Yes in my back yard
David at Forking Mad wrote Are you a Nimby? and said he'd not heard the term before, which surprised me. Nimbyism seems to be a really big conversation here. The counterpart is Yimby - Yes in my back yard.
Usually this is all in reference to housing. I think we should probably be building new towns with excellent accessible infrastructure, at human scale, of houses that are sustainable and modern and interesting rather than hodgepodge mock Tudor dozen-at-a-time developments. Of course this always gets fought tooth and nail.
The equivalent in my area now is that people get very proprietorial about our local park. It is at the top of my road and an important part of this area and its identity. Half a mile from the city centre, very close to the train station, it's large, flat, and open. Naturally it is a venue for big events like the marathon, carnival, outdoor concerts, and so on.
You cannot miss this park when moving to the area. It has been here in some form for hundreds of years. It is a large part of why the area is as nice as it is, as sought after as it is. To me, this is great.
To many local residents it is a huge problem. People come! There is noise! People park on the street! Our community group urges its members to object to the planning applications for events. I fill in the form and say I think they will be fun or educational and should go ahead.
Yes some of it is a pain. There are ways to work around the problems. Parts of the park are closed but these things go up and down with incredible speed. Car parking gets scarce, sure, but I've not seen anyone parking worse than residents do. Ongoing noise issues can be serious problems in people's lives - but we can all cope with a one-off event.
This is not unlike the people who buy flats in Manchester or London's historic club districts and then lodge noise complaints with the council. They want the cachet of the address but not the thing that brought that cachet about.
It's good for all the independent businesses. It's nice to have people around. It's important for the city to have stuff happening. We get to enjoy this amazing civic amenity at the end of our road - the compromise is being sometimes inconvenienced.