I am a final year student undertaking a master’s degree in Environmental Policy and Management at the University of Adelaide and I have chosen to focus my dissertation research on the manifestations of place protective behaviour and the use of the pejorative term NIMBY in the South Australian context.

Although my work is far from complete, I am currently collecting questionnaire responses from local community members who have been labelled as NIMBYies. I have undertaken this research in order to determine if it is an emotional attachment to place which plays a role in why people go to sometimes great lengths to oppose planning decisions impacting places which are uniquely special to them.

The trend in my results from this questionnaire have indicated that people labelled as NIMBYies are more likely to display place protective behaviour the closer they live to a LULU (Locally Unwanted Land Use)  and that these same people all have strong emotional connections to their local areas. It is too premature to draw too many conclusions from the results but the results are very interesting so far. Watch this space.

I would like to credit the work and support of Wendy bringing insight into so called NIMBY tendencies to a wider public debate. I feel that through greater knowledge and understanding into these concepts we can develop equitable and empathetic planning systems which meet the social and economic goals of all stakeholders and hopefully bring some peace into planning.  I welcome correspondence and the sharing of thoughts and information from readers of this blog. My contact details can be found in the link below:

http://www.unisanet.unisa.edu.au/staff/Homepage.asp?Name=Olexij.Straschko