FROM NIMBY TO YIMBY: NEW CULTURES OF LOCAL DECISION-MAKING

The biggest challenge that communities face is making shared decisions; and particularly decisions that might generate multiple forms of capital – environmental, natural, social, cultural and financial. Part of the problem is the phenomenon of Not In My Backyard (NIMBY). Our governance culture unwittingly generate reasons to say ’no’ to change, rather than ’yes’.

The goals of the project are to enable richer and easier participation possibilities for local communities, whilst improving the business and investment environment, and enabling a more sophisticated, more effective approach to public administration and governance.

The project consists of two main phases. The first is action research, based on talking with and studying communities in Finland and Europe, and developing prototypes of platforms and processes that will ’kickstart’ shared decision-making in communities and indicate how permitting and other regulatory hurdles might be streamlined through user-centred design and citizen-led co-creation and engagement. The output will be a working prototype – a system, process, workflow, or platform – developed via these research findings

The second phase will involve partnering with local communities, institutions, and industry bodies in order to turn prototype into practice. This will again be focused on particular communities in Finland, and particular issues or case studies, testing these ideas in reality.

The project can be followed in the http://brickstarter.org/ blog.

Brickstarter enables everyday people, using everyday technology and culture, to articulate and progress sustainable ideas about their community. Brickstarter is a platform to turn possibilities into proposals into projects.

people

Päivi Hirvola

Director, Sitra