Inky beat reporter Julia Terruso’s (@juliaterruso) excellent article on police and overtime at the waterfront has been making the rounds. Julia focuses, in part, on evasion of public record requests and effects on the police budget. Our own PhD Candidate, Christopher Wheeler, picked up some of the chatter on social media about inappropriate use of police force and city dollars. I want to focus on something different, based off of a document sent to me by folks living in Cooper-Grant. I want to focus on the perverse results of these events for neighborhoods, and how legitimate claims by residents about development are often discredited as NIMBYism. But we need a new acronym. I propose DPIMBYism. That stands for “Don’t Pee In My Backyard.” And it’s the motto of those affected by the concerts at the Susquehanna Bank Center.
This PDF is a compilation of some of the scenes from the XTU 2012 concert. I implore you to stop reading this, and start reading that.
Cooper-Grant Security Issues from XTU Concert _July 2nd 2012
It’s absolutely brutal. When a neighbor can walk around and, with little effort, snap pictures and video of people peeing on his car, on the walls of local houses, drinking illegally, and any host of other discretions, something needs to change.
This is likely one of the motivations for the use of additional police in the waterfront. It’s not to protect concert-goers, it’s to protect Camden residents from concert-goers.
There’s a lot to be written about that; specifically about the types of pressures commercial and entertainment development put on residential areas. But I want to focus on something different.
All too often, neighborhood groups are discredited and called “NIMBY” groups when they oppose development (the acronym, for readers uninitiated in these debates, stands for: Not In My Backyard). What this instant reaction fails to recognize is the history behind neighborhood opposition. While there are certainly negative aspects of neighborhood action (resistance to affordable housing, for example), there is also something simple to the complaints. Much opposition comes because neighborhood groups have seen this script before. They’ve been promised that a bar (or concert venue, or late night takeout restaurant with a liquor license) won’t affect them, only to find someone peeing on their house and the establishment claiming it isn’t their problem.
Opposing irresponsible development (or asking for additional resources to combat its externalities) isn’t NIMBYism, it’s just survival.
Share it!
