", but rather "only the bad kinds of opposition to new things being built in proximity to people's houses". OK. I get it. I disagree. It doesn't seem clear that there's a rich vein of curious conversation to be mined out of this semantic dispute, so maybe we just leave it here.
You're mistaken - I have no problem with two people having different definitions for "NIMBY" (A. Objecting to something being built, reasonableness not being judged, and B. Objecting to something being built unreasonably; though certainly definition B is more common colloquially). But your post was a criticism of these people, and an implication that they are hypocrites for not considering themselves representative of "NIMBY tropes", which would be nonsensical unless you are using definition B (again, barring more details of the case).
I.e. you are implying "ugh, these people are NIMBYs and won't admit it", followed in later posts by implying, "there's nothing inherently bad about being NIMBY", which is tonally confusing.
The "rich vein" in this case is the clarification. What you're talking about in your original post is important and interesting. I oppose NIMBYism broadly speaking. I am not disagreeing with you on some semantics irrelevant to the main point of your post - I am commenting on the validity of one of its central points. Humanity tends to be one of the first things we throw out when we find ourselves on two "sides" of some societal disagreement (especially when our "opponents" are not very articulate, which pretty much everybody at a community meeting is not), and that's the relevant part I'm commenting on.
I point out: "150 attendees is just 0.03% of the municipality, and in fact really only a small multiple of the number of people who will end up living in this new development".
They respond, "Why would you expect anybody who doesn't live directly adjacent to this planned development to attend? It's not going to be built in their back yard, so they won't care."