Sohn-Levi Silvia and Danny Ben-Shahar (Advisor)
This research examines the Not in My Backyard (NIMBY) syndrome in the urban environment of Tel Aviv, Israel. Particularly, it is concerned with the social phenomenon according to which people oppose specific land uses in their proximity (known as the LULUג€”Locally Unwanted Land Usesג€”phenomenon). While the vast majority of the literature in this area focuses on environmental land uses, this research examines the NIMBY phenomenon in general, and then with a concentration on Human Care Facilities (HCF) LULUs. These facilities include prisons, drug treatment institutions, nursery residential homeless shelters, and other community care facilities.
The main objectives of this research are twofold: (1) to summarize and categorize the existing literature on the NIMBY phenomenon; and (2) to determine whether a selection of socio-economic characteristics are statistically correlated with the location of HCFs in the urban space of the city of Tel Aviv. These socio-economic variables emerge from the international literature on the subject.
The research findings show that the empirical evidence generally supports the assertion that there is a tendency for HCFs to be unevenly concentrated in areas of low socio-economic status (this result, however, does not include HCFs that serve disabled people). Furthermore, a Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis of the data further supports this evidence by indicating that HCFs are unevenly distributed in the urban space of Tel Aviv.
The paper concludes with a discussion of the empirical evidence in light of the existing literature, as well as insights and suggestions for future research.
Full thesis text>>