The Trajectory From "NIMBY" To "YIMBY"

With the rapid development of urbanization in China, the number of cities andtowns is increasing continuously. Thus, the expansion of the towns’ scale and a growingnumber of residents living in the towns call for numerous construction of the publicfacilities in the service of the production and life of urban residents, such as, waste plant,substation, sewage treatment plant, etc. On the other hand, all these facilities cause acertain negative externality effect to some extent, though they can provide services forthe entire communities around. Also, as the citizens’ rights consciousness and rightsmaintenance ability gradually improve, surrounding residents demonstrate a disgust orexclusive attitude toward these NIMBY facilities. And public events protesting againstconstructing such public service facilities on their own doorstep have occurred andpresent a mufti-made trend, which is concluded as the NIMBY (abbreviation of “not inmy backyard”). Or rather, China has gradually step into the NIMVY era, or the NIMBYhas become normal in recent years in China. Because of the NIMBY, not only are theconstruction or the operation of the NIMBY facilities blocked, but it also leads toconfrontations and even conflicts between the residents and the government as well asthe construction unit. Most importantly, the existence of the NIMBY often result in, atleast to a certain degree, a rise in the cost of maximizing the social public interests, andeven as a failure at last.Though various perspective of analysis for the NIMBY are existing now and thereasons for the NIMBY are also complicated, the article, in the author’s perspective, the most important subjects concerning the NIMBY in China are the government and theresidents around the NIMBY facilities. The fall of local governments’ credibility causesan extreme distrust in the decisions made by the local governments among the localresidents. Due to poor communication while making decisions about the NIMBYfacilities, residents are full of fear about the potential risk which eventually causesresistance of the local residents beside the NIMBY facilities. When investigating thereason, it’s not difficult to conclude the main reasons are the destruction of the unitsystem, the construction of the service-type government, the development of the socialorganizations which gradually weaken the possibility of the governments’ socialcontrolling ability. While what is corresponding to this is that the citizen’s rightconsciousness has been enhanced greatly, and their ability to maintain the legal rights isalso vastly improved. This kind of change makes the government and residents in theequal position, and thus citizens have more capital to hold equal dialogue to protecttheir legal rights which has been or may be violated in future. However, what is moreimportant is to solve the problems successfully after positioning them. In the long run,finding a trajectory from the perspective of mechanism construction is not onlybeneficial to letting the residents be no longer exclusive or opposed to the constructionof the NIMBY facilities, but better to win over the residents to support or welcome thesetting of such facilities, that is to say, to realize the YIMBY (abbreviation of “yes in mybackyard”).Based on the fact that the government and the citizens are the two most importantsubjects of the NIMBY, this article conducts academic analysis on the theoreticalfoundation of the decision-making initiative union model. Owing to the growth of thecitizen’s right consciousness and their ability to protect their legal rights, the citizens arestriving for expanding the right to speak in order to protect their legal rights, whichmeans the citizens are willing to and also have the ability to be involved in the policy decisions, while, on the contrary, most of the governments’ decision-making process isclosed. To solve the contradiction and achieve smooth building of the NIMBY facilities,the article argues that it is necessary to establish a kind of equal dialogue andcoordination mechanism to strengthen their communication between the governmentand the residents, ie, the establishment of the the Decision-making Advocacy Coalitionmodel, which enables the two subjects of the NIMBY to move from suspicion to trust,from confrontation to cooperation, and ultimately from the NIMBY to the YIMBY.Closely combined with the actual facts in China, this article is mainly divided intothree parts. Part one describes in detail the background information and the importantmeaning, the research status at home and abroad, the rational, the research ideology andmethodology as well as the innovation and deficiency of the study. Part two put stresson the academic analysis for the NIMBY on the basis of the Decision-making AdvocacyCoalition model. Part three concludes the specific implementation path of moving fromthe NIMBY to the YIMBY from the perspective of mechanism construction based onsome successful experience in the developed countries and areas.