The teacher discussed the environmental impact of societal needs (and wants) like landfills, prisons, plants, airports, and other such public use places on a potential neighborhood for its location. A common situation is NIMBY, “not in my backyard” where people want the services provided by these places but want that to happen far away from where they live. It seems almost cold-hearted because by protesting the creation of something in your neighborhood, you most certainly are assigning that to someone’s else. This is how we end up with the “nice side of town” and the “rough side of town.” With money, the “nimbies” as they are referred to can protest and hound city zoning offices to keep undesired areas away. The rough side of town is always not-surprisingly minority, urban, and low-income. These neighborhoods are easy targets when they get stuck with the liquor stores, strip joints, etc. which lead those kids to grow up with the ideas that what they see around them is the way you should live. It’s very subtle messaging that their lives are nothing special and its hard to teach messages up upward mobility under those circumstances (http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1397&context=ulj).
 Now it may seem fair, if you work for your money you should be able to protect your home’s value and maintain the neighborhood you bought. However, nimbies aren’t just a problem for more hazardous, destructive, or negative projects. According to CleanTechnica, in October 2011 45% of all clean and renewable energy projects were abandoned because of NIMBYism. An example is Ted Kennedy who didn’t want a wind farm built because it would ruin the aesthetic beauty (http://www.isfoundation.com/news/environment/nimby-phenomenon). Case in point: people are all for environmental growth but not if they have to see it. Basically we can’t save our planet, ourselves, or sustain the societal model if we can’t learn to share the NIMBY sort of businesses and services around, though they be annoying for all. If it’s not good enough for your family then it isn’t good enough for mine (and in this case we should hope for the removal or lessening of those things (strip joints, liquor stores, etc.)).