NIMBY accomplishments in your city

[Bergenser]

We all know that European cities are under special attack by the NIMBY's
in the world because of the cities' old cultural heritage, it doesn't matter if
the projects are being build far away from the old areas though, what only
seems to matter is the "untraditional" building style and the "terrible" height.

Well, here in Bergen Norway, hatred against new high-rises are very common,
I will show some examples of the accomplishments of the NIMBY's here:


Møllendal Høyhus 22 floors | 50m

http://www.khib.no/

it was planned to be the first high-rise building in the world to produce more energy than consumed. Unfortunately it was too tall for the NIMBY's...
BA local newspaper during the final stage

Studenttårn 18 floors | unknown height

(c) Bjerk og Bjørge AS


Lokket 12 floors | unknown height

(c) Vikanes & Brekke Bergen AS



Nøstetårnet 1 Originally plan: 14 floors | 59m

The area planned before the original high-rise:

Bergen kommune

The originally planned high-rise:

Bergen kommune


Bergen kommune

Then they reduced the height and tried again:
This time with a new design and 13 floors.


Bergen kommune


Bergen kommune


Bergen kommune

Bergen Kommune

But even this reduced version of it didn't make it.



Ørnen 12 floors | 39m


www.bt.no

No other high-rise has created so much controversy and media coverage here in Bergen than
this project, the problem is that the city limits is at 27m, it's very hard to get
anything build taller than this. However there are high-rises close to this new project which are even taller: 49m and 55m.

First the high-rise got approved, but then later it got stopped by the
county governor after a complain.

The project has still not entirely lost as they tried again later, but unfortunately I doubt anything will change. I haven't heard anything
in a long time now, maybe it's already dead.

The Ørnen official website translated in English by Google for those who are interested in the details, it's
a complicated issue, and it's now only about politics and laws.

Here is an example of Bergens official policy regarding highrises:

Original document in Norwegian
Google translate:
Existing highrises south of Ørnen is Bergen University College, DNB Nor, and the farthest north county hall. In addition, the regulated maximum height of the top of the City Parking garage = Kote + 45.8, but here is the intention that the height be reduced to 27 meters in the ongoing regulatory activities for Nygårdstangen (future plan), in line with the adoption of high-rises message.

"Ørnen" is not unproblematic in relation to the criteria that are the basis of high-rise post / municipality plan, including:

*high-rises should only be permitted where they reinforce the existing landscape forms.

*Only buildings with unifying common functions for the general public (the public character) can be allowed to address itself to building heights beyond the ordinary.

City Council affirms that the Ørnen quarter is located near an area where there have previously been accepted higher settlement, and where today's high-rises are located. City Council believes that this must be given significant weight. City Council will also emphasize the positive side by getting a large number of modern apartments in the city center, located close to existing and new public offerings. City Council recommends that the regulation is approved as the application, but with the assumption that the project is processed in relation to the form and materials. The City Council's opinion is that there should be held an architect competition.

So basicly, the public authorities can build as tall as they want but not the private investors... They have even approved a high-rise taller than the city's sacred "absolute height limit" at 50m. Better known as the DnB bygget pretty close to Ørnen BTW.


From a brighter perspective:

The comments on the Internet is becoming more and more positive.
Unfortunately the same can not be said about the politicians.

[wjfox2004]

In London recently there was the Broadway Leaf, designed by Norman Foster.

It went from this striking, futuristic 143m skyscraper...












... to this rather boring brown, 85m tower block:

[antinimby]

^ What role did NIMBYism play in that?

The brown tower isn't so bad. We've seen worst.

[Bergenser]

Reducing the height of a building is a common NIMBYist action. (At least here)
We have seen much worse, but still.

Of course what is NIMBYism and what is not is subjective.

[Swede]

Nimbys in Stockholm have stopped many, many plans. Some of the plans during the 40s-70s were horrible tho, so during that period they did good and most people see that now. BUT many think that's still the kind of planning going on! Gah!

Stockholm is also the first city to have an organized Yimby group to counter the nimbys in the media and show that there are legions of Stockholmers who DO want more urbanity (including taller buildings).


here's an example of what nimbys have done in the last 20 year:
they managed to get this tower shopped in half. Only 22 levels were built out of 40 originally planned. The architect refuses to acknowledge the project as his because of this and other changes. Even some of the leading nimbys have since said that it would have been better with 40 floors!

source: wiki (Jonathan Lundqvist)

[Proof Sheet]

Originally Posted by Bergenser

Reducing the height of a building is a common NIMBYist action. (At least here)
We have seen much worse, but still.

Of course what is NIMBYism and what is not is subjective.

Very true statement...nobody every claims that they are NIMBY's..instead they try and indicate why their community is unique and why their thoughts are said in the interest of the greater community etc.

Height, density and increasing the parking totals are common tactics.

[Swede]

Another thing the nimbys are very succesfull at in Stockholm is making sure we can't see the city from the huge Haga park which is right next to the inner city. To them this is vital for the park, for enviormental reasons they say. That it means a hell of a lot lower density in the new areas built by the park on old industrial areas. Areas that could be a higher density than the old inner city (hight norm from pre-elevator days), places that now are planned at so low density that the plans for a new subwaystation in one of them is getting cancelled! So where does the needed growth happen instead? sprawlburbs waay out. Guess which is more eco-friendly?
Idiots.

[Bedhead]

A dreadful victory for nimbyism in London yesterday. Richard Rogers' plan for luxury flats in Chelsea has been withdrawn by the developer, the Emir of Qatar, after opposition from local residents and Prince Charles.

http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/n...203419.article


Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners http://lookingaround.blogs.time.com/2009/04/08/

Whilst the flats were not the most spectacular project currently underway in London, this is one of the most depressing pieces of news I have heard in a long time, for many different reasons:

1. The apartments were really well designed. They were light and airy, but their mobile privacy screens meant that they were not slaves to big windows. The blocks were well proportioned, and structural elements were picked out in a subtle and elegant way - making the buildings truly the heirs to London's elegant Georgian town houses, as well as the best modernism of the 1930s.

2. This is an example of royal censorship. The developer wanted to go ahead with a scheme that the planners in the local council said was of 'exceptionally high quality'. Without Prince Charles' opposition, the scheme would almost certainly have gone ahead in something close to its proposed form. So we live in a country where the heir to the throne can dictate public policy. What a joke.

3. The British economy is in deep trouble, and needs its creative industries more than ever. Britain's experiment in being the world's banker hasn't exactly been an unqualified success. Everyone agrees that the UK needs to diversify, and our creative industries are one of the stronger alternatives. And yet London has just slapped one of its most successful creative entrepreneurs in the face. Paris and New York have no problems with Rogers, but fuddy-duddy London can't cope with his work. What a way to relaunch our economy.

4. The scheme would have been a flagship for high quality housing in a country that desperately needs it. It was a modern scheme that had learned from the mistakes of high modernism - built to high standards with the best materials, giving its residents good transport connections and privacy as well as light, open interior spaces. It would have been a flagship for good design - a modern, high density development that people could aspire to. Now developers know that low-quality housing with gables and columns bunged on the front is a much safer bet than high quality, modern design.

I'm just going to go off and be depressed now.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Go Prince Charles. :rollleyes:

Here, it's just nothing over three stories will ever get built. Hotel proposals have gone from ten, to eight to maybe six on a good day. In the end, it will probably never get built.

There's a couple of new fights brewing over an addition to The Battery Hotel and then another over an existing structure that won't even be heightened. I think the Nimby's would rather bulldoze it for a parking lot so views for another few dozen houses can be improved.

[New Brisavoine]

Oddly enough, at the moment in Paris the NIMBYs seem to be rather weak. Even the Socialist mayor of Paris, despite his alliance with the Greens, has proposed skyscrapers inside the City of Paris proper, which would have been unthikable a few years ago. His Green allies are opposed to it, but the Greens suffered a catastrophic defeat in the 2008 municipal elections, so the Socialist mayor of Paris can now do what he pleases, unhindered by the Greens.

There has been a swing of the pendulum going on in Paris. During the 1960s and early 1970s, there were big projects in Paris that changed the city a lot (the Périphérique beltway, the freeway along the quais of the Seine, the Montparnasse Tower, the Pompidou Centre, the digging of many tunnels for cars, the destruction of many old districts, the towers in the 13th and 15th arrondissements, the tearing down of the Les Halles 19th century wholesale food market). As a result of these big changes, some of which where quite ugly and open to criticism, there was a huge wave of NIMBYism that followed and submerged Paris from approximately 1977 (high-rise construction banned in the City of Paris proper) to the beginning of the 2000s. For about 25 years Paris (the city proper that is, not the rest of Greater Paris) became fossilized, with only a few low-key projects. The NIMBYs didn't even need to oppose the big projects, there were none, because the political leaders were NIMBYs themselves, or were too afraid of the NIMBYs to propose anything bold... Jacques Chirac was the typical NIMBY panderer. Of course there were the Mitterrand grand projects in the 1980s (the Louvre pyramid, the National Library of France, the new Bastille Opéra), but those were the exception (and they were hotly contested by the NIMBYs... I.M. Pei is even reported to have cried once as a result of the level of insults and scorn he endured due to his Louvre pyramid proposal... the leading critique at Le Monde was adamantly opposed to it for example).

Then from approximately 2002-2003 the pendulum has swung in the other direction. Seeing that the other global cities were developing a lot, and displaying bold architecture, the fossilization of the City of Paris became criticized more and more, and eventually in 2007 the Socialist mayor of Paris pronounced in favor of high-rise buildings in the City of Paris proper for the first time since 1977. The Greens were outraged, but much to their dismay the citizens have remained rather unconcerned about their protests. Then in 2008 they had their thrashing in the elections like I said (the Parisians were sick and tired of the anti-automobile policies of the "Khmers Verts", as they are called in Paris, i.e. the "Green Khmers"). Now the mayor has announced several skyscrapers in the 15th and 13th arrondissements, and there hasn't been much protest. NIMBYs are rather weak like I said. The projects in La Défense have also raised little controversy. Even Jean Nouvel's proposal to build some new skyscrapers at Montparnasse next to the Montparnasse Tower has failed to generate a controversy. The mayor is still cautious enough not to raise the prospect of new skyscrapers at Montparnasse, which is within walking distance of the medieval heart of Paris, but it was quite telling that Jean Nouvel's proposal did not create any controversy, in a country, France, that usually loves controversies.

I'm sure the Paris NIMBYs will become strong again at some point. Perhaps after the 300m supertalls at La Défense are built and Parisians discover these huge towers towering ominously over the Champs-Elysées. But for the moment the NIMBYs are thankfully in the wilderness. May they remain there for as long as possible.

[Architype]

I'm not suprised at NIMBYism being prevalent in Europe, because you have so much history going back hundreds of years. In Canada, where 100 years is old, NIMBYism ranges from having strict veto power in the East to being almost non-existant in the West.

[Jstaleness]

Halifax is a great example.

[Daguy]

True but at least this tends to be an issue in the smaller provinces where fewer people live. Toronto is in central Canada, and could be horribly more sprawled out if it weren't for its great number of towers.