Aurum: a case study in the politics of NIMBY

Abstract

The literature on the phenomenon of community resistance to local siting of undesirable facilities, the so-called `not in my backyard' syndrome (NIMBY), emphasizes community civic characteristics and motivation. We describe a case study in which prior political history played an important but not obvious role. The Aurum project was a proposed landfill for the city of Edmonton, Alberta (Canada) proposed in 1989 and 1990 for an isolated and mostly vacant site within city limits but across a river from the developed area. The siting was bitterly but successfully opposed by the government and residents of the adjacent area. Investigation determined residual, unspoken resentment among county residents against an attempt by the city to annex it decades before. It was concluded that in this instance, and probably many others, the political history of the community plays a major role in conditioning their response to `locally undesirable land use' (LULUs) and the NIMBY phenomenon.