Anti-Olympic NIMBYism isn’t just a Boston thing, poll finds
Over the past few months, a number of commentators have suggested Boston’s peculiar NIMBYism explains Boston residents’ distaste for hosting the Olympics.
But a new poll of American attitudes toward hosting the Olympics suggests that anti-Olympic not-in-my-back-yard sentiment isn’t some unique Boston attribute. It’s practically all-American.
An Associated Press-GfK poll of 1,000 American residents found that almost nine in ten people said they would strongly or somewhat support the Olympics being hosted in the U.S.
“This poll confirms that and shows there is a strong desire, from coast to coast, to see the Games return to the U.S,’’ U.S. Olympic Committee spokesman Patrick Sandusky said.
But within the U.S., Americans would prefer they be held someplace else. Ask whether they’d approve of it in their state, and that support drops to 75 percent. And ask if they’d support the Olympics in their local area, and support droops to 61 percent.
Finally, ask how they’d feel if the Olympics were to be paid for with a combination of public and private funds, and then watch support tick down again to 52 percent, the poll found.
That’s still a majority, of course, and it’s well above Boston’s current polled support, wavering between about 30 to 40 percent.
Yet the stark drop in support when respondents consider a local Olympics speaks to the American (universal?) desire to support drastic change elsewhere but balk when that change would impact one’s own day-to-day life.
The poll’s findings somewhat contradict the oft-used argument that Boston is, well, different. “You may think Bostonians don’t want to host the Olympics, but then you don’t know Boston. We love to hate. We love to complain. We love to hate that we complain. We are difficult people. Just ask the British,’’ The Boston Globe’s Shirley Leung wrote.
James Keefe, writing in the Dorchester Reporter, echoed many of the same ideas.
“Frankly, I’m not surprised at the level of skepticism that has greeted the possibility of the Summer Olympics coming to Boston,’’ he wrote. “That Yankee caution and resistance to all things new has permeated our culture for centuries.’’
Antagonism to local change isn’t just us. It’s U.S.
Gallery: What Boston 2024 wants the city to look like before, during, and after the Olympics.
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