Friday, March 26, 2010

The Nimby Battle Cry

Go to any public hearing for the rezoning of land in anticipation of a new housing development and you'll hear the same tired old litany of complaints being regurgitated ad nauseum:

All the bad things in the neighbourhood are going to get worse. Nothing is going to get better. The traffic is going to become dangerously congested; the taxes will increase because of the additional demands for sewer, water, police and fire protection services; the sky is going to fall.

Never do you hear the nimbys ask: where their own kids are going to live after they leave the comfort of their parental homes, hopefully to earn their respective livings: or where the immigrants from across the country or around the world are going to find reasonable accommodation, i.e. those people on whom the growth of the economy and frequently our own jobs will depend.

We all know about the inevitability of death, and of the almost equal inevitability of tax increases, as the politicians succumb to the real or perceived demands of their constituents, in attempts to secure their own re-elections by bribing us with our own money spent on local improvements of one sort or another.

So let's just get over it. That's life in 21st century Canada, just as it was in the previous century and will remain in the foreseeable future... unless there really truly is an armageddon.

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