Urbanities,
Vol. 4
·
No 2
·
November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
8
Assuming that each community member understands the perception of their
neighbourhood as a ‘bad place’, NIMBY battles allow avenues for neighbourhood residents to
vent frustrations about their own perceived quality of life. They literally ‘walk the middle
ground’ between the institution and the community with picket signs to assert their definition
of the situation. Local politicians are cognizant of this sensitive situation and may interweave
their own opinions on halfway houses into their political diatribe.
This article attempts to fill a gap in the current literature on social disorganization.
Social ecology is useful in understanding the conditions that constitute a neighbourhood in
decline. Social constructionism, on the other hand can account for definitions shared by
residents in neighbourhoods in decline. Both, in turn, are important in understanding the many
dimensions that are involved in any given NIMBY battle and especially one taking place in a
disorganized neighbourhood. In such battles, there are groups of people that feel largely
disenfranchised. Their experiences are not dissimilar to the experiences of civil rights
protesters of the early 1960s. And like the physical conditions that spawned the civil rights
riots in the 1960s, effects on definition are more pronounced when there is a struggle over
control of the usage of space in an area where there is a perceived territoriality.
Data and Methods
We conducted our interviews with 48 respondents who lived in an area of town (near the main
street) that was an ideal location for the placement of halfway houses. We used a snowball
design asking local community leaders, such as the chief of police and local priests, where we
might find people to interview. Some of the interviews were conducted at the community
centre of a local church. Others were conducted directly out front of the halfway house during
some of the many community protests that took place.
The majority of respondents (95 per cent) were Caucasian, however since this was the
demographic of the town, we did not expect much minority participation in the interviews.
Most of our respondents were males between the ages of 25 and 65. The ages used in the
interviews in this article represent how old a person was at the time of the interview. The
interviews were conducted between 1998 and 2008 and our respondents still keep in touch
with us periodically. During the interviews, one of the authors of this paper maintained a
residence near Chestnut Lane and developed a special knowledge of community events,
places and rituals through daily interaction as a town resident.
The neighbourhood where the interviews were conducted had an urban centre with
resources such as a hospital and local social service offices, an abundant supply of low-cost
housing, and access to public transportation. We found that most of the residents had two
main perceptions in common related to the declining condition of the neighbourhood:
perceived failure of local economies and perceived neighbourhood image. The content of
what these people said confirmed what Berger and Luckmann (1966) defined as
‘intersubjective sedimentation’, which is a particular form of symbolic understanding that
arises when individuals share a common perceived biography.
Piat (2000) describes how NIMBY battles begin. They begin with residents of a
neighbourhood seeking to maintain some kind of control over the area in which they live.
