There's a completely bland, ugly, brutalist movie theatre in the downtown of my city [1]. Probably from the 80s? There was talk about tearing it down and replacing it with a much nicer looking (IMO) modern mid-rise [2]. A local news organization posted about it, and the comments were flooded with old people who live in the suburbs moaning. One just posted a link to a YouTube video of Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" ("they paved paradise/and put up a parking lot"), absurdly.
Kind of funny using Victoria as an example. Having lived in Victoria on and off for the last 20 years I can remember the "tall-building ordinance" that finally got removed to allow for the construction of taller condos in the downtown area. Up above is also someone posting the lack of progress for bike lanes in their city but Victoria has been pretty good about that with the mayor going ahead with them even despite significant outcry about them. I think Victoria could be faster at adjusting to change but when I think about the changes over the past 2 decades, there has been significant development.
The quintessential "bad faith NIMBY" proposal is probably the infamous "historic laundromat" saga in SF where a laundromat had to do three studies on shadows and was proposed for historic preservation in an effort to stop an apartment building: https://missionlocal.org/2018/06/the-strange-and-terrible-sa...
A lot of small parks in SF are also there because declaring some land a park is a good way to stop affordable housing projects/senior housing/anything that doesn't sound as cute as a park.
My college fraternity purchased a former sorority house turned retirement home, with the intent to turn it back into a fraternity house. Neighbors objected.
We had to take it all the way to the state Supreme Court to use the dwelling as it was originally intended and zoned.
Sure but that’s not how laws or zoning are supposed to work. A retirement home is zoned the same as a fraternity.
It is like suing your neighbor because you’d rather they have 2 kids instead of 3. Or suing the corner business because they opened a coffee shop instead of a donut shop.
The idea that you think you have a say in your neighbors private business is the real problem.
As long as you tag your hypothetical neighbor's business as "private", saying that it's inappropriate to think you have a say in it is tautological.
The idea that you have a say in your neighbor's business is not a problem, it's a fact. The fact that you have property at all is an agreement amongst your neighbors to respect that claim. If you want a place where your neighbors don't get a say in what you do, you should shop for another planet.
I find it really interesting that in the supposedly "land of the free" US people constantly try to invade each other's private business. So many regulations telling you what you can or cannot do, especially in your private property. And of course people willingly(!!!!!) joining organisations that regulate where you can park on your own driveway or what's the regulation height of the grass in your garden.
In other countries you want to open a business out of your garage? Go ahead, why would anyone stop you. It's your private property. Your neighbour doesn't like it? They can talk to you about it. The local council isn't going to invervene because.....it's none of their business. But somehow in US that's flipped on its head - like somehow the "freedom" means "freedom to tell others how to live their life" instead of "freedom to live my life how I want".
I wouldn't even think you need to shop for another planet - there are plenty parts of world where it's essentially free-for-all what people build on their own land. They're variously known as favelas, slums, shantytowns etc.
I've heard of people moving next to schools and playground/sport field and then complaining to the council about the noise. Some take it even further to enforce restrictions on the use of the public grounds.
